Lawrence is known to many people as the home of the University of Kansas. But to a growing number of computer gamers, the town is quickly becoming an epicenter in a brutal yet community-fostering virtual world.
QUAKE CULTURE
"SPLEENRIPPER"
BY SEAN DEMORY • ILLUSTRATION BY BLAKE WALLES
NTHISSIDE
of the computer screen, Peter Carlson is a psychology major with passions for computers and
music. On the other side,
though, he's Spleenripper, a founding member of the feared Impulse9 Quake clan and a force to be reckoned with.
Impulse9, a top-ranked Quake team, is based in Lawrence, and, like other Quake clans, it dispels the stereotype of lonely, misanthropic computer geeks clicking at images on a screen.
Quake is a first-person virtual reality combat game that was released in test form by Id Software last summer.
"There are two things that make Quake so excellent," said Carlson, Champaign, Ill., senior. "It's easily modified, and it's got Internet play. Internet play is the reason Quake culture exists."
Id Software has been a pioneer in first person gaming, producing a number of games including Doom, Descent and Hexen. Quake, however, may have created the most significant impact on users.
In single play mode, the game pits combatants against ranks of zombies, demons and monsters. The player then blows them to pieces with an armory of high-tech weaponry.
It's the game's deathmatch feature, however, that allows players to link their computers together through a local area network or over the Internet to fight against human opponents.
"You can play against human opponents online, find real people playing 24 hours a day, seven days a week around the world," said Steve Perry, a Prairie Village junior known online as Ratmonkey. "Instead of playing a limited computer mind, you can match wits with an infinitely adaptable human being."
"Playing against the computer is pretty static," said Scott Dalton (Doctor Rigormortis), Overland Park junior. "There isn't as much to it. There's more of a rush to head-to-head play."
The head-to-head play found in deathmatch has spawned clans, a world-wide ranking system and a host of sites where players can test their mettle against distant foes, stalking their live quarry through a series of winding catacombs, barren courtyards and twisting halls.
And Lawrence is one of the epicenters of this virtual universe.
Impulse9 started when Scott Dalton read about Dark Requiem, the first clan of note, and talked with his house mates and friends about starting a clan of their own. They proceeded to work their way up the ranks until they were knocked from their champion status last year by the Ruthless Bastards, based in Michigan.
In his seminal 1992 essay on virtual communities, Whole Earth Review editor Howard Rheingold said that the way people use computers to form communities would "always be rooted in human needs, not hardware or software." In this case, the human needs in which the clan system is rooted are those of challenge, camaraderie and recognition from one's peers of mastery of one's environment.
Computer technicians, contractor's assistants and students, young and middle-aged, male and female all seem to have some place in this warrior culture. Through speed, skill and ingenuity, they're able to carve out a niche and gain some renown for themselves and their clans.
A community, a culture has formed around
Oakake, a game that is in many ways the logical
result of virtual reality.
Rather than flying through
Rather than flying through a world of computer-generated polygons or grabbing blocky apples, they use Quake as a way to pit themselves against other people, challenging themselves and others in head-to-head combat.
At the beginning of the year, Impulse9 was host to a proving ground of sorts. More than 50 battle-tested soldiers from across the country invaded Lawrence on the first weekend in January, lugging reality in their hard drives, prepared to do or die on the field of battle, participating in the largest
ing in the largest Quake Local Area Network party on record.
Impulse9, at the time the second-ranked clan in the world, sent out the clarion call, and the best of the best came from Mississippi and Colorado, Indiana and Iowa.
In the "War Room," the name given to the sprawl of computers that took over Impulse9's base camp, a curving, warrenlike house at 21st and Louisiana streets, the battle began in earnest early on.
The low whoosh of rockets, the relentless thud of shotguns and
high-pitched chatter of nail guns meshed with the screams of the players' on-screen personae and fevered, whispered cursing from live players finding themselves in or out of trouble.
Forty computers were hooked together, most of them in the War Room, and people were sitting back to back, headphones on to eliminate distractions as they went to war.
On-screen, blocky, lantern-jawed figures leap from bridges, crept through catacombs, popped out of nowhere and burst from water, weapons always at the ready. The action was constant: Fighters would fire instinctively as they ran for cover or rushed to reequip themselves, always watching, keeping fields of vision and fire moving with a slight movement of the mouse.
The battles were as jarringly sudden as they were gruesuice. At the merest glimpse of an enemy, shots popped off relentlessly from all sides. Often, barely discernible chunks (called "gibs" for gibbles in Quake parlance), a quick message on the screen to other players and an equipment pack floating in the air were the only signs of the unfortunate's passing.
"You can tell who the people are who think of nothing but killing and who the tinkerers are," said Eric Stephenson, Lawrence resident, "but they aren't silly about it."
Quake has gained a large portion of its following through the ease with which it can be tinkered and through Id Software's willingness to add player-created features into the canon. Player tinkering has spawned everything from new levels to attack dogs and jet fighters, and Id is including the popular hobbyist-created Capture-The-Flag modification to Quake II.
Rheingold says, in *Virtual Communities*, that one of the core risks of virtual communities based on conflict or "mastery" is the threat of defining one's self more by mastery than interaction. "It becomes a way of masking fears about the self and the complexities of the world beyond. People can become trapped," Rheingold says.
Stephenson's experience interacting with clan members as an unaffiliated competitor seemed to run counter to Rheingold's concern.
"The they seem like they're actually interested in meeting each other," Stephenson said. "I've seen people just talk for an hour or so, rather than just getting on and playing nonstop."
The atmosphere of the gathering was an odd combination of hang-out session and tournament. Bad blood existed between some clans, but only within the game. Ruthless Bastards rubbed shoulders with Impulse9ers. Muppets from Mississippi and Coloradan Millennium Clansmen chatted amiably, occasionally looking over the winners brackets. Talk about new strategies and modifications warred with conversations about movies, places to go and things to see. Players removed themselves from the game to greet or see off people who, on the other side of the screen, they had been hunting for hours on end.
"A lot of people at things like this," Stephenson said as screams and explosions filtered in from the War Room, "get really whiny about their play environment, get petty about little things. I'd say that these people are different. The usual BBS geeks are much more immature than the Quake crowd. This has the feel of a pilgrimage."