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September 10, 1999 (9:34 AM EDT)

By Mo Krochmal,

Frances Roberts traveled from Fairbanks, Alaska, to New York this week just so she could "frag" the virtual opponents she sees on her computer monitor.

Roberts and seven other women were in New York on Thursday to compete in a tournament of Quake Arena 3, a computer game where successful practitioners of tactics such as rocket-jumping and fragging could win a championship.

Roberts, a 21-year-old who makes a living as a cake decorator, said she doesn't pay attention to the violent nature of the game -- it's just a way to pass time in the Alaskan winter. She said she plays networked computer games three to six hours daily.

"You do a lot inside when it's minus-60 degrees outside," said Roberts, who is here to compete in an all-female Quake championship tournament that is part of a three-day tournament for professional computer game players, the Cyberathlete League East Coast Quake 3 Championship.

Quake is a 3-D computer game where players use virtual weapons to fight other players in a digital environment. Players can log onto networks and do battle with others who might be in the next cubicle or thousands of miles away, connected via the Internet.

For the next three days, tournament organizer Angel Muoz said he expects 800 to 1,000 fans to pay $35 to enter the Puck building in downtown New York City to observe the professional gamers battle -- either standing behind the players' computer screens or watching via a big-screen closed-circuit television.

"It's unbelievable, the crowd goes nuts," said Muoz, who owns the largest minority stake in Irving, Texas-based NewWorld.com, a company that organizes the contest, which is making its first New York appearance. The players in the tournament belong to the Cyberathlete Professional League, a group that Muoz started in 1997. At this tournament, the winner gets $10,000 of a $25,000 purse.

To provide a laboratory-like environment for the pros, 12 full-time employees and 10 temporary employees have built a high-speed network throughout the building. In one room, orange cable networks 32 identical Gateway Pentium III machines with 600-MHz chips running Windows 98.

"Every machine is like an enterprise server," said Tim Schuh, the network engineer. "Is it reliable? There is a lot of pressure to make sure the players have nothing to complain about. And, we have to do it in record time -- setting up in eight hours."

The network extends past the pro setup to include a free-for-all room, open all-day and night, where amateurs can bring their own machines and hook up to the network to play on their own. The experience is just like what they have in the office -- playing over a fat corporate network -- just without having to worry about their supervisors pulling the plug on the game.

It's a more social experience than playing alone, Muoz said.

"There is nothing more exciting than seeing your opponent," he said. "People get excited about meeting people; this is about social interaction."