1/3/2024 0 Comments Dopewars windows 7![]() ![]() (Cook's own company, an Internet start-up, recently went under.) "It's like your company IPOs at five times what you expected it to," he said. He said the game reflected lessons taught in his classes, including market testing, risk management, inventory control and money management and, in the twilight of the dot-com age, it plays to the interest in sudden riches. Matthew Cook said he became obsessed with DopeWars while he was a graduate student at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. For those working in the very bosom of the establishment, the game offers a peek into an imagined underworld. Lee said that the lack of sound and images or graphic blood and gore makes DopeWars less popular among die-hard gamers and more popular among those who prefer simplicity. The dealers and the police are armed, and the game features violence and even killing, albeit in text. "People probably think I'm doing something really important, when I'm actually making drug deals." "The Palm is great," said Willie Torres, a computer animator at Sorceron, a streaming-video company. One advantage of the Palm version is that it can be played in relative secrecy in the office, on a plane or even in a meeting. Days change as the player moves from one borough to another. Prices are sky high." The object is to make as much money as possible, and the game ends if the player is killed or at the end of 30 days. News flashes pop up in boxes to lend helpful hints such as: "The cops just did a big ludes bust. There are adjacent listings showing how much cash the player has, how much the player owes to a loan shark (who must be repaid by the end of the game or the player's legs are broken) and how much room there is in the player's trench coat to transport the drugs to five New York locations. Columns list the amount and types of drugs a player has for sale and the current price. It was just straight text."įor the Palm, DopeWars still is just text, and it remains essentially an accounting game. "I must have seen it five or six times and each time it had a different name," said George Jones, editor of Computer Gaming World magazine. Lee said he wondered about the uproar caused by the game, which he said was far less offensive than many available: "A game like this would probably end up in the kiddie department at CompUSA," he said.ĭopeWars is derived from a 1980s computer game called, variously, Drug Wars, Drug Dealer and Dope Wars. Officials of Palm Computing, which developed the Palm and its operating system, declined to discuss the game. ![]() (removed the game from their available downloads. In September 1999, MIT made Lee take the game off its server, in part because of proscription against commercial software being run on the servers, but there also was some concern over the game's content. "It is sad that an industry with as much talent and creativity as the video game business should choose to profit by stooping to such a level." "Glamorizing violence and lawlessness is a dangerous thing to do," Brownback said. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., has spoken out against the game in Commerce Committee hearings about violence and the media. "But the explosion in recent months is astonishing." "The game came out at a time when there were relatively few good games for the Palm so I expected at least some feedback," Lee said. Matt Lee, the graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wrote the Palm version, estimated that more than 500,000 people had it, which would make it one of the top three Palm games available. (A version for Windows, developed by British programmer Ian Wall in September 1999, has been downloaded almost 2-million times, according to figures at CNET's Web site.) But DopeWars has been on CNET's list of 10 top Palm downloads for 72 weeks. Since DopeWars was released in February 1999, more than 180,000 people have downloaded it (It is impossible to say how many people have the game because other sites have offered it and many users pass games along by beaming them through the Palm's infrared port. The popularity of the game, among the first developed for the Palm, is striking. "You're being bad, although you're not really being bad." "I get to lead a lifestyle I don't normally lead," she said. She admits that she gets strange looks from the other passengers on her bus when she discusses her virtual drug deals with friends. Marlinda McPhail, a former employee of Wheelhouse, a marketing company in San Francisco, estimated that about a third of the people in her former office played the game. Although many people on Wall Street said they like to play the game, few would admit to it in public. ![]()
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