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Katic is assigned to manage one-on-one "deathmatches" between
attendees. His experience from previous parties has taught him that
vocal cords aren't enough, and this one is no different, so he carries
around a small bullhorn.
By 5:30 p.m., individual skirmishes have broken out everywhere. Groat,
who spends most of his time managing the network, has set up multiple
game servers to play different maps and custom mods, and the assembled
group has split up among the different servers of its choice. In
addition to the attendees, gamers from outside of the office can
connect over the Internet, though if they don't have fast connections,
they are sitting ducks for the players on the local, high-speed
network.
"At the last party, I looked around at 5 a.m. and everyone was at their
computer except for two people, all with a smile on their face."
-- Mark Surfas
Critical Mass Communications
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The party is in full swing
by 6 p.m. Surfas has set up two cameras that regularly take pictures,
and he posts them to the PlanetQuake Website. The shades are drawn, and
a dozen candles on the walls are lit, giving the room a rather eerie
glow. No one complains, because the darkness eliminates glare off the
monitors.
Players bounce up and down in their seats, though the players sitting
on folding chairs have to be more careful, lest their chairs collapse.
People swear like Marines when they're "killed" and glare around the
room for the responsible party. Occasionally, they make eye contact and
exchange a taunt, or a raised middle finger, but the fighting is always
good-natured. Quake is designed to let you start right over, become
heavily armed very quickly, and extract a measure of revenge. It's the
ultimate "don't get mad, get even" game.
A Peaceful War
Still, you'd think the environment just begs for a fight. There are 40
people crammed into a small office in an intensely competitive game,
all screaming obscenities and threats at each other, and they're jacked
up on caffeine.
But there's never trouble, Surfas says. There have never been any
fights or any damage to his office, which has a lot of equipment.
"Everyone has a lot in common," he says. "When you get beat, sure,
you're angry, but you have respect for the other person."
"I have yet to see any real aggressive behavior, outside of in the game," adds Tom "ParadoX" Mustaine, a level designer with Ritual Entertainment,
a Dallas company that has its own 3-D action game, Sin, due next year.
Mustaine wasn't at the BeatDown, but he attends similar events in the
Dallas area with his girlfriend, Stevie "KillCreek" Case, who also
plays the game.
Female players are in the distinct minority in the Quake community.
Most women are turned off by the violence and aggressive nature of the
game. By and large, the male players welcome the women. "The guys in
the Quake community go out of their way to be nice to us. I think
there's so few of us, they're just happy to have us around," Case says.
There have been some ugly incidents, though. A young British woman, who
goes by the name HellKitten, posted some pictures of herself on her
Website, but shut the site down within days after receiving obscene
(and often anonymous) letters from male players.
And recently, when Slam Site, a mall-based LAN arcade (see related
story) hosted the All-Female Quake Tournament, the event's organizer
Anna "Nabe0" (she refuses to give out her last name to protect her own
privacy) took a lot of grief from male players, even though they
thoroughly dominate the community.
Case lets these incidents roll off her back. "Just as in the real
world, there will always be jerks on the Net," she says. "Fortunately,
99 percent of the guys I've met through Quake have been wonderful to
me."
As for the all-female tournament, Case, who finished second behind
Kornelia Takacs of Los Angeles, has mixed feelings. "I just don't have
much appreciation for segregation when there is no good reason," she
says. "No gender has any physical advantage in Quake. It is in many
ways a much more even battlefield than could be found in the real
world. However, it is a nice way to recognize the women that play and
love the game."
Next: The Battles Continue |
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In This Series:
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On The LAN Party Front Line
· Page One
· Page Two
· Page Three |
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