LITTLE ROCK — Over the past 15 years, and the last 10 especially, the Internet has done a very good job of making sure that people who play video games don't actually have to be in the same room to play together.
But Noel Franks, who majored in sociology and even moved out to California to work in the video game industry for a time, wants to remind folks that it doesn't have to be that way.
“I think camaraderie and competition go hand in hand in gaming,” said Franks, 30, the founder of Little Rock Multitap.
What is Multitap? According to the website, it's “an all-ages club dedicated to local multiplayer video gaming on a very large scale — it blends the intimacy of the living room with the energy and magnitude of the arcade.” Meeting on the first and third Saturday of each month at the Arkansas Community Arts Cooperative building at 901 S. Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock, the group brings together folks who like to game with other people — and together, in this case, means in the same room not just the same cyberspace. The competition is friendly, the learning curve low.
The club, designed to accommodate almost 100 players in a session, is the brainchild of Franks, who has not only invested in the hardware to get it going, but has also designed the agenda specifically to include games in which four players all play simultaneously on a broad selection of titles and genres.
“Really one of the trickiest elements was properly picking the games for a balanced social experience,” said Franks, who delved into his own extensive past with games to select the titles. He's lined up a whole year's worth with no repeats, each promising something different.
Though it makes sense when you think about it, what he settled on might surprise some. All his titles are on two systems, the Sega Dreamcast and the original Microsoft Xbox.
Why pick systems that are a generation or more behind, particularly with a pastime where the focus is so routinely placed on the latest and greatest technology? Because, explained Franks, the point was to get games and systems that offer the highest design quality and still support four players. Unsurprisingly, these criteria peaked just as gaming consoles started going online.
“[These systems] were really the end of the local Multitap because it was the dawn of online gaming,” Franks said.
As such, the games in Multitap’s repertoire may not be titles gamers are familiar with — unless, like Franks, you played them years ago in the dorms. They're games like Virtua Tennis 2K2, Bomberman Online, Crash Nitro Kart and NBA Showtime.
That last is basically another iteration of the NBA Jam franchise and was the offering on July 17. Easy to pick up but challenging to master, it's the epitome of the formula Franks said he seeks in his games: simple but deep.
And he's got a point. As someone who has never paid much attention to the real NBA or sports video games in general, I still found myself fist pumping when the last-second threes went in — or heartbroken when they didn't. It's an easy game to get into. And so is Multitap, for that matter. Everyone gets a session on the house. After that, it's $3 a night to play.
The ease of approach is good, said Taylor Webb, 23, a manager at the Game Exchange up the road on Rodney Parham. A participant in that Saturday's Multitap meeting — his second in the two month history of the group — Webb said it could be a tricky act to entice gamers in. Some will only be interested in the modern triad: Halo, Madden or Guitar Hero.
But a lot of old games hold up well, he said, and the beauty of the group is the discovery of those games together with other people who share the same passion.
“The biggest thing for me is the chance to hang out with other people who love games,” he said.