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Gaming is big business - millions of dollars ride on it. Gaming is also not static. Every day, new games are being introduced, for all audiences - children, teenagers and adults. Two of the most popular types of games are RPG, or Role Playing Games, and MMP, or Massive Multi-Player games. There are different kinds of RPG - single player versions and multiplayer versions. As the name suggests, MMP have only multiplayer versions.

Participating in a role playing game means you assume the role of some fictitious character, often available in a specific collaborative storyline. While there are rules to follow, the player is given the freedom to choose from different actions, according to which the game will take shape and the results will occur. Improvisation is allowed within the rules and because of this, role playing games make for a great pastime.

Role Playing Games are a lot of fun and can even help people forget about winning and form teams, and work together, which makes them very different from arcades, puzzles and card games.

These Role Playing Games work like a series on TV - they are like episodes, or sessions, running from one to the next. You can either play against your computer, or you can play against other gamers in your network. Each session has to be played out, and can take a long time - weeks or even months, depending on which game you are playing and what your strategy is.

These role playing games always have specific characters and a developing plot, usually spanning over all the related sessions. New characters can be introduced as you go to higher levels in the game and the play intensity will grow too. Some RPG are based on creative imagination, such as Dungeons & Dragons, while others are sophisticated simulations of real-world happenings, such as Call of Duty.

Even though you can choose who you would like to be in an RPG, you have a set of characters to choose from, each with characteristics and abilities that are predefined. Let us take X-Men, as an example - you can be any of the X-Men, but, just like in the comic, each character’s abilities are already decided and you cannot change them or invent new ones.

In comparison, the Massive Multi-Player Games require the compulsory participation of several players. They are not for individual or two players. The objective here is to create complexity and bigger challenges.

MMP is played in a much bigger scale than RPG. You have to be connected to the net to play it, and you can only play if you pay the monthly subscription. You also need a whole lot more people on your network to play it - take, for example, one of the most popular of MMP (also called MMORPG or Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games), EverQuest - it usually has up to thousands of players in its fantasy world, set in another universe.