If you're looking for what's next in online technology and commerce, just follow the gamers.
Dennis Fong is sitting in his Silicon Valley bedroom, framed by posters of Mariah Carey and Michael Jordan and a border of Dean Koontz paperbacks. Dressed in Stussy cap and Gap shirt, Fong is a gentle and polite 20-year-old, chilling out after community college class by playing a game of Quake on his PC. Under the influence of the game, however, mild-mannered Fong morphs into Thresh, a badass, bomb-lobbing bully who loves to spill blood and roll heads.
Thresh is trolling a labyrinthine dungeon in search of a nail-gun-wielding thug, intent on reducing him to a smoking hunk of riddledflesh. Girded with extra armor, a grenade launcher, and a "ring of shadows" that renders him invisible, Thresh has taken the offensive, pursuing the scumbag down ramps and up darkened stairways. He passes strange weapons that hover in midair; torchesflicker on the wall. During the fight, CrockMe, his foe, regularly fires off aflak stream that reverberates through the stone tunnels like Hell's own thunderclap.
Dizzying, disorienting, violent, and incredibly fun, the realm of Thresh is exploding under our noses. More than a pastime for undergraduates blowing off steam, the multiplayer online gaming community explores and extends the digital frontier - pushing new technology to its performance limit, creating effectiveecommerce, and building immersive electronic worlds. What's happening online ultimately ripples into larger worlds. "As gamers go, so goes the nation," explains Robin Raskin, computer journalist and editor in chief of FamilyPC. "If you want to know where the rest of us will be in 12 months, look to the gaming community."
The chief goal of most gamers and game companies is to more seamlessly merge the real world with the electronic one. And one thing is clear: just wandering around killing monsters has become boring.
Dialing for dollars
The growth of online gaming is expected to rapidly accelerate in the next five years, from an estimated 1.5 million households in 1996 to 23 million by 2001, according to a report by International Data Corporation/Link. Driving that incredible expansion is the amount of gaming options that will become available. Some 30 to 40 Internet-enabled games will find their way to store shelves in 1997 and 1998; last year, there were fewer than half a dozen.
Yet the fact that only 6 percent of online households play games demonstrates how unappealing most Net environments are, says Nick Donatiello, president and CEO of Odyssey, a San Francisco-based research firm. There's a huge incentive to change that, he says: "Entertainment is extremely important, yet the PC is sold as a productivity device. The PC needs a new identity as an entertainment device."
Adds Jack Heistand, president and CEO of Total Entertainment Network: "Every new medium has a critical application driving its success. In home video, it was the exercise tape and kids' titles. Games are a means of bringing people together, and the Internet takes the game experience to a new level."
The question for entrepreneurs becomes how to turn this new direction into dollars. More than a dozen online gaming services - CyberPark, Heat.net, Engage, Battle.net, MPG Net, Dwango, TEN, Kali, and Mpath, among them - jockey for a share of the action. Together they scramble for an online market that Forrester Research expects to gross more than US$1.6 billion by 2001. But how to get there? While there are a seemingly infinite number of ways to lose money online, it appears that there are still very few ways to earn it.
Today, most gamers are not paying to play online, the IDC/Link survey says. Only a relatively small number shell out fees for premium clubs or services like TEN or Kali. Instead, several online game providers are borrowing the cable TV industry's business model and offering a multitier pricing structure that includes free services as well as hourly and daily rates. iMagic Online, for instance, plans to adopt a multilevel strategy that offers free chat rooms and demos, as well as basic and premium services. In July, America Online started charging $1.99 an hour for multiplayer gameplay on top of its $19.95 flat monthly rate. Microsoft, too, has unveiled a layered approach on its Internet Gaming Zone: customers can compete against each other in selected multiplayer games and board games such as backgammon free of charge, or they can pay a daily fee for "premium" multiplayer Internet games. Microsoft is expected to charge roughly $1 to $3 per day for premium games like Fighter Ace, expected to be released this autumn, and Asheron's Call, which will arrive next year.
