One of the most popular applications of synchronous communication in the early days of the Internet was the role playing game. Here, players would log into a central computer and assume a character within a text-based world generated by the computer. Players could move around, talking to each other and perhaps to computer-controlled characters built into the game.

These games were a development of the text-based adventure games that were widely available for the emerging home computer market. Though primitive, they reached a level of interaction and literary description that made them highly immersive; despite the limitations of text, you had a real sense of “being there” in a world within the computer.