Eugene gamers plug in to the future.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

Imagine the daily pressures on your average 11-year-old: Middle school, homework, maybe a big brother or sister to contend with.

Dylan Gnojek needs release, and he finds it in video games: He spends four or five hours each weekend blasting away at computer-generated freaks and other creatures. He'd probably play more if his mother let him.

"It releases pressure," said Gnojek, of Eugene. "If you're really mad at something, you can release the pressure on it. Sometimes, when me and my brother are mad at each other, it kind of releases the pressure when we start playing. Then we're starting to have fun together."

Video game as therapy: That's just one reason for the love affair between Eugene gamers and a surging entertainment medium with potential as boundless as the computer-animated stories themselves.

If you're of a mind that theatrical films are still the No. 1 way that Americans spend their entertainment dollars, consider: Sales of video-game consoles, joysticks and games topped $10 billion last year, outpacing trips to the movie theater, which claimed $9.2 billion.

The latter number, in fact, represented the first drop in box-office revenues in 12 years. The video-game boom, meanwhile, shows no immediate signs of bust: Sales of games and accessories each are up 6 percent over last year at this time, according to the NPD Group, a New York-based market research firm.

Eugene gamers say video games have moved out of the cluttered bedrooms of computer geeks and into the mainstream, thanks to ever-improving technology that puts you in the game - or teams you up with others playing across the country or around the world.

Rylie Carlberg, a 28-year-old preschool teacher from the Elmira area, spends about $400 annually on video games - about four times what he spends on movies.

With "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" - a role-playing game with a plot predating the original `Star Wars' movies - he can portray a Jedi-in-training and follow a story line that takes up to two months to complete.

"Movies aren't really that interesting anymore," Carlberg said. "And in a video game, you get to play the role."

As video-game companies strive to reproduce cinema-quality effects such as realistic voiceovers and driving music, their design budgets can rival that of a Hollywood film.

It makes a difference for Evan Fort, a 19-year-old student, whose favorite game is "Metal Gear Solid," about a loner, ex-military supersoldier.

"Movies are great, but with video games you actually get to control the person," Fort said. "You get to do the stuff that the guy in the movie would do. And not only that, games are 10 times longer than movies. That has a big pull."

The industry also appeals to older, adult gamers by making games with older, adult-level content, said Justin Field, 28, owner of Big City Gamin,' a video-game retail and rental shop in downtown Eugene.

Field's customers - mostly male - range broadly in age, from 8 years old to guys in their 50s who tee off with "Tiger Woods PGA Tour."

For more than two years now, Field has drawn a consistent, middle- and high-school-age crowd of 15 to 20 to his Thursday-night "community gaming" event, where players compete in the shoot-'em-up game, "Halo."

Multiplayer games such as "Halo" and more adult-themed games such as "Grand Theft Auto" - about a gangster moving up in the mafia - show how the industry has matured from the innocent days of "Donkey Kong," Field said.

"It's just basic business," he said. "You want to fill the niche of your market. We've always had kid gamers, but the growth is coming with the older crowd. I like a throwback (game) once in a while, but it is nice to have games with real content, that feel like real life. That's what the game makers are making - they're really trying to focus on the older crowd, guys in their 20s and 30s."

One aspect of today's games that appeals to 27-year-old Ilyas Ansari of Santa Clara is the interactive nature. When he puts on the video-game pads to play "Madden 2005," he can huddle up with players at consoles anywhere in the country, all connected online in real time.

"It's kind of confusing - you might have one person who's operating the quarterback and another for the wide receiver or halfback," Ansari said. "You're on the same team and it requires a lot of coordination and a lot of communication."

That challenge brings Ansari back for more. Likewise, as Ansari and others hook up online and the popularity of video games soars, Field said the rap on games as the province of nerds will be as outdated as `Pong.'

"It's always been an outcast community, but now, with the growth of gaming and with the community and the Internet, you have everybody from Le- Bron James to Carmen Elektra playing games," Field said. "It's not geeky at all, anymore. Gaming is becoming definitely mainstream."

Matt Cooper can be reached at 338-2317 or mcooper@ guardnet.com.

CAPTION(S):

Damon Gnojek, 13, Kahlil Niemeyer, 15, Enoch Lothamer, 19, Jordan Nettles, 15, play `Halo' at Big City Gaming.