Interactive Attack Modems Linking Live Players For Computer Games

The waiting was taking a toll. Beth Fanchier wanted a kill. “I’m hunting youuuuuu,” she taunted her opponent.

A moment later she found him, pressed against the corner of a tall brick building, watching for her to approach from the other direction.

His only warning was the muffled whoomp-whoomp of the rocket launcher. He turned to run. Unfortunately, he turned toward the coming missile.

The first explosion was just to his left, announced with a crash and fragments ripping his body. The second rocket was lethal.

Fanchier had another victim, so to speak. It was just a game.

To most of her friends, Fanchier is an outwardly reserved legal assistant. But she’s also among hundreds of computer game players who use technology to pit their skills against each other rather than the machine.

Her game of choice: Doom II. For others it’s dogfighting warplanes, golfing on cyberlinks or even an oldfashioned game of bridge.

The games, the computers and modems make it all possible. With help from on-line services, it’s even easy to find opponents across town, or from around the world.

“The computer and video game industry has spent a decade creating sophisticated computer games only to discover we’d rather play against the idiot across the street,” says Bill Kunkel, executive editor of Electronic Game magazine.

“We’re talking about the single most popular trend in electronic gaming,” he says.

Dozens of games hitting the shelves this spring tout the option of playing another person by modem. Major companies are ponying up millions of dollars to offer networks of nothing but games.

General Electric’s GEnie network is pushing hard to sell itself as a gamer’s heaven. In November, AT&T spent $40 million to buy the relatively small ImagiNation Network.

“When we topped 50,000 and were bought by AT&T, we knew we were on the radar screen,” says INN spokesman Bill Linn. “Now we’re racing for the target.”

That target is the millions of computer owners who have equipment to fit the games, usually a high-speed modem and a computer with graphics capabilities.

Head-to-head games are just starting to make their presence felt in the $600 million computer software market. In 1994’s fourth quarter alone, games and entertainment software had sales of $39 million, more than any other category. Historically, trends in games have spread through the rest of the software industry. This could mean interactive components could find their way into other home and business programs, such as banking.

“The reality is that games have been driving the industry for some time,” says Ann Stephens, president of PC Data, which tracks software sales. “If we were only interested in spreadsheets and work, there would be no reason to replace our 286 computers with these hot machines today.”

Playing computer games against others via modem is nothing new; people have been doing it since the early 1970s, when all the computer could manage was text. Today, games have seized upon the speed, storage and graphics potential of computers.

Flight simulators, which were among the first to offer multiplayer modes, are so advanced that the shading on the airplane changes with the movement of the plane in relation to the sun and clouds.

“Players want games so close to reality that they can suspend their disbelief,” Kunkel says. “That’s the measure of a great game.”

Players using Doom, and the sequel Doom II, arm themselves with guns, missile launchers, plasma guns and even chain saws. In single-player mode, they fight to escape demons, possessed souls and other villains.

But when players link computers by modem, they can team up against the monsters or take aim at each other in “death matches.” On networked computers, such as those in offices, as many as four players can battle at once.

The battles are so popular that Doom II is now the top-selling game. And nearly a dozen companies have announced similar games with competition modes. But players aren’t waiting for promoters to set up games. On-line services and Internet’s Usenet newsgroups have thousands of messages from people looking for opponents.

The on-line services want to play a much larger role. As long as people are logging on, why not get them to play a game or two?

“We offer games, lots of games,” says Dean DeBiase of the ImagiNation Network. “But more important, we offer social interaction.”