Social Gaming

Social Gaming (verb) is the act of playing games with other players, either in person, electronically, and/or both. The maximum number of players is dependent upon the game but there must be at least two. Materials needed range from dice to foam covered swords to a keyboard and mouse. Over time, social gaming has evolved from back alley gambling to massive mulitplayer online games (MMO's) involving millions of people.

History
Card games, gambling, checkers, and chess are a few early forms of social games. Industrialization brought about the ability to mass produce and introduce new board games such as: Monopoly,Dungeons and Dragons, Risk, Clue, and Candy Land. Live-Action Role Playing (LARPing) evolved along side its modern board game counter parts. LARPing is similar to board games such as Dungeon and Dragons, except the moves are actually acted out by the players. The first highly popularized electronic or video game was also a social game, Pong. With the advent of the Internet, video games are now able to be played remotely by my multiple parties.

Modern Social Gaming
The Internet has infinitely increased the the number of ways in which gamers interact socially. Firstly, there are the ecosystems in which one can gain friends, achievements, and status/ranks. Many games have their own proprietary systems, but there are a few that account for most online play. The console game systems have mutually exclusive ecosystems (bar a few exception on the XBox 360 and PC). These include Sony's Playstation Online (free), Microsoft's XBox Live ($49.99 per year, but $59.99 per year as of November 11, 2010), and Nintendo's Will Online (free). On personal computers, the predominant ecosystem is Steam (Valve) and is free for all online play. Valve has just recently release a version of Steam for the Macintosh, and is rumored to be working on a port for Linux as well. The number of players involved in online gaming has also created several online communities, blogs, and wikis dedicated to specific games.