Games That Grownups Play

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Jim Cantrell, the chief financial officer of a San Diego diving-suit manufacturer, has been known to drive ten miles to his office on a Saturday just to play Starflight on his IBM Personal Computer. Jim Bonevac, a senior economist for the state of Virginia, likes to spend lunch hours playing APBA Baseball and other games on his Leading Edge computer. Peter, a San Francisco marketing representative, uses lunch breaks to get in rounds of Mean 18 golf on an IBM PC Model AT, although he feels guilty enough about fooling around on the company computer to shut off the game the moment he hears the boss coming his way.

Who said office computers could only be used for work? Machines designed to juggle equations, balance budgets, process words and draw graphs are now also capable of bringing a little fun and adventure to the corporate routine -- either after hours or on the sly during the workday. Of the 15 million personal-computer games sold in the U.S. last year, according to Ingram Software, a leading game distributor, nearly 40% were designed for the most popular business machines: the IBM PC, the Apple Macintosh and such IBM- compatible brands as Compaq, Epson, Leading Edge and Tandy. In 1985, by contrast, only about 15% of the games sold would run on business computers. When 750 U.S. executives were polled by Epyx, creator of Winter Games and Temple of Apshai, nearly 40% admitted that they had used their office computers for entertainment. Says Will Rodriguez, assistant manager of a B. Dalton's Software Etc. shop in Torrance, Calif.: "We sell an awful lot of games to people in business suits."

Traditionally, game publishers steered away from business computers. Games that ran well on Atari or Commodore machines could not be easily adapted to the IBM PC, primarily because it did not come equipped with a joy stick. The more versatile Macintosh was better suited to game playing, but Apple, which was eager to have the machine accepted as a serious business computer, discouraged independent game developers and even suppressed some early staff- written entertainment programs.

More important, software companies feared that games written for business computers would not sell. "The general thinking was that the average player was a 17-year-old geek with pimples who wanted to blow up spaceships," says Chris Crawford, a former game designer at Atari who now writes programs independently for both business and home computers. "Publishers are just beginning to realize there is another market out there."

To exploit that market, software houses are busy developing adult-oriented games that are more sophisticated than Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and can be played as easily on a keyboard as with a joy stick. Programmer Crawford's current best seller, for example, is Mindscape's Balance of Power ($49.95), a foreign policy simulation in which the player tries to check Soviet expansion in as many as 62 different countries without starting a nuclear war. In Starflight by Electronic Arts ($49.95), players explore some 270 star systems and 800 simulated planets, zapping aliens all the way. Infocom has even come out with an "R-rated" adventure game called Leather Goddesses of Phobos ($34.95 to $39.95), which features a band of Martian sirens bent on turning earth into their "private pleasure palace." The game can be played at three levels: tame, suggestive and lewd.

Many of the top-selling games for business computers are based on adult pastimes. In Accolade Inc.'s Mean 18 ($44.95 to $49.95), armchair golfers can hit a sand trap or score a hole in one without ever stepping into the hot sun. Software Toolworks' popular Chessmaster 2000 (160,000 copies sold at $40 to $45) challenges players in up to 20 different levels of difficulty, from novice to grand master. The classic of business-computer games is Microsoft's Flight Simulator ($49.95), which puts Walter Mitty pilots in the cockpit of a Gates Learjet or a Cessna 182. During the past five years, more than 500,000 copies have been sold.

Computer buffs maintain that managers should be tolerant of employees who want to sneak a small amount of computerized relaxation into their workday. Stewart Alsop, a computer columnist for PC World, argues that game playing can serve as a "decompressant" for people caught up in the corporate rat race. As he puts it, "You get all bollixed up, you play a game, it clears your mind, and you start over again." One executive who agrees is David Winer, president of Living Videotext, a software publisher that does not put out games. "I don't want my employees playing all day," he says, "but I certainly don't object to occasional play. We have coffee breaks, why not have computer-game breaks?"

Knowing that most bosses might take a different view, software companies have equipped many games with a "panic button." When the boss approaches, a player can hit a single key, thereby stopping the game instantly and bringing rows of businesslike figures to the screen. Such a feature is available on every game produced by Les Crane, a popular TV talk host of the '60s turned software publisher who brought out Chessmaster 2000. Says he: "I hate to think we're seriously hampering the productivity of America. But, on the other hand, what the heck!"

With reporting by Linda Williams/New York and David S. Wilson/Los Angeles