In "shoot 'em ups" such as Quake III, meanwhile, they will rapidly negotiate the three-dimensional chambers of a disused spaceship, guns blazing as they dodge the rocket attacks of other players and attempt to "frag" everything in sight.

Britain's top computer gamers were out in force last Sunday for the annual UK Quake Championship at the newly opened games cafe, The Playing Fields in London. Keyboards were battered frantically as individual players patrolled the multiple levels of the game's maze-like fighting arenas, looking for others to hunt down and kill, or 'frag'.

In DOOM, and other PC games from id Software, a player enters a 3-D world. Armed with weapons ranging from a double-barrel shotgun to a rocket launcher, a DOOM player can track and kill other players or cooperate with them to slay monsters and move through levels of play. Kills, or "frags," are depicted in full color and convincing sound.