PC GAMING
It looks like an ordinary photo booth, but a sign above the curtain reads: STOP PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES, ENTER THEM. So far, four of these Q Cloning Booths have been set up around the country - in San Jose, Dallas, Seattle, and Springfield, New Jersey - all produced by 3Q, an Atlanta gaming company. For $25, three digital cameras inside the booth will snap your picture, transform your image into a 3-D file, and burn it to a CD-ROM. You can then upload your likeness to games based on the Quake III or Half-Life engine.
"It's pretty cool," says Jaime Gonzalez, the manager at Software Etc. in San Jose, where the first booth was installed in November, "except that your head is kind of big, and you walk around in a 3Q T-shirt." The real fun is in multiplayer games:When you frag an opponent that looks like your best friend, it gets personal. Currently, only first-person shooters support 3Q's technology, but the real killer app is likely to be the coming generation of multiplayer role-playing games, such as Shadowbane and the online version of The Sims - both of which will support clones.
There's a catch, though: clonejacking. Every 3Q CD-ROM comes stamped with a warning that your image will be copied onto the hard drive of everyone you play with and could be misused without your knowledge.
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