Gamers, however, are not happy with the changes. Some have even contacted their state's attorney general, saying that they have been hit by bait and switch. After being promised unlimited access, they are now charged for some of the most popular games. Angry players in the AOL community have even started a protest group that drafts petitions and organizes letter-writing campaigns.
Yet within this hothouse of controversy, some important seeds of ecommerce have begun to germinate. SegaSoft possesses what might be the most revolutionary idea yet about how to bankroll Heat.net, its internet gaming network. The company has teamed with San Francisco's PostLinear to create a revenue model using limited-edition digital objects (LEDOs). By early next year, Heat.net members will be able to buy, sell, and trade these virtual objects (typically weapons, characters, abilities, tricks, information, and other game-enhancing assets) using a technology called Transactor, which keeps track of ownership and payment records. LEDOs are estimated to cost between 50 cents and $15 each and will be included on the customer's monthly bill. Purchases can take place during the game, in a chat room, or off the network entirely. Players retain possession and ownership of LEDOs when they log off the network.
"Transactor technology is no mere add-on to Heat," says Gary Griffiths, SegaSoft president and CEO. "Transactor brings the essence of a real-world market economy to the Heat network."
SegaSoft will implement Transactor technology on three titles: Ten Six, Vigilance, and Skies. When you buy the Ten Six game disc and log on, for instance, you are given a plot of land and a random collection of tools. Transactor ensures that your starting setup will be different from anyone else's. It's entirely possible that your plot of land is near a limited-edition object, like a superbazooka, of which there may be only 50 per game. If you're one of the lucky superbazooka owners, you enjoy both a military and an economic advantage. Other gamers in your world can offer you anything in trade, from other items to in-game money to real dollars and cents. Players can sign on to Heat.net free of charge, paying by secured credit cards only for those LEDOs they use within the game.
But LEDOs are not without controversy. "They go against the gaming ethic," says Marty Schoffstall, CEO of gamemaker TimeSink in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Anyone who has the money can pay to have all the advantages. With most games you need to invest the time to become an expert. With LEDOs, if you spend enough money, you can beat anyone."
Nonsense, says former SegaSoft vice president and general manager Peter Loeb. "We're creating a new economic model based on incremental investment," he says. More important, the company is taking a very real stab at defining the future of online barter.
Building communities
The legend, of course, is that engineers designed the Net to withstand the ultimate wargame: global thermonuclear war. In truth, the Net originally served interlinked communities whose members loved friendly competition. Even in its earliest incarnations, the Net attracted enthusiasts who used it as a competitive arena. Early adopters populated a variety of networks and became fanatics of Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, and similar titles. BBSes supported role-playing MUDs - fantastic, organic worlds that used text-based chat functions. Sierra's ImagiNation Network offered early simulation games such as Red Baron and 3-D Golf, as well as electronic versions of backgammon and cribbage, while Nets like LINC supported e-chess tournaments with up to 30 participants.
Online gamers continue to exploit the Net's predilection for community-building. They hang out on IRC or in chat rooms, arranging contests and swapping stories; they readily take to building clans - alliances formed among players united by geography, skill level, or shared vision. Virgin Interactive's press release for SubSpace goes straight for the jugular : "Thousands of Gamers from Around the World Meet and Interact," it promises, "Then Kill Each Other!"
"Being a member of a well-known clan adds to how well you're respected," explains Jen Press, a teenage Quake champion and affiliate of Psycho Men Slayers, a clan whose members hail from British Columbia, North Dakota, Utah, and Washington. (See "Quake Girls," Wired 5.04, page 39.)
But if bloodthirsty gamers have been adapting since the Net's early days, gaming companies - those whose business it is to provide players with a reliable competitive environment - are a fresh breed still struggling to build truly immersive online worlds. One of the best, created by TEN, feels like a cross between The X-Files and Blade Runner. Spooky and futuristic, TEN is conducive to whiling away hours fragging, shredding, or fantasizing.
