When I returned to Ion Storm in November, Daikatana crunch mode had turned vicious. Though the monsters, levels, sound and art were nearing completion, there was a formidable task ahead: burning through the remaining 500 bugs in time for a Christmas 1999 release. To attempt this (unsuccessfully as it turns out), Romero had upped the team's core hours to include weekends; the staff was elbowing for bed space in the lounge.

The death schedule was claiming victims. Mike Breslin, the company's affable vice president, had been stricken with the flu after a whirlwind marketing tour of the country. The virus had been making its way around the office, taking down a few other team members along the way. Most noticeably absent is Stevie "Killcreek" Case, Daikatana's accomplished level designer and only femme fatale. When Case had last come into the office, I'm told, her lips were blue from a kidney infection. A couple of guys down by the pool table suspected it had something to do with her crash diet. "Yeah," one added with an irrepressible grin, "she had to get ready for Playboy."

Case, 23, had been selected to appear in a six-page spread for an upcoming issue of the magazine. She caught Playboy's attention after its staff heard rumors about a bleached blond bombshell who had not only beaten the notorious Romero in an online death match, but got a job working on his hotly anticipated new game.

The legions of young men who populate the online gaming scene, of course, were intimately familiar with Case's story. As young men are wont, they eagerly drew their own conclusions about how this woman -- this chick -- landed herself in gamer's paradise.

"There's an assumption that the only way a woman could get on this team was because of her looks," Case told me during my last visit. "As long as I've been gamer, I felt I had something to prove."

Case grew up in Olathe, Kan., the daughter of a social worker and school teacher. As a competitive tomboy, she took to sports early on, earning the award for freshman athlete of the year at her high school. At the University of Kansas, she became a tomboy of a different sort, battling her guy friends in the online arena of Quake.

Though an A student, Case was already bored with her plans for law school. The more fun she had playing Quake, the quicker her plan faded away. During a trip to Dallas, Case managed to score a death match with Romero (who was known to challenge gamers who visited the office). Case lost, but just barely, and challenged him to a rematch. The next time around, Romero got clocked. As penance, he uploaded a Web shrine in Case's honor. Her last semester, Case played so much Quake, she failed to graduate.

Liberated from the law school path, Case returned to Dallas where she eventually found work as a beta tester at Ion Storm. Gradually, she felt herself shedding the Midwestern girl in denim pants and dirty-blond bob. "This was such a creative environment that I finally felt the freedom to be whomever I wanted to be," she says, "so I decided to reinvent myself." She stopped eating meat, went to the gym, lost 50 pounds, bleached her hair. By the time she had been promoted to a mapper on Daikatana, the new Case -- complete with breast implants, midriffs, leopard pants and a boyfriend, Romero -- was in the house.

Posing in Playboy, she says, is not only another step into self-confidence, it's her way to encourage more women to pursue their dreams, even if those dreams are told in computer games. "When people hear that I'm a gamer, they expect me to be unattractive and overweight," she says, "I'm trying to defy expectations."

It just goes to show, as corny as it sounds, sometimes when you play a game, you don't only win. You find yourself.

Brandishing my silver claw, I hear footsteps

It's a snowy, gray night in Plague Village, an ominous town in the heart of Daikatana's Norwegian episode. As Hiro Miyamoto, I have just jumped effortlessly off a cliff into the outskirts of a seemingly abandoned medieval town. When I look back up, soft layers of winter clouds sift quietly overhead. After the height of this cliff, I feel like I should be dead or, at the very least, limping.

Deep within the ominous strain of minor chords, I hear the icy crunch of footsteps approaching. Taking no chances, I brandish my silver claw in case the ones coming are werewolves. I jog cautiously around a nearby wooden shack that, upon closer inspection, is riddled with arrows. Crouching down, I do my best to hide but it's not working. The footsteps are getting louder. The forces against me are closing in.

For a moment, I'm reminded of the Ion Storm troops who have so adeptly instilled this fear in me -- and how, throughout their lives and careers, so many forces instilled the fear in them. As Daikatana finally nears release this spring (there are hints that the shooter really will hit shelves within weeks), they're more than ready for a little R&R. But, shortly enough, they'll be on to the next title. Crunch mode, after all, is a chance to live inside the game. But before they move on, they'll get the payback for their endless hours -- a chance to experience what mapper Larry Herring describes as "the ultimate rush:" knowing that others will soon inhabit the world they helped create.

It's no wonder my heart is pounding so convincingly. Leaping out from behind the shadows, I stand armed for battle. But, to my surprise, these aren't werewolves poised to end my dream. They're my faithful sidekicks, Superfly and Mikiko. How sublime it seems as the wind howls around us. In this most brutal of worlds, the gamers have given themselves friends.

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