Rockville firm scores with Gretzky game

In the world of hockey, L.A. Kings' Wayne Gretzky is No. 1; in the world of computer game software, Bethesda Softworks' Wayne Gretzky Hockey is No. 1.

The PC-based sports simulation game first introduced in 1988 by Bethesda Softworks -- actually based in Rockville -- was picked by its peers as the best new sports program in the country. Last year, the firm introduced Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2, an upgrade so sufficiently new that it's been nominated again by members of the Software Publishers Association as the best new sports program of 1990.

The game has achieved wide recognition in the hockey arena too. Several players and coaches have enthusiastically endorsed it. "The simulation provided by your game is so realistic, I can see it changing the way coaches view the game," wrote Doug Carpenter, who has coached the New Jersey Devils, Halifax Citadels and Toronto Maple Leafs, to Christopher Weaver, president of Bethesda Softworks. "For myself, your categories of player skills and how each affects game play has added an important dimension to how I evaluate my own players."

Carpenter has been a regular visitor, guest, consultant, game player at Bethesda Softworks during the entire development of the game -- now totaling about 11-man-years of developments time. He was one of many hockery professionals consulted in the programming of the game.

Area players of the computer game may also have a sense of deja vu about the simulation. The whole aura of the game is based around the Washington Capitals. The way players on the screen move simulates the actual movement of Capital hockey stars like defenseman Marty McSorley who were scouted by Bethesda Softworks programmers. Their movements, positioning, on-ice decision-making were simulated through artificial intelligence programming into the little characters on screen. Players of the game can choose from a wide selection of professional hockey players -- including The Great One as Gretzky is known as -- all ranked in 11 different skills categories. At any given second during the computer game, the program is making 739,000 calculations about their movements. There are no canned sequences in the game, every game and series is completely new.

Furthermore, the arena looks like the Cap Centre; the Zamboni that scrapes the ice between periods follows the same route as that of the Cap Centre's Zamboni driver, and the game even has an instant replay capability like the arena.

Britt Hume, ABC White House correspondent and a syndicated software reviewer picked up by the Washington Post, wrote "it may well be the best computer sports simulation ever made."

All of this is high praise for Weaver's small but rapidly growing firm; even more so for Weaver whose interests include flying, kite flying and composing music but not sports.

"We knew nothing about hockey when we started," Weaver said of the start-up of Bethesda Softworks five years ago. "I was trained in physics. But that turned out to be good, because hockey is motion and I knew a lot about motion."

He defines hockey as "a complicated choreography of fluid motion," -- a definition a long way from the rough and tumble brawls that television stations show as news bites in their sports broadcasts.

But it's the game's inherent engineering in the movement of the players that has made Wayne Gretzky Hockey a best seller.

"It takes the real rules of hockey and applies them to the game. It tries to glorify the game play of hockey," said Ray Daly, president of DisKcovery, a software retailer in Seven Corners and Fair Oaks Mall. "I play it myself and I'm a season-ticket holder of the Caps."

The Seven Corners store is selling Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2 at the rate of about four a month, Daly said. The average number for a sports simulation game is one or two a month. It was Diskcovery's best-seller during the holiday season.

Bethesda Softworks develops, manufacturers, designs packages, assembles and distributes its own products and currently is placed in about 8,800 stores throughout Canada and the United States.

Weaver, the gameplayer, still dances enthusiastically around his opponents after his man has slapped in a shot on an opposing goalie. Weaver, the entrepreneur though, rigidly defends his net better than many a goalie. He's reluctant to surrender much information about his firm's sales or financial agreement with Gretzky in part due to competition from his larger competitors.

"I don't have the wherewithal to outspend largest competitors, so I outdance them," he says.

What he will say about the business is that in each of its five years, the company has more than doubled sales and expects to again this year. Five years ago, Bethesda Softworks sold less than 10,000 games, last year it sold games totalling in six figures.

Should the final tally of members of the Software Publishers Associations pick Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2 as the best new sports game of last year, Weaver estimates sales could go up another percent.

Daly of Diskcovery says the kudos "make a difference. It doesn't make the sale but it has the impact of keeping it above the rest of the crowd."

Wayne Gretzky Hockey is not the firm's only product nor its first, it has just been its star. The evolution of sports simulation games started with Gridiron, a football simulation game that is still the most popular game among Bethesda Softwork's 48 employees.

The next game will likely be based on college basketball, as the firm is in the final stages of negotiating with her National Collegiate Athletic Association for licensing rights.

And Besthesda Softworks has picked licensing rights outside of the sports world as well. It has the electronic games right in and is developing games for the movie The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger and last year's box office star Home Alone as well as the best selling children's book The Great Waldo Search.