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Making World-Class Time Wasting On-line Games
Friday, October 13 2000
by Bernie Goldbach


As he stood in Dublin's Irish Whiskey Corner carrying his Internet Business
Award, Michael Cunningham put the accomplishment in perspective. "We get nearly
a million page impressions a month. On average, each viewer spends nearly two
minutes with each page. That means we help waste more than a million minutes of
company time each month."

Applying standard industry rates, P45.net is siphoning off more than IEP300,000
of productivity from the new economy each month. That puts the site into the
Premiership of On-line Gamers.



The best games are the ones where you lose track of time. Their design,
interactivity and creative twists grab your attention and hold your interest.



It's challenging to make a compelling electronic game. Kevin O'Gorman, a
programmer for Kompass.ie thinks multi-player games like Quake 3 and
CounterStrike are much more compelling than single-player ones. "Many single
player games are ridiculously easy," he says. "It's all about patterns,
really. Even good Artificial Intelligence has standard patterns of play. One you
learn them, you can beat the AI every time."



According to Attracta Brennan, whose doctoral work in Galway focused on
human-computer interaction, "popular games help build better next generation
interfaces." Noting how a great game has to excel in design, graphics and sound,
she is also quick to point out that great games give players roles to play,
activities to perform and constraints to meet.



Visit any Irish college on any afternoon and you can wade into on-line gaming
sweatpits. The most intense activity swirls around highly addictive games of
Quake. The Irish national team routinely sits at the top of the All-Europe
competition.



"Quake rocks because of its excellent design," says Devore, an Irish Quake
grandfather. "The graphics kick ass, the sound pumps and you get feedback in
your face right now." Blind newcomers walking into a Quake Room could easily
think they've just landed in an aerobics work-out session. The backing tracks
sound the same and the perspiration level is high. The big difference is that you
die in Quake but you only hurt after a good aerobics session.



"If you want to attract and retain discriminating on-line games players, it
pays to incorporate the Quake model, great graphics, adaptabilty for
personalisation, and real time game play," says Ruth Maher from Anamu Animation
Base. Anamu have arranged for the November Irish Animation Festival to include
master classes showcasing design elements behind vibrant on-line games.



Some of the best on-line single-player games experiences use development tools
found in Macromedia Flash. The latest edition, Flash 5, lets programmers write
scripts while animators draw the movie clips. When viewed in a LAN environment,
it's a remarkable combination of programmers and designers working closely inside
the same digital file.



When he was constructing the interface for Fortuneslive.com, Keith Jordan knew he
needed to push the performance envelope of visiting computers. The site assumes
visitors arrive with the Flash plug-in installed. The site offers horoscopes and
fortune tellings. Its core features draw heavily from Flash, 3D rendered objects
and a smooth interaction between your computer screen and the server-side
database.



Quality games have quality programming inside them. Nils Olofsson, the technician
and programmer inside Kilkenny's Cartoon Saloon has to get his head around
programming routines that make Flash actions work smoothly. "You don't want to
be too predictable in any of the sequences," he explains. He searches for the
simplest way to program the interactivity because it puts less strain on the
computer processor.



Low processor overhead means the merging of online games to handheld devices.
Firepad.com shows technology that can stream video and audio to the Palm OS. The
developers claims to have field tested the first high-speed streaming technology
for the Palm, which can support video at up to 25 fps.  This brings realistic
action sequences for games into Palm devices.



When higher speed bandwidth appears for wireless devices, this streaming media
content could arrive over TCP/IP. Motorola have their cloaks around similar
technology splashing down in the Irish market in the run-up to Christmas.



Trends indicate the world will be carrying around mobile devices that can
interact with online games. It's a huge market for designers and programmers. If
it's to be successful, the first wave of software applications must be as
compelling as the current generation of on-line games.







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