CGI games
The following is translated from the Japanese Wikipedia article on CGI games
CGI games (CGIゲーム) are browser-based CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programs that take the form of games.
Overview
CGI games are games that run on servers. Their origins can be found in the olden days of computer networking and online services. What differentiates them from those older services is that the server programs don't output results as a stream of text, but instead send HTML to be viewed in a web browser; users interact with the programs via the content displayed in the web browser.
Since everything is done through standard web browsers, CGI games are OS agnostic. Some CGI games can be played using mobile browsers, but sometimes issues can arise due to their inherent limitations (particularly with how the games are displayed).
The main bulk of these programs are usually written in C, Perl, PHP, etc., though there are no real limits as long as it can run on a server and send responses to browsers. As the average web browsers's capabilities improved, CGI games began utilizing JavaScript, dynamic HTML, Flash, etc. This meant that the UI of the games could be generated on the user's machines, with the server only handling the coordination of players and the management of game data.
The term "server" has been used thus far for the sake of simplicity, but even an ordinary home PC can be configured as a web server or configured to run typical CGI program languages such as Perl. As long as a game uses CGI, it can be classified as a CGI game.
History
CGI games—along with CGI chat—exploded in popularity in the late 1990s. A representative example would be the Lord of Monsters (ロードオブモンスターズ) series, which had tens of thousands of registered users, and was even ported to PlayStation. This popular game had four iterations that ran between 1996 and 1999.
As the 21st century came along, the earlier form of non-distributed CGI games (such as Lord of Monsters) were replaced by paid CGI games and open source, distributed CGI games (the latter of which became widespread due to their open source nature), though both would eventually be supplanted by MMORPGs and social games.
What is a distributed CGI game?
Distributed CGI games can be installed by individuals relatively easily by downloading the CGI script from the distribution source and uploading it to a web server according to the script's instructions. Many of these distributors give permission to modify the code; this means that many variations can be created by webmasters. Most of these scripts could be downloaded for free, which made them a popular inclusion with many webmasters.
On the other hand, the installation of these programs increases server load to levels greatly exceeding that of normal page browsing, so even web hosts that allow the installation of CGI scripts (such as bulletin boards) often disallow the installation of CGI games. Some paid rental servers allow the installation of such scripts.
Unlike games produced by companies, the majority of CGI games were made by individuals, and since the millennium, a large amount of them were released as open source freeware. There are both games that can be played solo, and those where multiple players can participate simultaneously.
There are wide variety of genres represented in CGI games—including RPGs and simulation games—but some are simply unspecified multiplayer environments where users can look/play around at will, and it's questionable whether some of these can even be called games. Some games are played by a single player, some are competitive and allow only a specified number of participants, and others allow an unspecified number of players to freely come and go as they please; this makes it difficult to clearly define the number of participants.
In the same way that CGI allows for communication on the web in the form of electronic bulletin boards and chat rooms, CGI games can be described as "a mechanism for communication through the interface of computer games".
Examples of paid CGI games
- Aqua-Arius (アクア＝エリアス)
- The Treasure of GENUM (トレジャー オブ ゲノム)
Examples of distributed CGI games
- GundamField
- Script Of Saga II
- Net Age of Discovery (ネット航海時代)
- Hakoniwa Islands (箱庭諸島; Hakoniwa Shotou)
- Free Fight Adventure (formerly known as Final Fantasy Adventure)
- Tsumitobatsu++Niritsuhaihan (罪と罰++二律背反)
- Blind Justice (derivative of Tsumitobatsu++Niritsuhaihan)
- SOLD OUT
- Gekikuukan Powerful League 2 (劇空間ぱわふるリーグ2)
- Ore no Pennant (俺のペナント)
- @Party II
- TOWN
