Paul Trueman
Online gaming is the fastest-growing industry on the Internet, where players spend hours online sharing information … and killing each other. Some friends and I blew up the Death Star last night, freeing the galaxy from the emperor’s evil tyranny. Not bad for a night’s work.
I used to be someone who got his gaming addiction out of his system by playing and reviewing three or four games a week at work. That was until a friend introduced me to the gaming equivalent of crack: playing online against other gamers. I should have said no. I should have stamped on my modem. I didn’t and now it’s too late.
Played in single player mode, games like Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, or gorier shoot-’em ups like Half-Life or Quake II are simply enjoyable, ingenious wastes of time: you against the computer. Click on the multiplayer option, though, and you discover a whole new way of playing computer games. You can launch into an online match through the game itself, or go to a website that brings together itchy trigger fingers from all over the world.
You can chat with them, discuss tactics, or simply get down to the real reason you’re all there: playing games. All you need is a decent PC, a speedy modem and, most importantly, housemates who don’t mind you tying up the phone line for an hour or two.
If the chatroom gamers aren’t discussing the incredible lengths to which they “rule” and their opponents “suck”, then the talk is full of obscure references to Internet technology and gaming tweaks like “pings”, “FOV”, “push latency”, and “water-hacked maps”. None of it makes much sense unless you regularly play over the Internet, and to make it even more confusing almost every term is deliberately abbreviated. Asking them to explain anything shows you up as a “newbie”, guaranteed to provide easy pickings once the game starts.
Playing with your mates over the Internet guarantees a far better standard of pre- match chat and, remember, the most advanced computer’s artificial intelligence is no match for the smarts of a true friend, motivated by that tenner you still owe him.
Teaming up for matches is also an option, although the best teamplay always comes from people who regularly play together. The most frighteningly cohesive performance I’ve ever seen in a game of Quake II’s “Capture the Flag” came from the Taliban XI, a group of friends from Marseille who modelled their purist approach to Quake II on the fundamentalist Islamic group, and their “rotating squad” approach on the Chelsea football team.
Nowadays, it would be commercial suicide for any major new PC game to exclude the option of a multiplayer version over the Net. Online gaming has recently gone legit in a large way with the advent of the Professional Gamers’ League. The American- based league has been running for only a year, but already attracts more than $3- million in sponsorship and has made its champion a star. He plays under the moniker “Thresh”, but in real life goes by the altogether less intimidating name of Dennis Fong. He is effortlessly better than everyone else; Michael Johnson to everyone else’s Roger Black, and won more than $100 000 last year alone, as well as a shiny new Ferrari.
The best professional gamers all have groupies, earn fortunes, and fans can even buy trading cards featuring their heroes’ pictures and gaming stats. Thousands of gamers turn up for the end-of-season finals and watch the action on huge screens, screamed along by the hysterical commentators as lives are lost on the screen, galaxies conquered and fortunes made, while down on the competitors’ stage almost everything is still. There is little movement from the players apart from the quick, deft moves of the mouse on the pad, with the occasional click as a rocket launcher or jet pack is fired up. It is truly geekdom gone stark raving mad. It’s too late for me of course, I’m 24, the gaming equivalent of Paul Gascoigne. The talents you need to be exceptional at these games – lightning reflexes, fierce cunning and the desire to practise eight hours a day – have long since passed me by.
To play the blockbusters like Half-Life and Unreal online, you’ll need to own the actual games. Some launch through a built-in multiplayer facility, although often it’s easier to use a website to host the game for you, and the sites have simpler games that don’t require you to own the software.
A good place to start is the Microsoft site , or you could try the British Telecom site at . Both are free.
Paul Trueman is a writer at PCAdvisor