It`s a (realistic) gamers` paradise

PC vendors today have identified a lucrative new market, and they are bringing all the creative design, manufacturing, integration, implementation and marketing skills to bear on reaching out to the burgeoning gaming sector, and its population of dedicated, yet discerning gamers.

Michael Hann, a business manager at Rectron, says the gamers` time has come - and it`s paradise for the well-heeled among the fraternity for whom a new product appears on the market - as if by magic - almost every day.

Reality is thriving today in many types of media, including the cinema and television in the form of reality TV. It is also proliferating on personal computers (PCs) in the form of games.

In the 1980s Ronald Reagan famously predicted that action videogames were training a new generation of cyber-warriors ready to fight real foes on the real battlefield.

Today, gamers are doing their best to reconstruct real life and play games with as much reality as possible built in to them. Games such as Close Combat, The Sims 2, and Madden NFL typify this trend.

However, unlike realism in the cinema or realism in the movies, realism in a PC game relies, to a very large extent, on the very intimate relationship between the game and the gamer.

Gamers need to make connections between their (gaming) world and the real world from two perspectives: Through their eyes in the form of effective action - and from the outside point of view, in the form of realistic representation.

To address this issue from a marketing perspective, PC vendors - as well as peripheral product suppliers, software developers and a host of other companies - are placing considerable emphasis on realism.

Realism is achieved through the tactile feel of the controls and the lightening fast speed at which the game reacts to inputs. It`s also about the super detailing of the graphics and the colours represented on the screen and the surround sound delivered through state-of-the-art speakers.

It`s achieved through features such as joy pad-activated special moves, double jumps, power-ups, unlockable features and more...

To meet these requirements, gamers need to source hardware and software that is up to the task. One of the key areas of focus is the gaming PC chassis.

Gamers can today purchase chassis with additional internal space into which they can pack a host of gaming-specific components.

For example, new wide-bodied chassis provide accommodation for a number of hard, stiffy and CD-ROM drives as well a range of motherboards, power supplies, CPUs and VGA and network cards - and other ancillaries.

The extra performance capabilities of most gaming PCs - and the high levels of internal energy they generate as a result - place addition pressures on their cooling systems to cope with the rapid heat build up within key components, many of which are vulnerable to overheating and failure.

Many after-market companies are developing sophisticated heat-sink technology as well as advanced water and air-cooling options to satisfy this market`s need for ever-faster PCs.

Another characteristic of this market is a requirement for "flashy" or stylish PCs. Now offerings have striking appearances often highlighted by clear, see-through panels and offset by neon or florescent lighting and other special effects.

The market for aftermarket accessories is growing as vendors take advantage of user demands for innovative, more realistic "gadgets" and specialised performance-enhancing add-ons.

That said, keeping pace with demand is one of the key challenges facing components vendors.

The gamers usually specify one of the latest aluminium cases with transparent side panels and coloured LED lights for effect. To this they will add a powerful motherboard - with a specification that is likely to feature a Intel or AMD Platform, depending on preference, with a 64-bit architecture to handle future, highly complex and skilful gaming applications.

Important considertions of all gaming PC buyers is upgradability and scalability, so a good option is a motherboard equipped with the new PCI Express interconnect bus to accommodate add-on expansion cards required for future upgrades.

An ideal gaming PC will be fitted with a number of aftermarket `mods`, such as an improved power supply system, a powerful sound system, aftermarket multifunction graphics cards, special lighting effects and other innovations.

Gamers are divided into two camps: Those for whom visual effects are important opt for flashing LEDs, interior case lights and eye-catching PC designs, usually with black, silver or aluminium finishes.

On the other hand there are the performance `junkies` who generally choose the very best technology, the fastest processor speeds and the most hard-drive memory capacity money can buy.

For example, dual graphics cards, 8-channel audio, RAID technology and `over-clocking` functions have become de rigueur for this group of serious gamers.

Looking to the future, gamers are eagerly awaiting the next generation of hardware designed to take advantage of highly multi-threaded processing environments with parallel processors, capable of delivering unique features such as "universal collision detection".

These are essential to the new breed of powerful gaming PCs capable of integrating software-driven, real-world physical attributes, motions and effects - as in newer games such as Half-Life 2 - for added impact and realism.

The only difference is that new PC systems will magnify the realism and associated physics as demonstrated in Half-Life 2 by at least a thousand.