A long time ago a couple of farm boys started throwing around a medicine ball. One of them decided it would be neat to put a pole with a hoop in the ground and throw that medicine ball into it. So, Basketball was born. Today it's a "Billion Dollar" industry. Well, just years ago a couple guys at a software company thought it would be cool if you could kill your buddies in a virutal environment. Doom, became the number one selling piece of shareware in the history of the computer-gaming industry, and today the Deathmatch is on it's 4th incarnation in the form of Quake3: Arena. Will it hold up as a valid professional platform? Can it grow into the role of a professional game in a world where the stereotype of a computer gamer still exisits as a pale faced, over-weight, pimply man with glasses? It's not out yet, but with what has been seen let's evaluate it.
The game is going to sell. That's not in debate here, but who will it sell to? Initial projections show that only 30% of the people that will purchase Quake3: Arena will play it on-line. That's not a very good number for a game that is supposed to be primarily a Muli-Player (ie On-line) game. What does that do to the gaming community? Not much considering only about 20% of the people that purchased id's previous game, Quake2, played it on-line. That is a 50% increase in the number of players, but what does that do to professional gaming? Again, not much at all. What should it do? It should bring the casual gamer to the scene of even semi-professional gaming. Something of a little league for Professional gaming, where it is possible to discover that diamond in the ruff. Even someone with mild skill could be succesfull enough to gain encouragement from their peers. In essence the more player you have playing the larger the talent pool. It's like this for every other professional game out there. The social ramifications of this lack of exceptance and encouragment isn't the point of this article, but it's a neccesary reminder. As far as professional gaming is concerned, Quake3 is only doing "ok" and that's not good enough.
So, why all this big deal over Quake3: Arena? Well, as the last paragraph stated this title is going to sell, and it's projected to sell like hotcakes. It will have the largest audience and so will lock it in as the defacto standard in On-line gaming. Gameplay wise it's also the easiest to understand. So, Quake3 would seem perfect to catapault computer gaming beyond simply the mainstream but into the world of professional play. What remains to be seen is how much effort id Software will expend to put it there.
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