We’ve all probably played io games sometime in our life. If you didn’t know what .io games are, they are online multiplayer games that are free to play and relatively easy to learn how to play. The .io extension is the country extension for the British Indian Ocean, but it is used in .io games, and it is a pretty nice break from the common extensions like .com. But did you think that you were playing with actual people? Well, the chances are that the .io game you played had bots. Bots are programmed to act like people playing the game in real life, with some bad at the game and some good. A good example of bots in a .io game is Paper.io 2. You spawn randomly in a map in the ongoing match of bots fighting each other, and you would play like you usually would, thinking you are playing in a multiplayer game. However, as you are dropped into the arena, not every bot is out to get you. Some bots will attack you, some will defend themselves, and some will attack other bots. This is all to make the game incredibly realistic and to make it seem like you are playing in a real server. So why do the game developers do this? There is only one reason: Money. You play an actual multiplayer game on a server, which the game developers have to pay for. When you play an actual multiplayer game, your client, which is a piece of software on your device that translates your controls into binary or some type of computer code, translates your commands and sends the data via your internet or network to a server. All the players do this, and the server collects their information. The server then sends the data via the internet/network to your game, and the game loads what other players are doing and what you are. While there still are .io games that are multiplayer, most of them are just botted servers. Nevertheless, playing .io games is still somewhat fun, even though you are likely playing against AI.
Image Source: PCGames