SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- Four guys sit on a couch, Nintendos in hand, hooting, shooting, shouting. They are blowing away each other's targets in 3DO's "Battletanx."

These guys get paid for this?

Yes. Continuous, rigorous testing of the latest video game technology is very important work.

RELATED VIDEO

CNN's Greg Lefevre reports on the video game explosion

Windows Media 28K 56K

Blammo! Then the analysis. Good shooting sound. Good explosion. Great smoke.

Trip Hawkins, 3DO CEO, says battle smoke is tough to do right. Opaque enough to obscure your vision, but not so opaque you can't see the vague forms of the bad guys on the other side.

All this for a video game? You bet.

The video game market is exploding. NPD Group in New York says video game sales jumped 25 percent this year to $4.2 billion.

Hawkins says games appeal to a mass market, "All those kids that played video games ten years ago, they're adults now and they've got even more money to spend, and there's a whole bunch of new kids as well."

At Electronic Arts, NASCAR Producer Dave Ross has a steering wheel game controller clamped to his desk. (Imagine if I tried that at MY desk!) EA has studied the Winston Cup NASCAR series, right down to the tire pressure. EA's new "NASCAR Revolution," due out for pc's next spring, features exacting race detail.

"Races are won and lost in the pits," Ross says. "We've photographed a stunt person doing all the types of moves you would see someone in a Winston Cup team doing." The result is that even the pit stops in the game show each member of the pit crew changing the tires, loading fuel, raising the jacks. "Seeing all of those guys come over the wall and perform what they call the 17 second ballet."

And out on the track, the gamer faces 42 other drivers, each with different personalities programmed into the game.

"All of their characteristics are put into the artificial intelligence of the game so that as you're racing you're coming across drivers that may be more aggressive than others. You have some that are more passive."

Seven floors down, a computer program mimics the REAL sounds of race cars. On what is otherwise a standard desktop PC, Marc Farly uses digitized engine sounds to recreate engines in all types of running situations. Even damaged. "I can kill pistons here, so when you blow an engine you can actually take out a couple of cylinders."

A few stops down the freeway at 3DO sound designer Sean Carson tweaks a fight scene for the upcoming "Requiem, Avenging Angel." In this sequence the avenging angel is dispatching the bad guys with, well, dispatch. Carson says his challenge is to have a lot of bad guys moaning their last gasp without all sounding alike. "Five years ago we would have maybe one 'dying sound' and now maybe we have six. There's three or four different types of guns being fired. Each one has to sound unique. The human ear can tell when it's the same thing over and over again."

At Electronic Arts, Eric Holden needs to make "Future Cop LAPD" more than just another cop car chase game. "Remember kid, serve protect--survive," warns the dispatcher/cyborg. Even a point and shoot game requires cunning and strategy. And the biped turbo super cop is a hoot! A mix of a Star Wars ton-ton and RoboCop.

Holden says design of individual game elements is important. "Instead of driving a car or a tank which is fairly boring to look at we decided to have something that was a little more articulated and a little more exciting to look at." And if you look closely you can see his picture, sprayed, graffiti-like on the city walls. Holden says everybody on the team is in the game.

Wes Nihei has the killer job -- playing and reviewing games for GamePro Magazine. "I think every video game forces you to make some critical decisions or to use some strategic thinking and that's what's fun about those games. I think what you're starting to notice now however is that the market for games has really spreading out."

That means the game buyer is growing older. The average gamer is 24 -- still mostly men, but with rapidly growing audiences of women and girls.

The heroes are not always men, some games have relationship interests. Others like the "Barbie" and "Madeline" series target girls specifically. Marketers don't talk much about how many women play their video games but admit the percentage is still comparatively small.

Overall, the number of game players is growing fast. Games have matured beyond the mere point and shoot, although there are still plenty of them.

3DO's Trip Hawkins sees growth across all the gaming platforms -- Nintendo, PlayStation and PC. "I think what's really happening in games right now is that there's something for everybody. The hardware is cheap. The systems are easy to use."

What's hot? On Nintendo it's got to be "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" and "NFL Quarterback Club 99," considered an excellent football simulation.

How much game will you get for your money? It depends on what you play it on. Eric Holden at Electronic Arts wrestles every day with how much game action he can stuff into one cartridge.

"Most of the time it comes down to memory within the machine and processing power within the machine. Our little models can only be so complex for the PlayStation whereas for the PC they can be four or five times as complex." His production, "Future Cop LAPD," plays on the PC, PlayStation as well as the Macintosh.

Contrary to past trends away from the Apple Macintosh platform, this "Future Cop LAPD" was written on the Mac. The CD-ROM is a hybrid -- good for both Mac and PC. And how does it play?

"It's exactly the same," says Holden.

Surf on.....

Special section:

Fun & games

Related stories:

Holiday donations: Click and give - December 15, 1998
Shakeup in Silicon Valley? - November 24, 1998
Java's victory: Will computer users see a difference? - November 19, 1998
Latest Headlines

Pakistan begins troop withdrawal from Indian border
White-collar workers in Jakarta join anti-Habibie chorus
Veteran politicians hand over EU reform blueprint
Klan rally in New York fizzles under counterprotests
Falwell hosts summit with gay minister
Critics assail plan to give women addicts money to use birth control
Chemical that could power microbes is found at Jupiter moon

Texas downs No. 3 Huskers, continues hex

Illinois stuns No. 9 Michigan 35-29

Agilent plans $1.1 B IPO
Agents boycott United for slashing commissions
Advocates assail legislation encouraging mergers

Today on CNN

Related sites:

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

3DO
Electronic Arts
Sony PlayStation

External sites are not
endorsed by CNN Interactive.