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	1c Players of Sphere create alter egos and form alliances to fight with rival clans.

Digital Armies

With 15,000 computer warriors signing up in just three months, a massive Russian role-playing game, Sphere, spells big digital business.

By Alexander Osipovich

At first glance, Alexander Fomin, a 27-year-old system administrator from Novosibirsk, leads a fairly mundane existence. But in fact, for the past three months, Fomin has been slaying monsters, storming castles and exploring a vast continent in a parallel universe slowly headed for annihilation.

Fomin is one of 15,000 players in an online computer game called Sphere, which was launched in November by a partnership of three Russian companies: the software publisher 1C, the game developer Nikita and the web portal Yandex. To people in the game industry, Sphere is known as a MMORPG -- a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. The MMORPG genre has existed in the West for several years (the most popular example, EverQuest, has close to 450,000 players worldwide), but Sphere is the first MMORPG developed in Russia and catering specifically to Russian players.

Like many other MMORPGs, Sphere is based on an alternate reality with a complex history and mythology. But unlike the Tolkienesque world of EverQuest, Sphere's history is intertwined with our own. Legend has it that Sphere came into being in 1348, when a French monk invoked an ancient Sanskrit mantra for the creation of parallel universes. But everything went horribly wrong when the monk got burned alive for heresy just as he was completing the ritual. The world he created was taken over by hellish monsters bent on destroying it and then moving on to our own unsuspecting Earth. Luckily, there is a still a way to stave off our impending destruction -- by becoming players and paying $5 a month to battle medieval monsters in the troubled world of Sphere.

Online games such as EverQuest and Sphere are fundamentally different from traditional video games. Instead of punching buttons to defeat a computer-generated enemy, players in a MMORPG have a more complex set of objectives -- to develop alter egos and form alliances with other players. In Sphere, the social aspect of the game is critical, because players cannot accomplish much individually. But by banding together with other players in "clans," they can take over castles or feud with rival clans. Joining a clan also has some social advantages. A few lucky couples have even had virtual weddings.

Personal satisfaction aside, Sphere represents a breakthrough for the Russian game industry. As a technical achievement, it is on a par with Western MMORPGs such as EverQuest or Ultima Online. Reviewers have praised the game's three-dimensional graphics, which pop up quickly even on dial-up connections. According to 1C sales director Nikolai Baryshnikov, getting the game to work on slow Internet speeds was a challenging task.

"From the beginning, we faced a big technical problem -- how to make a game that would work well over our absolutely abominable phone lines," he said in a recent interview.

The other main problem was economic. Since few Russians have credit cards, 1C developed another scheme for online payment, partnering up with Yandex to use Yandex-Dengi, a ruble-based payment service similar to the dollar-based service PayPal. Players interested in a low-tech alternative can also re-subscribe by buying a fresh Sphere CD for about $6 every month. A monthly subscription to Sphere costs about half as much as EverQuest's, opening the door to cash-strapped Russian gamers.

So far, the response to Sphere has been strong, with 15,000 players signing up in the first three months. Baryshnikov hopes to expand Sphere beyond Russia's borders by setting up Sphere spin-offs in other languages.

If 1C and game developer Nikita play their cards right, Sphere could become big business. Worldwide, MMORPGs form only a small part of the computer game market, but they are renowned for the loyalty of their players, which notoriously borders on addiction. EverQuest fans refer to their game as "EverCrack" because of its addictive pull. Some players will play 20 or 30 hours a week, and the game has also been associated with depression and suicide.

Just three months into its existence, Sphere already has its devotees. Some players have offered real money for fantasy items that increase their characters' power. In a recent forum posting, one player put up $100 for a rare magical robe to help his character fight, and, according to 1C game developer Dmitry Laskov, another player offered $350 to buy an actual character. With such a character -- in this case, a powerful wizard -- a player could soar up the social hierarchy of Sphere, perhaps even becoming a clan leader.

Over a hundred clans, with dozens of members each, now operate in the Sphere universe. Some clans even have their own web sites, designed to attract new members and promote the clan's ideology. On the web site for Mad Dogs, a self-proclaimed "dark clan," the leaders VIPer and Tezarius invite other players to support their evil agenda.

Meanwhile, the Defenders of Light call on players to battle the forces of darkness, which include a few elements from a more familiar world. In particular, the Defenders hope to defeat the United States of America -- "a beachhead," they say, "for the invasion of the Devil."