Getting play the cyber way

JOHN YI/YH

BONDING EXPERIENCE: The progress of a kill in the popular N64 James Bond game.

With a look of studied concentration, Daniel Grollman, SM '03, attempted to save the world from the evil machinations of Dr. Wiley while casually munching on a mouthful of cashews and subconsciously swaying to the hypnotizing, repetitive music from the flickering screen. "It's hard to eat while you're playing," he commented. "You need to use both hands for the controller."

Grollman is just one of a large group of students at Yale who turn to computers and game systems for a breath of relief from the stress of schoolwork. According to Grollman, whose game console of choice is the beloved, albeit outdated, Nintendo Entertainment System, playing video games is a good way "to work off stress and waste time when bored."

A (64) bit of heaven

The selection of electronic diversions here at Yale is unquestionably enormous. In addition to traditional household game systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Super Nintendo, new iterations of ever-increasing quality continue to emerge. It has now been several years since the so-called "third generation" game systems—Nintendo 64 (N64), Sony Playstation, and Sega Saturn—made their appearance on the video game scene. These 64-bit systems redefined the industry standard for quality of graphics and ease of play.

Ernest Morris, SM '00, a devoted follower of professional wrestling, owns an N64. "I like the wonderful graphics and the multi-player capabilities," Morris said. "My favorite game is WWF Warzone because I get to be cool wrestlers like The Rock and lay the smackdown on people's rudypoo candyasses." Morris views video games as a way to relax. Since the start of this school year he has only played his N64 once, but as a freshman the situation was much more intense. "We had a Nintendo in our suite, and we would have Tetris competitions and keep the results on a scoreboard on the mantel." As he puts it, "Video games bring people that are already friends together in another way."

Now avid video gamers are heralding the newest addition to the ranks, the recently released Sega Dreamcast. This state-of-the-art entertainment system features extremely rapid graphics processing—over 3 million polygons per second. In addition, it can be used with the Internet; coming equipped with a browser, a 56 kilobit-per-second modem and a keyboard that plugs into the controller port.

That ticles!

Some would argue that no matter how sophisticated new computer games become, nothing could ever compare to the classics such as Super Mario Brothers, Kirby's Adventure, or The Legend of Zelda.  To that end, a class of programs called "emulators" has arisen that allows computer users to relive the hours of thrills derived from those Nintendo games, all without budging one inch from the keyboard.  Although technically illegal, emulators seem to have garnered a large base of fans among computer users.  The NES emulator is called "NESticle," the reasons for which we can only speculate, and it provides the computing environment in which the various emulated Nintendo games can be run.

Justin Weinberg, CC '00, is not all that enthusiastic, however.  He stated, "The reason that I'm wary of emulators is that my computer is not exactly high-end (150 MHz) anymore, and installing a memory-intensive emulator would eat up enough resources to crash it or at least come dangerously close to doing so."  In addition, he warned, "I once tried [a Super Nintendo emulator] and it worked okay but it had a lot of glitches. The N64 emulators just won't work right unless you have the appropriate video accelerator."  Thus, before you go about getting an emulator, it is definitely a good idea to make sure beforehand that your computer can handle it.

Crafty comity

Although video game systems are certainly popular among Yalies, stuffing a Super Nintendo, two controllers, 15 game cartridges, and assorted electronic adaptors into an already-overflowing Ford Windstar while your mother screeches, "We're not paying thirty thousand dollars a year for you to play video games!" may not be the world's most pleasant prospect. For that reason, among others, many students here at Yale tend to turn to their computers for entertainment options. Indeed, if you know the right places to look, the computer can be an excellent diversion.

For example, take the various multiplayer network games available to Yalies with quick reflexes and a taste for glorious simulated victory. Starcraft, a game of galactic domination created by Blizzard Entertainment, is one of the newer such games on the market. The original Starcraft made its appearance as a sequel to similar game called Warcraft several years ago, and it quickly impressed its users with its extensive networking options. Through a service called Battle.net, up to eight players are able to play a simultaneous game over the Internet, either fighting together against the computer or teaming up against one another in a gruesome melee. One thing that players like about Battle.net is the anonymity it allows. Seong-Shin Hong, '01, of Stanford University said, "Even after the carnage that follows your victory, you can just log off and not worry about repercussions."

The Starcraft series, as well as the Diablo and Warcraft series, also by Blizzard, are examples of interactive online games that pit humans against other humans, thereby greatly increasing the complexity of game play. After all, matching wits with other people who are just as conniving and imaginative as you is far more engaging than battling against any computer algorithm, no matter how advanced or artificially intelligent it is purported to be.

Quake up, little Yalie

Here at Yale, a particularly popular network game is id Software's Quake. It and its ilk defined a whole new genre of computer games: the first-person, three-dimensional shoot-em-up. As with the Starcraft series, Quake and its successors can be played online with other people. In fact, Yale possesses a very active society of Quake players known as "Clan .elay".

A member of the clan, who wished to be identified only as "Sonkun.elay," commented, "Outside the entertainment value, Quake can really help foster a sense of community, especially among a group of people who agree to compete together in a clan." Each clan, of which there are literally thousands throughout the world, is composed of a small group of dedicated gamers. The members of these groups inevitably become close friends as a result of their contact in the clan." As Sonkun.elay put it, "Had I not joined [the clan], I would have missed out on meeting wonderful people with remarkably similar interests."

