Do you like to play? If so, the Internet is offering lots of thrills -- both traditional and non-traditional- for gaming fans.
Don't let the decline of the NASDAQ stock market or the demise of myriad dotcom businesses fool you. Innovation in the area of Internet-based gaming is as hot as ever.
If you need proof, look no further than Majestic (www.majesticthegame.com), an unconventional online game that "blurs the distinction between games and reality," according to Mark Preier, a technical writer who has been a Majestic player for the past several months.
Several months? Yes, Majestic is not a game you enter into thinking that you'll be finished after a short time. When users sign up to play, they're asked for their e-mail address, phone number, fax number, and other information. Then the fun begins.
Majestic unfolds over the first week as an intricate mystery. The game plays the player much as the other way around. Via e-mail, Internet, fax, or the telephone, the player is treated to clues, conspiracies, and secrets along the way. Each game's outcome is tailored to the player, as the game "learns" about each player's lifestyle.
"It's a mystery, of which I'm a part," Preier says. "I was hooked the moment I started playing. Now, when the phone rings, I'm asking, is it someone I know, or is it the game?"
Majestic couldn't exist without the Internet, and in that sense the game is not alone. Anarchy Online (www.anarchy-online.com) and Ultima Online (www.uo.com) are Internet-based role-playing games designed to allow gamers from around the world to pit their cunning against one another.
Each has become wildly popular, with Anarchy Online being voted the second most popular computer game in a recent survey by Gamespot (www.gamespot.com).
Both Anarchy Online and Ultima Online are so-called role-playing games, in which participants enter virtual worlds as characters that they themselves create and nurture. Part of the fun lies in seeing how their created personalities interact with others in within their fictitious worlds.
The lure of such games, as with Majestic, also lies in the degree to which they allow players to escape from reality into a world that is unpredictable.
Anarchy Online, for example, takes place in a surreal, high-tech world on the outskirts of space, where a revolt has started to emerge. Players can join the rebels in this world, the government, or they can stay neutral -- a choice that will determine where they start out in the game. The virtual world itself created by Anarchy Online is filled with beautiful scenery, sometimes dark and foreboding.
Fans of more conventional games such as cards, chess, or backgammon can access Playsite (www.playsite.com). It offers "rooms" in which you can play everything from backgammon to video poker against others around the world.
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