Multi-Player Online Games Drive Start-Up.

YOU'VE heard of the console wars. Get ready for the server wars. As the online gaming industry slowly picks up steam, Sony Corp., Electronic Arts and Microsoft Corp. will have a lead as providers of servers and games that pave the way for what the industry calls massively multi-player gaming.

But those giants should make way for the latest entrant: Calabasas-based Rebel Arts.

The five-man start-up announced last week its intention to provide a high-tech software platform for multi-player online gaming.

No one in Los Angeles is saying "massively multi-player gaming" as much as the company's chief executive and co-founder Paul Villadolid. The former senior vice president of Walt Disney Television hooked up with Larry Hess, a widely respected software engineer, formerly with special effects house Digital Domain.

Their technology, dubbed Versatile Accelerated Server Technology (VAST), is designed to handle more than 100,000 simultaneous users and more than 2 million transactions per second. The founders want it to become the standard server platform for multi-player online gaming.

To pull it off, Rebel Arts teamed up with AMD and Linux NetworX to develop VAST. Linux NetworX is a networking company specializing in linking multiple computers on the Linux operating system to provide the capacity of a much larger supercomputer. AMD makes integrated circuits for the personal and networked computer.

Until now, the cost of building out and maintaining the server necessary to support a massively multi-player game has been a huge stumbling block for most game publishers, according to Villadolid.

Costly or not, online gaming is gaining momentum. With the ongoing revenue stream that their subscription models generate, online games are a potential gold mine. Sony's "Everquest," Electronic Arts' "Ultima" and Microsoft's "Asheron's Call" together have more than 1 million subscribers. That number could spike when new consoles with Internet access hit shelves this fall.

"To date, nobody is approaching the server platform the way we are," Villadolid said. "They're trapped in very expensive and inefficient platforms."

Rebel Arts is betting that movie studios will take an interest in VAST. "With movie studios all looking to develop strategies to converge their content with interactive content on the Internet, massively multi-player games will very likely be the answers to the studios' prayers," Villadolid said. "These subscription-based games have the potential to sign up millions of subscribers for games based on popular film titles."

Of course, to wage a server war, the Rebel Arts team needs capital, and the company is seeking a modest first round of $3 million."