The social aspects of games like Quake often go far beyond members of a single college. Patrick Fu, BR '99, noted that playing online games is "not just about gaming. There's an entire community of people out there, and you make friends, talk about random stuff, etc. Many of the gamers out there are also college students as well." Fu was the .elay clan leader last year and is now an IS consultant at Ernst &Young.

Sonkun.elay agrees. He stated, "Quake is useful not only for its entertainment and stress relief value, but also for its social aspect. Granted, you may never meet your opponents and friends face to face, but I have formed some intense friendships with people from all over America, as well as the world."

Vladimir Cole, a former resident of Silliman who graduated last year and is now a financial reporter with Bloomberg News, likens online gaming to a "hidden IM." As he described it, "Teams of Yalies play teams of non-Yalies," adding that "yes, we dominated the few Harvard 'players' we ran into." He continued, "Many times, there were five to ten Yalies playing online together, linked via phone conference call. We'd play teams from other schools, and we'd play teams from other non-academic environments. The competitive and social environment made it lots of fun."

Knee-deep in MUD

JOHN YI/YH

HIS NAME IS MUD: Professor Aspnes is probably not the last person you would expect to create a successful computer game.

Another set of popular online diversion are the "MUDs" (Multi-User Dungeon or Multi-User Dialogue), computer worlds, often simply text-based, which users can log into and explore. Each player chooses a character and interacts with others playing online while attempting to solve puzzles or deal with monsters.

James Aspnes, an Associate Professor of Computer Science, described MUDs as a "multi-user version of the old text-based adventure games." In 1989, Aspnes wrote a program called "TinyMUD." According to Aspnes, "Some people see [TinyMUD] as the ancestor of `social MUDs' or `talkers' that emphasize social interaction rather than wandering the landscape slaying virtual monsters."

Card/board no longer

Even if one does not possess a video game system like the Nintendo and is not interested in playing games like Starcraft and Quake online, there are still a huge number of entertainment options available to anyone with an Internet connection. An extremely popular site, Yahoo! Games, features such well-known diversions as chess, hearts, and go-fish, while also offering less common games such as mahjongg and Go. Users log on with their Yahoo! screen name and password and proceed to play against other people from around the world.

As with online strategy games like Starcraft, having a real human opponent enhances the playing experience enormously, even for traditional offline games like bridge. No, you can no longer claim seven no-trump at the beginning of each hand; the other players see through that one pretty quickly.

Sites like Yahoo! Games also possess a certain social component. Players are able to converse with each other in real-time chat rooms as well as via private instant messages. In fact, in most of the games, you are likely to encounter at least one "social lounge" where you can meet people from around the world

Bezerkly college

The increasing sophistication of the Internet has brought about the advent of a whole new generation of "web-based" games. Bezerk made a huge splash last year with innovative games such as "Acrophobia" and "What's the Big Idea?" In Acrophobia, up to fourteen players match wits in an effort to produce meaningful, witty phrases out of a series of random acronyms. Although the games sometimes degenerate into strings of random lewd words, players with true wit are usually rewarded for their efforts. Players vote for their favorite responses, and each person receives a rating at the end of each game.

"What's the Big Idea" is a family-feud type game in which players answer multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions based on what they think the other players will select. Thus, there is no "right" answer, but rather a "most popular" answer. The goal is to advance up the "Ziggurat," a huge pyramid. Each question you answer correctly earns you "IQ Points" and moves you a step closer to the ultimate goal of "Brilliance."

In both of these games, there is once again a good deal of interaction between the players. Both allow you to converse with entire rooms as well as send private messages. Words of encouragement (and occasionally insults) flash across the screen almost continuously during the course of a particular game, especially in competitions such as Acrophobia that are based entirely around interaction between players.

Trivial pursuits

Those with a propensity toward quiz-show games have a variety of options to choose from. Bezerk also has a game called "You Don't Know Jack," in which players answer multiple-choice questions to earn points. In addition, the online version of Jeopardy! is extremely popular for triviaphiles.

The special online edition of College Jeopardy is a place where students compete for the glory of their various universities. At last count, however, Yale was extremely low in the rankings, and did not even appear in the top 50. Yale, with $7,117,800, is still ahead of Harvard and Princeton, but Brown leads the Ivy Leagues at second place overall with a total of $137,253,367.

ITS okay!

When one views the enormous variety of online distractions used here at Yale, one might be tempted to ask whether it taxes the Yale network. According to H. Morrow Long, the Yale University ITS University Information Security Officer, "even the highly interactive multi-user games apparently are designed to run over dial-up connections (e.g. PPP with V.90 modems) and are therefore fairly low bandwidth," meaning they do not significantly affect the speed of the Yale server. In addition, said Long, "Most of the board—chess, Go, bridge, Bolo, etc.—and text-based role-playing games tend to be very low bandwidth.

Dan Updegrove, the University Director of ITS, stated that "In general, all students, faculty, and staff should inform themselves about the ITS Appropriate Use Policy accessible at http://www.yale.edu/policy/policy_doc.html." The Appropriate Use Policy does not forbid gaming, though the Handbook of Undergraduate Regulations cautions against distracting others from their work.

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