An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.
Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g., a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic.
A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish.
Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.
An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through the Internet or another computer network. Online games are ubiquitous on modern gaming platforms, including PCs, consoles and mobile devices, and span many genres, including first-person shooters, strategy games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).
The history of online games dates back to the early days of packet-based computer networking in the 1970s, An early example of online games are MUDs, including the first, MUD1, which was created in 1978 and originally confined to an internal network before becoming connected to ARPANet in 1980. Commercial games followed in the next decade, with Islands of Kesmai, the first commercial role-playing game, debuting in 1984, as well as more graphical games, such as the flight simulator Air Warrior, released in 1987. The rapid availability of the Internet in the 1990s led to an expansion of online games, with notable titles including Quakeworld (1996), Ultima Online (1997), Starcraft (1998), and Counter-Strike (1999). Video game consoles also began to receive networking features, such as the PlayStation 2 (2000) and the Xbox (2001). Following improvements in connection speeds, more recent developments include the popularization of new genres, such as social games, and new platforms, such as mobile games.