And TEN provided player-matching services, letting you hang out in a 'chat lobby,' choose a game to play, and start up almost immediately, instead of searching through web sites, looking for the IP addresses of game servers until you finally found one you liked. On the public Internet, lag times sometimes make games slow and frustrating to play. TEN provided low-latency connections for people who wanted to play games like Quake online that's useful, because in a fast-moving game like Quake, you want your computer to connect to the other players' as quickly as possible. Two problems, actually: Latency, and the difficulty of finding opponents online. TEN was founded in 1996 as a simple technology play: They had, so they said, solved the basic problem of online gaming. It is hard to imagine a more drastic makeover. Its new site no longer boasts black backgrounds and self-consciously hip graphics, but primary colors and a fun, friendly, family-oriented look. On September 1st, TEN became, a fun, friendly, family-oriented service for everyone, featuring such happy games as Hearts and Euchre and online Bingo. And TEN sponsored LAN parties-imagine a warehouse-like space thrumming to a relentless techno beat with noseringed twenty sometimes standing at computers all aroud the space and fragging each othher with abandon, high-power speakers roaring with explosions. TEN was the sponsor of the Professional Gaming League, an organization that runs computer gaming tournament, with the 'finals' at heavily promoted sites with the press invited, a rather bizarre attempt to make a professional sport out of computer games that has made celebrities (at least among gamers) of people like Thresh, winner of the 98 tournament. It was a place where you went to 'frag' people in violent, first-person shooters like Quake and Unreal, to engage in profane banter with other players before and after turning them into 'gibs' (the slang term derives from 'giblets,' which may give you some idea), and to hang out with like-minded gamers. Up until September 1st, the Total Entertainment Network (was the online game service for the hardest of hardcore gamers. This piece was published in October 99 in Wall Street Journal Interactive.

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