[2] SubSpace incorporates quasi-realistic zero-friction physics into a massively multiplayer online game.

The game has no built-in story or set of goals; players may enter a variety of servers, each of which have differing objectives, maps, sounds, and graphics.

SubSpace is considered an early entry in the massively multiplayer online genre due to its unprecedented player counts.

[5] SubSpace evolved from a game originally called Sniper (1995), a project to test the effects and severity of lag in a massively multiplayer environment over dialup connections.

The game was released commercially in December 1997 with a list price of US$27.99 for unlimited play, requiring no monthly or hourly fees.

[7] The game was originally developed by Burst, led by Jeff Petersen, Rod Humble and Juan Sanchez, for the US branch of the now-defunct Virgin Interactive.

Once VIE went under in 1998, many of its remaining US assets were purchased by Electronic Arts, but the SubSpace license was not.

A coordinate system (A-T horizontal, 1–20 vertical) allows players to easily identify and communicate where they are on the map.

Safe zones allow a players to evade enemies or simply take a break from the game.

While prizes are generally plentifully scattered throughout the map, the upgrades or abilities they award are randomly selected by the zone.

Rather than dealing with ammunition counts and hit points separately, SubSpace combines both of these elements into a single unit of measure: energy.

However, suicide was possible in early beta versions of the game and the offline practice mode included with the original SubSpace client.

Thrust (Up for forward, Down for reverse) and rotation (Left for counter-clockwise, Right for clockwise) make up the basic movement of the ship.

In addition, ships experience inelastic collisions with walls and asteroids but do not take damage from them.

Within any given zone, a player can choose between up to eight different ships:[10] Warbird, Javelin, Spider, Leviathan, Terrier, Weasel, Lancaster, and Shark.

[11] Standard VIE Settings, SVS for short, (also referred to as Standard SubSpace Settings[7][12]) is a server configuration conforming to the physics and rules used in non-special game types hosted by Virgin Interactive Entertainment (VIE) before the company's dissolution.

[13] The term is sometimes used informally to describe servers which seek, through other means, to preserve the spirit of the game as it was originally played.

[14] Zones typically have multiple public arenas, whose settings and maps are the same, which players are automatically distributed to upon joining the server.

Perhaps the most attractive feature of SubSpace is the extremely high degree of customization that zone sysops can implement.

A new client, titled Continuum, was created by reverse engineering without access to the original source code by the players PriitK (one of the creators of Kazaa) and Mr Ekted.

[18][19] In 1997 Next Generation named SubSpace as number four on their "Top 10 Online Game Picks", reasoning that "Its minimal bandwidth requirements mean pretty damn good gameplay, and the software pings the various arenas to see where you'll receive the lowest latency.