As often as five times a week, Thomas Hazzard, 42, a manager at Boeing in Seattle, sits at his home computer a few hours before he heads to his graveyard shift. He pops in his favorite CD-ROM game -- Combat Flight Simulator -- and logs on to Microsoft's Gaming Zone site.
Just moments later he is climbing into a virtual World War II-era fighter plane that is part of a combat squadron with as many as 75 other fliers, each controlling their on-screen aircraft from computers in places as far off as Australia and Sweden. While Hazzard is chummy with all of them, he is especially interested in sharing missions and chatting (using instant text and voice messaging) with joystick jocks he has known all his life.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
From a small town in Texas, Hazzard's twin brother, Tim, takes his place in the squadron by logging on to the Internet. Another brother, George, who recently retired from the Air Force, also gets in on the action, signing on from his home near Boise, Idaho. Another brother, Ron, who lives in Wisconsin, joins in whenever he has the time. "It's all really fun," Thomas Hazzard said.
Online gaming has not always been this much fun. For years, a person -- much less four people in one family, scattered across the country -- who wanted to play online faced formidable obstacles. CD-ROM games had to be properly installed on the home computer, and hardware, software and Internet connections had to be configured so the computer could interact with other computers. Potential players stayed away in droves.
For those who managed to go online to play, finding someone to play with was no small task, either. Prospective players were often forced to navigate virtual game rooms to plead their case, in text chat, to be chosen for a game. Those doing the choosing had to be convinced that the player possessed an acceptable level of skill and had all the latest game updates and add-ons.
As a consequence of better game design, as well as more accommodating gaming sites, and faster and more powerful home computers, playing games online is becoming much simpler. The two biggest game-console makers -- Sony and Nintendo -- are promising even more simplicity when their machines begin to be used online, some as early as next year.
People like Thomas Hazzard and his brothers, using little more than basic computer skills, can be playing in minutes at the Gaming Zone or at rival sites like Electronic Arts' EA.com and Sony's Station.com Game site operators say they are working harder on technical details so that players do not have to worry too much about issues like millisecond-long lags in game responses, which put some players at a disadvantage.
"Game developers want to remove any technical barriers," said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst for Jupiter Media Metrix, an Internet research firm. "They want to make it dead easy for people to get on and get playing."
Most major sites now have "matchmaking" services -- they check your connection, equipment and software and match you up with others who have similar setups. Some sites, like Station.com, also offer translation services for their most popular games so that they can be played not only in English but also in French, German, Japanese and Korean.
Game playing has become so easy that even the Hazzards' 67-year-old father, George, who lives in northern Minnesota, joins in -- though only for less combative games, like online cribbage.
Explosive growth
The relative ease in which people can play online is contributing to an explosive growth in online games and creating a surge of newcomers. Last year, according to a study by Jupiter Media Metrix, about 35 million people played games on the Internet. This year, that figure has swelled to an estimated 44.8 million people, with projections of equally strong growth through 2005. It is the fastest-growing segment of online entertainment, according to Jupiter.
Many gaming sites charge monthly fees of US$5 to US$10 for unlimited playing time with complex games, while simpler games are free. Online gaming is still a small part of the US$7 billion-a-year computer game industry, with revenues of US$179 million last year, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. But revenues from fees, subscriptions, advertising and other sources are projected to be US$311 million this year, and some analysts forecast growth to well over US$1 billion by 2005.
Internet-based gaming, once the almost exclusive domain of hard-core gamers and skilled computer users, is also attracting an increasingly diverse group of participants. Some, like the Hazzard brothers, are drawn to sophisticated games like flight simulators, while others, like the Hazzards' father, tend to be more casual players who prefer less technically demanding games like card and board games, including checkers and backgammon.
"There is no question in my mind that it is all going mainstream," said Craig Spain, the production director athappypuppy.com, a computer gaming information site. "Basically it's online entertainment, and almost everyone wants to play."
Adding to the appeal is a slew of new quick games that can be played during short downtimes, while you're on hold on the telephone or waiting for a printout.
Station.com and Microsoft's Gaming Zone, for example, are offering simple, free online games that are usually Java- or Flash-based, so they require little or no downloading. They are proving to be a boom to drawing new gamers to the Internet, their makers say.
Chris di Cesare, the Gaming Zone's group product manager for online games, likes to call them "coffee-break games," 10- to 15-minute diversions.
One game, Outsmart, is a fast-paced, seven-question trivia game with a wisecracking host and a celebrity. The game, which went online in May and is continually updated with new questions and celebrities, is very popular, di Cesare said.
Even more graphically sophisticated games are downloading faster over conventional dial-up modems because of improved compression and clever manipulations of online limitations. Some game developers say it is no accident that there are many online racing games because cars (basically colored rectangles) that appear to speed around a track are relatively simple to render, animate and download.
New appeal
Part of the new appeal of games online is a no-brainer, said Jeffrey Brown, the vice president for corporate communications at Electronic Arts, a leading computer game makers.
"People are getting bored with the Internet," he said. "Once the novelty wears off, the Internet is like sitting around in a library." Brown said that entertainment will continue to drive the Internet.
For almost anyone who has ever played a computer game, from a simple coin-operated machine in a bar or an arcade to a complex strategy or role-playing games on a personal computer, the appeal of playing with or against an unseen flesh-and-blood person is hard to resist. Rather than facing off against programmed responses, playing against real people adds unpredictability. Computer-aided communication with the other players often adds a level of connection and community, online game players and developers say.
What might have been an isolating technology seems to be evolving into a more inclusive technology, game analysts say.
That's the case for the Hazzards, who spend as much or more time chatting as they do playing while they are online. "I like talking to my brothers, hearing what's going on in their lives, how we've all been and what we're doing," Thomas Hazzard said.
Such game play and communications are expected to become even easier when Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube start to take advantage of online abilities that are either built-in or added to the gaming machines. Since all PlayStation 2 users, for example, require the same machine with an online module, there will be almost no hardware limitations to arranging online opponents.
The only high-end gaming console that actually plays a range of games over the Internet is Sega's famously failed Dreamcast, which is no longer being manufactured. Sega's game site, SegaNet, has become a favorite of many gamers because of the range and quality of games that can be played on the system.
Access to SegaNet has been free (although players must usually have a Dreamcast console and a copy of the game they want to play online), but it will soon become a pay-to-play site. Among other sites, EA.com charges US$5 to US$10 a month to play a range of games that also include tournaments and other head-to-head competitions.
For online gaming to approach the kind of profit levels that offline computer gaming rakes in each year, Brown of Electronic Arts said it needs to offer games with more compelling content than car racing and first-person shooter games like Quake and Doom.
Comparing online gaming to the early days of cable television, Brown said that Internet gaming has been searching for a breakthrough product that would move people to pay to play games online, much the way millions of viewers pay to watch premium cable channels like Home Box Office and shows like The Sopranos.
For Brown, the game that is poised to change everything is called Majestic. Electronic Arts is scheduled to release it later this month on EA.com, which is also a game provider for America Online's 29 million subscribers.
Majestic is an episodic fantasy mystery-thriller, meant for adults, that unfolds both online and in a series of offline communications, including telephone calls to your home or office, messages to your e-mail accounts, faxes and frantic instant messages. Many of these communications refer players to elaborate Web sites that offer clues to the game.
"Every four weeks, there will be another episode of Majestic waiting for you," Brown said. "This will be a revolution."
All for just US$9.99 a month.
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