Game: Jump That Jacksplot!
What's in a game? More than just bragging rights. The latest computer-based amusements let you gamble everything, including your brain

Robin Barkley can't imagine life without mudtrufflage. "Before I discovered the game, my idea of a good time was pestering Microsoft 3.0 with financial transparency lawsuits," confesses the 43-year-old freelance attorney. "Now I spend 50 hours a week mudtruffling with people all over the world." Barkley is one of a growing number of semi-pro truffleheads whose highly trafficked mudholes have gone from obsessive hobby to flourishing livelihood — one that brings in a not insignificant cash flow.

Despite the game's near total incomprehensibility to the nonfan, mudtrufflage has attracted a core of devoted addicts, some of whom have actually succeeded in making the mind-bogglingly complex game pay off. Not that anybody should consider turning to mudtrufflage as a reliable source of income. "The payouts are quite large, but the odds of success are so small, only extremely risk-tolerant individuals are likely to make those vital rare finds," explains industry analyst Warden Wade. "The majority of players will lose money, and that's what sustains the system. Without the mudpuppies [as rookie mudtrufflers are called], the game would cease to be an industry."

There are those who would beg to differ, among them the game's original inventors. Three years ago, a former Lucent coder named Geoffry Priam invented mudtrufflage as a proprietary data-management system. But what started out as a patented business model quickly fell into the public domain under the pressure of grassroots trufflers, who turned its labyrinthine twists and turns, arcane organizational schemes and baroque file hierarchies into a form of amusement. Priam, holder of the original patent, is now locked in costly litigation that prominent trufflers call "self-defeating." However, Priam continues to insist that "private accreditation, with public oversight, is in the best interests of the public and the mudtrufflage community."

Enthusiasts remain unconvinced. "Mudtrufflage isn't about business and it isn't about money," Barkley declares. "It's all about the hunt." Maybe so, but Barkley wouldn't turn up his nose at a big score — he's set his sights on pulling down a countercore jacksplot. Whatever that means.

Another high-risk game on the rise is remsnorkeling — and it can endanger more than just your pocketbook. A couple of years ago, remsnorkeling was such a fringe amusement that it was almost an urban legend: your oddball cousin in Wyoming had an ex-girlfriend in Luxembourg who claimed she'd tried it — once. But with the launch of Ecstatic Liberation (ecstaticlib.com), a website designed to introduce remsnorkeling to Americans en masse, the game went mainstream.

Trevor Weekes, the Irish-born remesmerist who founded Ecstatic Liberation, has been remsnorkeling experimentally for seven years. Weekes' site offers the most thorough index of information available on remsnorkeling. More important, it secures and maintains sufficient bandwidth to eliminate the risk of dissociation — the neural trauma that results when a player loses his or her Net connection in mid-snorkel. While other sites secure usable channels for duets and trios, Weekes' site easily handles chambers. Before the end of January, he plans to host a symphonic remsnorkel.

Critics, including a number of prominent U.S. health and bandwidth officials, warn that remsnorkeling can have unpredictable side-effects. Mary Albridge, an insurance adjuster in San Juan, Puerto Rico, wishes she had known of the dangers in time to discourage her husband. "Dan can still speak, but he can't use verbs anymore. They have just disappeared permanently into his private idiolect." And Albridge is among the lucky. Some remsnorkelers have succumbed to permanent infusion, and there is at least one documented case of a remsnorkeler suffering a severe temporal lobe stroke.

Worst of all, the danger is not limited to those who directly engage in the practice. "The remsnorkeling boom has fast become the No. 1 threat to general bit-fluidity," notes Bandwidth Czar Gina Wiezener. " The amount of data required to keep a direct neural Net connection stable is simply beyond what our present crystal-optic network can handle."

Will the game take off in America? And if it does, who will be liable for the damage to players and the global infrastructure? Judging from the 10-MB legal disclaimer at the Ecstatic Liberation site, Weekes is hoping it won't be him.