Need to unwind? Load up that 'shooter' software and away you go.

By day you manage a budget of millions, oversee a staff of dozens and make decisions affecting every employee. By night, you engage in mighty battles using powerful weapons and maybe even some black magic. You are an online gamer.

You might be a lot like Lance Groth, director of IT services at the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor in St. Paul. A network manager by clay, Groth considers himself a gamer at heart. "I've been playing PC games for about 10 to 12 years," says Groth, who at 44 doesn't meet the 20-something demographic of most online gamers.

Groth mostly plays "shooter" games, such as UT, Battlefield; 1942, Medal of Honor; and Allied Assault, on PCs rather than consoles. PC gamers access either free or pay-as-you-go online games, while console players favor software games that run on Microsoft's Xbox, Nintendo's GameCube or Sony's PlayStation. Groth says his passion for logging on and playing first-person games even led him to get broadband access.

He is not alone in his love of online games. The Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) reports 60% of all Americans older than age 6, or about 145 million people, play computer and video games. Game software sales grew 8% in 2002 to $6.9 billion, with more than 221 million computer and video games sold - roughly equaling two games for every household in America.

IDSA says online gamers are an intelligent bunch looking for an outlet for their active brains. The organization reports that almost 40% of online game players have household incomes of $60,000 or more. And 88% of online gamers have at least some college education; 17% have post-graduate degrees.

Many turn to online games to chill out. Brian Jones, manager of network engineering and operations at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, says online hunting and fishing games help him relax when weather or time don't permit the real thing. Games such as Cabella's Big Game Hunter require skill, intelligence and strategy, he says. "These games are not just 'shoot 'em up, kill everything in sight to get the prize type' games," he says. "They are designed to be very much like real hunting experiences."

Jones enjoys the strategy required to go hunting in a virtual world and says it has improved his offline hunting skills.

"These games take you away from the hectic everyday routines and let you focus your mind on other things," he says.

A computer systems architect for a large aerospace company in Maine who wishes to remain anonymous agrees.

"Playing a good game for me is a little like a mini-vacation. When I need to escape for a few hours and going outdoors is not an option, a PC game is often my first choice. I like games that immerse me and require my full attention but do not frustrate me with difficulty and complexity," he says.

Tom Sandford, a network administrator for the Regional Information Center in the Jefferson-Lewis area of New York, uses games such as Ghost Recon, Rainbow 6, Doom and Wolfenstein to unwind after-hours. "I'm a network administrator who loves to come home and game all night when time allows it," he says.

Sandford touches on one risk of online gaming: addiction. Gamers acknowledge how easy getting pulled into the netherworld of online games is. Game Research found more than 50% of online gamers spent up to 12 hours per session on online games. "It is not unusual for an evening of game playing to extend well into the night or to discover that an entire rainy weekend clay has been spent playing," says the gamer from Maine.

Cost can be a downside, too, notes Scott Maddox, a network manager at iContact Australia in Canberra, Australia, who owns a few PCs as well as an Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64 and various other old consoles and computers.

"The costs of all this plus games, suffice it to say, was quite large," he says. "But even considering the downside, I don't think I would stop. I love playing games."

Copyright Network World Inc. Jul 21, 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved