RTime Inc. and Zombie VR Studios are hoping the U.S. Army Rangers will storm the online gaming world.

That because Zombie's military combat game, Spec Ops: U.S. Army Rangers, was turned into a multiplayer online version with technology from RTime in less than half the time it usually takes to accomplish such a transformation.

If other developers are impressed by that speed - and the speed with which the game can actually be played across computer networks - the success of Spec Ops could put both Seattle companies on the map.

RTime executives are hoping for an even bigger boost late next month with the release of a multiplayer version of Acclaim's smash hit game Turok 2.

"A lot depends upon the success of these titles," said Chip Overstreet, chief executive officer of RTime. "I'm bullish that these will raise the bar on multiplayer gaming."

One analyst is skeptical, however. "It's going to be a hard sell," said Seema Williams, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. "Most game developers tend to build their own (multiplayer technology), and vendors have never been well accepted by the game developers."

In addition, she said, many of the game centers that host multiplayer games, such as MPath's Mplayer and Total Entertainment Network or TEN, are building platforms that developers can easily add multiplayer and chat capabilities. Turok 2 will help showcase RTime's technology, but it probably won't give enough of a coattail for RTime to ride to great revenues, Williams added.

That will make RTime's strategy tough to execute as the company hopes to generate its first revenues from licensing the technology. Originally, the start-up also hoped to generate sales from transaction fees generated from game companies that charged players to play the games.

But that model quickly changed to a pure licensing strategy last year, Overstreet said. Licensing fees start at $25,000 and depend upon the number of games sold.

"We spent last year holding firm that the pay-to-play model would gain traction, and that hasn't happened," he said. "We were going to charge for usage based on hours that someone was online playing, and that model was predicated on someone pulling out their wallet making hourly payments as well."

Instead, major gaming networks including Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Gaming Zone decided to drop their subscription fees, open the doors for free and make money by attracting advertising.

Overstreet planned to market his technology as a way for small developers to host their own games and charge whatever fees they wanted, a move that would give developers more control and potentially more revenues. But he's shying away from that marketing message, although RTime's technology does give game makers that ability.

Now Overstreet envisions game makers taking their games to the major sites to gain more potential players, a move that drives up retail sales of the games.

For small, young companies such as Zombie, boosting sales could be the difference in making or breaking a game company, as the industry is brutally competitive. Zombie's first two games, Fire & Ice and Locus. weren't big commercial successes despite rave technical reviews and industry praise for the company's use of 3D virtual reality and cool graphics

In order to play Spec Ops, a customer has to buy a copy of the game. The player then hooks into a server with an Internet address given in the game. An Internet service provider, Zombie or one of the popular online gaming networks could run that server.

Once logged on to the server, a player can easily see who else might be logged on and looking to compete. If several players want to form a team, special features allow them to communicate or chat without opponents hearing their strategy.

At any one time, from 25 to 1,000 players can play Spec Ops, a realistic game where players become members of a team of Army commandos who are sent on various missions.

"Having RTime here locally was a real advantage," said Mark Long, co-founder of Zombie. "This probably would have taken us a year to build and it wouldn't have been as robust as RTime's multiplayer engine."

A small game maker like Zombie doesn't have that luxury. The Seattle game maker had engineering sales of between $4 million and $5 million last year on three projects, said Joanna Alexander, Zombie's co-founder.

Zombie's team of about 15 or so traveled to Yakima and Fort Lewis to film U.S. Army Rangers in action. The company hired Ron Haskins, owner of Factor Defense Services of Seattle and an ex-Special Forces expert, to help create the single-player version of Spec Ops. The idea for the game can be credited to Long, who was formerly a Ranger.

The 3-D game was released in April and has been successful, retail sales figures indicate. The game spawned at least three copycat games, and a new niche in the military game category, said Long. Most military games on the software shelves are either flight simulation games or tank games. Zombie's Spec Ops is published by Take 2 Interactive, which distributes the game to major retail outlets.

Zombie, which is known for its virtual reality development, also created a recently released tank game called Spearhead, as well as a major attraction called Cyberspace Mountain for the Disney Co.'s new DisneyQuest park in Orlando, Fla.

The company had a contract for a third game, tentatively called Vox Apocalypse, with BMG Interactive and had started development on that game. But midway through development, BMG folded.

This year. Long and Alexander limited their projects to three games, and they project sales to come in at about $3 million.

"We'd like to be more involved with the Internet, but we've developed a game niche where we think we can do well," Alexander said.