What's the biggest monster in online gaming? Onyxia? Supremus? Eve's Titan? This infographic? If you want a comprehensive history of online gaming, look no further.

What's the biggest monster in online gaming? Onyxia? Supremus? Eve's Titan? This infographic? If you want a comprehensive history of online gaming, look no further.

(And be sure and scroll down to the bottom for the bonus: game system sales to date, and the top ten best-selling games of all time, including a special online-only category. Thanks to Silver Oak Casino, which put this all together.)

I was one year old when Empire, the first networked multiplayer game, came into being. Soon after, "multiplayer gaming" meant hooking up another paddle to the Atari 2600 for a few rounds of Combat!, Pong, or some other game that allowed two players to play competitively.

Skimming this infographic is like a walk down memory lane. Ah, yes, there's 1993 and DOOM, the game that fortunately had a (relatively) short single-player experience, even across the multiple levels. Even though its was a single-player experience, the number of mods and user-designed levels gave it a replay value that approaches the add-on content available in modern MMOs.

Since I was a PC gamer, I never touched Marathon - still haven't, in fact, due to lack of time. But I recall peering over a friend's shoulder, intrigued by a first-person shooter that also strove to ensnare you with its story, and not just its shooting mechanics.

During that time, Ziff-Davis was surrounded by gaming magazines, which later consolidated into 1UP.com. PC Magazine didn't need to do much PC game reviewing, as our sister magazines shouldered much of the burden.

Still, I'm glad to see that PCMag.com covered most of the milestone games of the last two decades. Well, most of them, anyway. Thank goodness, for example, that we have positive reviews of and its expansions; after all, millions of gamers can't be wrong. But it would have been nice to have devoted a bit more time to or , say. Unfortunately, those were the limitations of print magazines back then.

Today, "gaming" is pretty much synonymous with multiplayer gaming. For years, (some) gamers have complained that the only reason to buy games like , with scripted events hand-holding the player around a visually gorgeous battlefield with lots of things that go boom. Even or are better experiences when the lame jokes and "monster closet" mechanics are removed, and players can simply engage in a free-for-all.

And there's a new element that's emerged: economics. The ability to trade in games like , and build or craft in games like Eve Online or World of Warcraft allowed players to "win" via economic means, either by creating a monopoly for a given virtual good or by simply creating a trading empire. (Free-to-play games struck back by allowing gamers to buy virtual items using real-world cash, but that's for another day.)

And then there are the few, antisocial gamers, who wish for the perfect game: plot, story, plus the intelligence of a dedicated human opponent. That's probably still on the horizon, unfortunately.