The Internet has influenced everything from our shopping habits to the way we communicate with each other. Emoticons--characters to represent emotions--have become commonplace even in corporate memos. Internet junkies are so addicted to their Internet activities that they become distraught when it becomes unavailable. Gaming has yet to take full advantage of what the Internet has to offer, but we are starting to see new facets slowly creep in.

First, the Internet has begun to connect people and allow them to play head-to-head on multiplayer games. In the beginning, most of this gaming occurred over a TCP/IP LAN, and we had isolated islands of gamers getting together after work or at school. But it was rare for a popular game to connect all types of people from all over the world.

Shortly after this phenomenon began to grow, Java showed up on the scene. Java, billed as a cross-platform solution to coding, offered the ability to create browser applet games. These were mostly Asteroid-like games, some of which included sound. These applets were sometimes large, and bandwidth was scarce.

Both of these themes have matured. Java now has grown in both its reputation and its ability to deliver. An example is Templar Studios' Stormrunner. The game is written totally in Java and compressed. From what I can determine, you download a 3MB JAR file that drives the browser applet part of the game. The game server then serves additional code to yo...

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