Mpath Interactive's Mplayer site, on the other hand, has a simple and clean design that stands in contrast to TEN's shadows. Mplayer launched in October 1996. So far, more than 130,000 gamers have joined the service. Mplayer offers several of the Net's most popular games, from Red Alert and Command & Conquer to Scrabble and Battleship. Fast, reliable, and sleek, Mplayer tempts gamers with real-time speech features and ScribbleTalk, a whiteboard on which players map tactical assaults.
Like its competitors, Mpath is betting heavily that multiplayer gaming will support its estimated $10 million business. To succeed, the company must build a reliable network, create and maintain proprietary software systems, and court a fickle audience, convincing them that Mplayer's game selection is better and faster.
"This is the most complex business I've seen," admits Mpath president and CEO Paul Matteucci, a round, impatient 16-year veteran of the tech industry. "You've got artistic stuff, you're operating a network, you're building technology. The product lives every day. And you don't control how it changes - your user does."
That observation is key. Particularly appealing are games wherein players team up and use the skills of others to gain experience and thus have more fun. Activision's NetStorm, for instance, encourages players to collaborate and create civilizations or warring alliances. In this fantasy world, the game continues even after individuals go offline or get disconnected. Likewise, Fenris Wolf's new Rebel Moon Rising allows players to join in a game of capture theflag. Players can hook up over their Internet services or find teammates and opponents at www.fenriswolf.com/. Several manufacturers are also creating technology that will free gamers from communicating via the keyboard. Both Rebel Moon Rising and Multitude's FireTeam use speech-recognition technology that allows voice commands. Rebel players can ask the PC to retrieve weapons or maps and shout orders to teammates. Voice commands pop up as text onscreen.
Some of the more enlightened gaming companies also use the Internet's strength as a distribution mechanism, and actively seek input from players in designing their environments. TimeSink's WarSport - a futuristic football game in the Mplayer Free Zone in which eight players (each commanding a 50-robot team) compete in 20-minute battles - promises monthly improvements based on comments from players. "It's a continual work in progress," says TimeSink's Schoffstall. "Every month we're going to tweak and fine-tune. We've got to get rid of this 'once and done' mind-set. It's presumptuous."
Tech troubles
But as gamers blaze the Net's future, no start-up has fully addressed online gaming's central technological problems, difficulties that keen features, cool ambience, and groundbreaking business models cannot counter. The Achilles' heel of online gaming is latency - the time it takes for a player's command to traverse the Internet and appear onscreen.
Thresh is standing in a doorway where he can observe CrockMe's approach from any direction. Thresh is armed to the teeth, hatchets and rocket launchers at the ready. Yet just as his foe lumbers into view, Fong's screenflickers and goes motionless. "See that!? See how the screen just froze?" he exclaims. "That's lag. He could be killing me right now, and I can't see it." His screen looks like a paused frame of a video; an icon of a disconnected phone line winks in one corner. Fong is as motionless as his monitor, frozen, cringing, waiting. Even the sounds have ceased. Then: BOOMBOOMBOOM! "I just died," he says with disgust, visibly wilting. "I couldn't even move."
He writes off the kill and continues to play, but it isn't long before the screen freezes again - another @#$% lag. Fong curls his fingers and growls, his enthusiasm for the game visibly fading. The delay continues, second after agonizing second. "He sees me just standing there, like an idiot," Fong says biliously. "This is pretty much unplayable."
A light particle takes less than .02 seconds to traverse the country, so much of latency's remaining delays are attributable to other causes - the network server, features running on the game, connection quality, data compression, and error checking on either modem end. Latency can be also partially blamed on narrow bandwidth.
Forrester cites these technological concerns as the greatest challenge to developers. Latency is pervasive and unpredictable, adding an unpleasant, uncontrollable variable to the game. "There's no way to get rid of it," explains Seema Chowdhury, Forrester's analyst, "but there are ways to deal with it." Star-shaped networks require only two routers; others prioritize game data packets. "If a router has 50 packets in its queue, it'll automatically bump a game packet to the top and send it out a little faster," she says.
