January 10, 2002
Wanted, Virtually Dead
By COREY KILGANNON
N American stood deep in a cave complex in
the hills of Afghanistan, a trigger-squeeze away from avenging the deaths of
thousands of Americans in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Aiming his M-16 assault rifle at a fleeing Arab in white robes and a long beard, the American fired — killing Osama bin Laden. A pool of blood spread from Mr. bin Laden's head as an elite Special Forces team stood over its vanquished quarry.
That trigger man was no soldier, but a 28- year-old Web developer in Winter Park, Fla., who has never laced up a pair of combat boots. His name is Andrew Baye, and his act of revenge took place not in Afghanistan but in cyberspace, in a game he is helping to create that lets the player hunt down Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Baye invents user-created modifications, or mods, to customize off-the-shelf versions of PC video games. Originally he created mods to "extend the life of the game," he said. "Otherwise they would get boring pretty quick."
And years before the events of Sept. 11, he enjoyed hunting down terrorists in so-called first-person shooter games. In these military sims, or simulations, the user typically plays as a member of a Special Forces unit using covert operations and stealth tactics to invade foreign lands or rescue hostages on hijacked airplanes.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In a sense, the attacks of Sept. 11 gave Mr. Baye and other mod enthusiasts a more pressing mission. Soon after the United States linked the attacks to Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Baye rushed to create a mod for the game Rogue Spear that transformed its objective into an assassination mission. Like most mods, it was free for other enthusiasts to download or to pass along.
Mr. Baye said he helped put this "quickie" mod, called Operation Just Reward, on the Web in late September because "people wanted to get this guy, and not all of us can join the Army."
Counterterrorism has long been a dominant theme of military first-person shooters, but since Sept. 11, the demand for this type of game has surged.
"We're seeing a massive increase in the desire to play anything antiterrorist, anti- evil-empire," said Greg Spyridis, editor in chief of Game Monkeys Magazine (www .gamemonkeys.com), a site that follows the electronic gaming industry. "People always write in asking which game to buy, and since Sept. 11 it's been nothing but `Which game will let me hunt some terrorists?' "
It did not take long for gamers to move from shock over the attacks to shoot-'em-up.
"When the attacks happened, everyone in the gaming community considered it taboo to deal with terrorist themes," said Eric Newhouse, manager of PCGameReview .com, a Web site where users review and discuss games. "You had gamers on message boards asking, `I wonder if they'll stop making these types of games.' It was striking too sore a nerve. But after a week, you began seeing things like: `I really can't wait for these games to come out. I want to beat the terrorists.' And it's been front and center ever since."
Billy Pidgeon, an analyst for Jupiter Media Metrix (news/quote) Research, which conducts surveys on Internet use, said that electronic game activity in general declined in the weeks immediately after Sept. 11 but was steady among the "hard-core gamers who use military simulators."
This new focus of mod activity has not, however, prompted commercial game publishers to rush new games into stores. Some even made changes in their games to prevent parallels from being drawn to the terrorist attacks. As for developing new titles, it takes months for a commercial game to wind its way from conception to the store shelf, too long for one relying even on a protean news story.
But the mod creators, who can react quickly and cheaply, rushed into the breach.
"The war and the hunt for bin Laden has created a greater appetite for mods because they let you imitate what is going on over there, even as it changes every day," Mr. Baye said. "You don't have to ask a board of directors for permission and then market the game."
The war in Afghanistan has captivated a group of gamers devoted to ultrarealism in cybercombat. "A lot of games get their themes from the current headlines," said Chris Abele, a mod enthusiast from Atlanta, "but the hunt for bin Laden is especially good for these games because you're dealing with something that is really happening, not some science-fiction theme."
Mr. Abele, a 23-year-old financial analyst for an accounting firm in Atlanta, is the founder and owner of Pie's Tactics (www.piestactics .com), a popular distribution site for free downloadable mods for Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon, PC games based on Tom Clancy novels and published by Red Storm Entertainment. The player becomes part of an elite Special Forces group hunting terrorists.
