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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 2<br>
                November 17, 1999<br>
                </b>
              <b> 
                </b>
              
                <b><i>Game, 

                  Set, Match!</i></b></p>
                <b><i> 
                  The Brave New World of Online Gaming</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Stephanie &quot;Bobbi&quot; 
                  Bergman</p>
              
              

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               Online 
                competitive gaming. It sounds so simple, doesn&#146;t it? People 
                go online, and play competitive computer games. But when you factor 
                in the people, organizations, egos, and money involved, the world 
                of online competitive gaming gets very complicated.</p>
              </p>
              At the 
                heart of online gaming are the people who log on every night and 
                hangout playing whatever game they play with their friends online. 
                You can find them on ladders like the Online 
                Gaming League, on services like HEAT.NET, 
                and playing in online tournaments. What is it about gaming that 
                keeps them coming back, upgrading their computers to make them 
                better at the games, shelling out wads of cash for the fastest 
                possible Internet access, practicing for hours on end to get that 
                perfect rocket jump? </p>
              </p>
              Then there 
                are the gamers who have earned the tag &#147;Professional&#148; 
                or &#147;Cyberathlete.&#148; They have made something of a career 
                out of winning tournaments both online and off, and are now sponsored 
                gamers, paid to play. There aren&#146;t many of these people, 
                the most well-known being Dennis &#147;Thresh&#148; Fong, but 
                thousands are trying to join him every day, every time they start 
                up a match. A few years ago Thresh seemed as amazed as everyone 
                else that he was making a living playing games. Now it&#146;s 
                just part of a day&#146;s work. What is the life of a &#147;Professional&#148; 
                gamer really like? </p>
              </p>
              It all 
                started a few years ago, when this curiosity popped up on the 
                horizon. It was called the Professional 
                Gamers League, and for a small fee, you could compete in their 
                online league over a gaming service called TEN. The league finals 
                would be held live, with finalists being flown in to compete. 
                And there would be prize money for the winners. Not just prizes, 
                or a new computer...this was a chance to win cold hard cash. Theoretically, 
                the PGL pointed out, if you won every &quot;season&quot; (the 
                idea being there would be four a year), you could live off of 
                the leagues. Hundreds of people signed up and competed in the 
                events. But TEN wasn&#146;t exactly the best of services, and 
                paying a fee to play was restrictive to a good number of people. 
                People stopped paying attention to the PGL, to the point that 
                their last event came and went without many noticing. Then TEN 
                shut down, or turned into POGO.com, 
                an entirely different kind of online gaming service, and certainly 
                not one that would run servers for games like <b>Quake</b> (the 
                game most commonly used in these events). </p>
              </p>
              Rumors 
                flew about the PGL being closed, about it not being possible to 
                run a business doing these events. loonygames spoke with PGL Press 
                Secretary Garth Choteau, who assured us that the PGL is not, in 
                fact, closed, and that they will even be at Comdex this week with 
                sponsored players Kornelia, Sybek and K9-Gloucester playing <b>Quake 
                III: Arena</b> in the Acer booth. The league itself is currently 
                on official hiatus, and the PGL is looking at &#147;a number of 
                prospective partners,&#148; presumably other online gaming services. 
                The PGL is, by league design, dependent on online gaming services 
                to provide servers for their games to be held on. Will the PGL 
                find a suitable partner? Or will the PGL be forced to change format 
                or fold?</p>
              </p>
              <br> </p>
              Other 
                competitive gaming organizations use different formats. The Cyberathlete 
                Professional Organization, the PGL&#146;s chief competitor, 
                recently awarded a $10,000 prize at the Frag 
                3 last month. At that event, CPL Founder Angel Munoz announced 
                the largest prize yet to come, $40,000 to be awarded to the first 
                place winner at an event to be held in Los Angeles. i2e2, 
                launched by former PGL and CPL founders Joe Perez and Frank Cabanski, 
                is taking yet another approach, seeking to hold events both &#147;professional&#148; 
                and &#147;amateur&#148;, as well as online and off. To look at 
                this in the coldest way possible, these organizations exist to 
                make a profit off of people playing games they didn&#146;t create. 
                To make money off of gamers. Is it really possible?  
              </p>
              And what 
                about the companies making these games? id Software jumped into 
                the competitive gaming ring this past summer with QuakeCon 
                &#146;99 (held entirely offline), and Microsoft recently gave 
                two Harley-Davidson motorcycles away at a <b>MechWarrior 3 </b>tournament 
                (held both online and off). Microsoft&#146;s 
                Gaming Zone is a study in how to run a ultra-successful online 
                gaming service, but not exactly the premiere place for serious 
                competition (but if you&#146;re looking for a mean game of Hearts, 
                it&#146;s the best around), the <b>MW3</b> tournament aside. <b>Starcraft</b>, 
                <b>Total Annihilation</b>,<b> Half-Life</b>, <b>Tribes</b>, <b>Age 
                of Empires</b>...all these and more have been used in competitive 
                gaming events. With the Dreamcast&#146;s multiplayer capabilities, 
                other games may soon be entering this arena, bringing other types 
                of gamers with it. How do all of these developers feel about companies 
                starting up to organize people playing their games?</p>
              </p>
              Of course, 
                there is also the issue of bragging rights. How do you really 
                know who is the best player, when so many different formats are 
                being used? Will someone, some organization, create a standard 
                for ranking online gamers? </p>
              </p>
              Then there 
                is the most important question of all. What effect will all this 
                ranking, paying out, and partnering have on the gamers themselves? 
                We pretty much take for granted the ability to jump on a server 
                and play without a rank or registration. Is that time nearing 
                an end?</p>
              </p>
              I don&#146;t 
                know the answers to the questions raised here. But this column 
                will seek, if not to answer them, at least to explore the complicated 
                issues surrounding them. At its most fundamental level, online 
                gaming is about you and me. I am a gamer. I like being able to 
                play, competitively, online. I like the rush I get when I&#146;m 
                winning a game of <b>Quake</b>, and nothing is like the hopeless 
                despair of losing a hard-fought match. It&#146;s a wonderful, 
                exhilarating experience, and what fuels all of these companies, 
                all of these organizations, all of us. Ultimately? We all just 
                want to kick some ass. It&#146;s the fact that we need so much 
                structure (and cash incentives!) to do it that makes it so interesting. 
                </p>
              </p>
              I like 
                to think I know the online gaming world fairly well at this point. 
                This past year, I co-organized the Female 
                Frag Fest '99, an all-female <b>Quake 2</b> tournament sanctioned 
                by the CPL, and I am a member of the <b>Quake</b> clan PMS. 
                I also currently play on the OGL ladder (<b>Quake III</b> open 
                division), and have participated in a number of other ladders 
                and tournaments, including the PGL. So while I try to answer these 
                questions, I will be doing it, not only from the perspective of 
                a researcher and a writer like everyone else, but also as a former 
                tournament official, and a gamer. </p>
              </p>
              Let me 
                add this. Online gaming is a very confusing, very complicated 
                issue. I've pretty much laid out what I intend to cover in this 
                column. If there is anything not mentioned here, any organization 
                worth looking into, something confusing, please let me know. Online 
                competitive gaming is ultimately about the gamers, and this column 
                will be the same. </p>
              
              <i>- 
                Stephanie &quot;Bobbi&quot; Bergman needs to come up with better 
                taglines.</i></p>
           <br><p>&nbsp;</p> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 