It all boils down to milliseconds: for turn-based games such as Scrabble, 2,000 milliseconds hardly affect the play; racing sims such as Nascar or fast-action contests like Quake and Duke Nukem 3D require much more responsive specs. "One hundred forty to 150 milliseconds is standard, but it's hard to deliver consistently," warns Chowdhury. "Most developers are looking to make games that perform at something like 300 milliseconds. Yeah, you can get 150 a lot of the time, but hit five on a Friday night, and it's not the kind of performance you'll get on your network."
Gaming companies do their best to soothe these inherent and persistent headaches. Boulder, Colorado-based game developer VR-1, which produces titles for Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone, uses a predictive-motion algorithm technology to minimize the effects of latency. The setup calculates the likely path of vehicles such as planes, tanks, and submarines, then plots them accordingly. The result is smoother and less jerky movements. TEN's Mr. Bandwidth applet, on the other hand, constantly monitors players so games can unfold fairly; Mplayer automatically calculates whether your connection is adequate to handle the requested game. "Green" game rooms mean you're up to scratch; "red" ones indicate your connection is too slow.
"The gaming companies evolved because people want to play against each other, and the Internet is a great way to do that," says Andy Eddy, an incipient online gamer, author, and former GamePro editor. "But the problem is that there's so much data to pass."
Designers are tweaking data into smaller packets to speed response time while creating titles - SubSpace, MechWarrior, Iron Wolves, and others - that feature slower-moving environments. Higher bandwidth will cure many of the tech ills, but forecasters say that is too far in the future: according to Forrester, only 19 percent of wired households will have cable modems by 2001. For their part, gaming companies will have more success focusing on latency concerns than counting on a quick bandwidth fix.
"Latency's a hard issue to solve," Matteucci admits. "It requires that you design software that reduces it, and that you manage the network 24 hours a day to make sure you don't get blockages." To compete in a massive entertainment medium, users have to get consistent performance every time they log on. "You wouldn't watch NBC," he says, "if 30 percent of the time it went blank on you."
Behind Matteucci's analogy lurks the specter of online gaming's greatest competitor - and also its best mentor - television. For all its detractors, TV is America's chosen entertainment medium, and game companies want a piece of it. Rather than passively turn on the tube to watch Rosie, why wouldn't John or Jane Q. Public instead want to jump online and play an intelligent and forward-thinking game with real humans?
"For all the talk of the PC changing the way people get and process information, it's still confined to a minority of owners," argues Odyssey's Donatiello. "Growth in PC penetration is leveling off."
What to do?
Recast the PC as an expansive and flexible entertainment tool, Donatiello suggests, and let games lead the way into the future. "This idea that the Net is going to dominate by providing sports scores or stock prices is really laughable," he explains. "If the Internet doesn't become a viable entertainment medium, it will never be a major force at home. And when we talk about entertainment, we need to talk about gaming."
What gaming has always done, multiplayer gaming can do better: satisfy sociological needs for community and human interaction, provide a realm for our fantasies and a passport for escape.
Fong and his foe serve as harbingers of the future of the Net - and with it the future of technology, ecommerce, artificial environments, networked business, and multiplayer entertainment. Online gaming creates a situation where human nature's every need - for competition, creativity, inspiration, interaction, rewards - gets continually pushed further.
But human history, the PC's future, and the role of the Net aren't particular concerns for Fong - not right now, anyway. He's got CrockMe running blind, dodging jags from his avatar's thunderbolt, zig-zagging a steady stream of bullets. Thresh has accumulated an arsenal for the final minutes of the game, and he unleashes it, raining explosive after explosive down upon his opponent. He throws in rockets and grenades and shotgun shells and a few hundred nails for good measure. It's a virtual World War III, and Fong's monitor becomes a crackling fireworks display of oranges, yellows, and reds.
In the end, CrockMe lies in a widening pool of plasma on the dungeon's steps while Fong takes a breather. Game over. This Quake match is done, but Fong and CrockMe know in this quickly changing realm they're destined to meet again - fortified with additional know-how and a fresh, competitive spirit.
And plenty of nails.