"The whole appeal of these mods is the element of extreme realism they bring to a mainstream game," Mr. Abele said. "And now mod creators have a realistic theme to base it on."
A mod is a set of downloadable files that piggyback on the programming of an existing PC game, allowing players to change the geographical settings, weapons and missions as well as the personalities and physical traits of perhaps generic characters.
At a basic level there are downloadable "skins," essentially digital masks used to personalize a character. Last fall, Mr. bin Laden's image became one of the most popular skins among PC gamers.
Soon after Sept. 11, Cyberextruder.com, a Web site that creates three- dimensional skins from photographs, made an Osama bin Laden skin available as a free download for use with Unreal Tournament, a shooter from Epic Games, and Quake III Arena, from Activision (news/quote). Players were even downloading a skin of President Bush to pit against Mr. bin Laden.
Gamers form e-mail chains to distribute the mods or search for them online at larger distribution sites, including www.piestactics.com, www.fileplanet.com and 3dgamers .com. A search-engine hunt can yield a cascade of links to amateur sites where they can be found.
Industry experts say it is difficult to estimate the extent of mod activity because there are so many sites from which the mods are downloaded and no purchases are involved. The creators are generally after prestige, not profit.
"This is a market that is largely ignored, partly because there is no significant revenue tied to it," said Mr. Newhouse, the manager for PCGameReview.com. "But from a populist perspective, the moding community is so enormous. The established gaming industry doesn't realize just how big it is."
Mr. Baye said he had received e- mail from police officers, firefighters and soldiers stationed in the United States saying they had enjoyed playing Operation Just Reward. (The game was made available on many sites, he said, so he could not estimate overall use. But on Pie's Tactics alone it has been downloaded more than 1,400 times.)
Mr. Baye recruited a 3-D digital artist, Ethan McKinnon, 27, of San Antonio, as a partner to help create a similar game with improved quality and realism. They enlisted Jeff Wand, 27, a 3-D artist who has worked for Red Storm and other game makers as well as for companies that make digital terrain maps for military training. Mr. Baye said that the new game, Operation Cat's Lair: The Hunt for Osama bin Laden, was almost complete.
Drawing on news articles, photographs and diagrams, the team sought to recreate Afghanistan's mountainous landscapes, cave complexes, architecture and foliage. It also sought to give a more realistic look to the fighters of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's terror network. (In Operation Just Reward, Mr. Baye had merely tacked turbans and beards on existing characters.)
The reaction of commercial game companies to mod activity varies. Some release parts of the underlying programming code to mod specialists to generate interest in their games and allow better adaptations. Others fear giving away precious game secrets and opening the door to tasteless mischief.
Cassie Vogel, a spokeswoman for Ubi Soft Entertainment, which owns Red Storm Entertainment, creator of Rogue Spear, said: "The company does not endorse or support the making of mods for its games. We understand that they enhance game play for our fans, but we do not support them."
In contrast, Sierra, a publisher in Bellevue, Wash., whose games include Half-Life, holds an annual Half- Life Mod Expo in San Francisco. "We definitely support the mod community," said Genevieve Ostergard, a Sierra spokeswoman. "We don't feel they take advantage of the game. They support it and give it new life."
Despite Red Storm's stand, there are signs that it has benefited from mod activity. Sales of Rogue Spear rose 48 percent in the month ended in late September, Ms. Vogel said.
Attaching real names and places to the targets in already blood- soaked fantasies may not be everyone's idea of a healthy development. But Ken Brown, managing editor of the magazine Computer Gaming World, said, "It's probably very therapeutic for people to feel like they're taking out bad guys and fighting terrorism in a way that doesn't harm anyone."
He added, "Where else can the average Joe have the experience of shooting terrorists for himself?"