Bowling Leagues for the New Millennium by Mark Frauenfelder 2:48 pm PST 7 Feb 97 - When computer-game licenser Frank Westall launched the first SlamSite computer-game playing center in Burbank, California, last June, he didn't expect it to become a '90s version of a paintball arena or community bowling lane. "I thought I'd have a bunch of kids playing," he says, "but the average age is about 24. These are adults who are coming in and playing in the evening after work." With five locations now open in Southern California and three 12,000-square-foot Interactive Super Game Centers slated to launch in April in other states, SlamSite has been encouraging members of the hundreds of registered Quake clans to get out of their houses and engage in league competitions using SlamSite's high-speed networked Pentium machines. The draw of the gaming centers, says Westall, is that they give clan players more "socialization and strategy" than they get by playing networked games over the Internet. Westall says that in addition to customers who pay by the hour or day to play games at SlamSite, about 400 are club members who pay US$20-$30 per month, giving them exclusive access to SlamSite's network-game server, allowing them to play at home as well. But the problem with Net play, says Westall, is that "some players are on a T1, some are on ISDN, and some are on modems. "There's a real disparity in ping times. Some guy in Nova Scotia with a 14.4 is going to have to play Quake with a different strategy." SlamSite's LANs offer clan members - who come to the centers wearing "skins" emblazoned with their clan logo - a "level playing field" where everyone on the team has an equally speedy computer and connection. "The only other place they can get together like this is at work, and companies frown on that kind of thing." Westall says that 20 percent of the Quake clan members who come to SlamSite are women. John Robb, an analyst with Forrester Research, says SlamSite is an example of "the computer industry slamming into a traditional industry." The battle between computers and video games "is not a clash of equals. The computer industry has power and momentum, and the other guys are flat out of gas," he says. Eighty to ninety percent of homes don't have the high-speed computers and network connections necessary to enjoy the full "twitch experience" of games like Quake and Diablo, Robb says. Game centers like SlamSite with high-speed LANs and top-of-the-line computers are a whole new area that can prove to be very lucrative as the video-game platform begins to disappear. As computer games become more complex the video-game industry will likely concentrate on the mobile/portable market. With the launch of their new theme-based location (one is designed to look like NORAD, another like a dungeon, the other like a space station), SlamSite will be sponsoring top Quake clans, flying them to SlamSite facilities around the country for a national ladder competition and a $10,000 prize. Even though SlamSite offers more than Quake, such as a cafe, a store, other types of networked games, and a T1 line, Westall stresses that SlamSite is "nothing like a cybercafe. We're an IGP, an interactive-game provider." Copyright © 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc. and affiliated companies. All rights reserved.