Carlo Sunseri of Mt. Lebanon never could play his favorite sport, lacrosse, on a TV screen until he convinced a video game creator in Scotland to convert a soccer game he'd built for the XBox 360 system.
This week, Sunseri introduced College Lacrosse 2010 as an independent, or "indie," game that other XBox users can download for $5.
To his knowledge, it's the first field lacrosse video game. "It's a pretty big deal in the lacrosse world," said Sunseri, judging from the online feedback he received via Facebook as he discussed plans for the game.
The game is available via the online XBox Live Marketplace.
"Now anyone can dodge hard to the cage, throw crazy stick checks and snipe corners," the game description says, inviting players to build their own rosters, design jerseys and challenge other players worldwide.
Inside Lacrosse magazine Publisher Bob Carpenter said interest in the sport, which traces its roots to a Native American game, has grown quickly in the past decade or so, fueled in part by the Internet.
Major sporting goods companies such as Nike and Reebok make equipment for the game, he said, and a lacrosse-themed movie is in the works.
The Baltimore-based publication keeps in touch with lacrosse fans online. "We own the largest message board in the game with 55,000 registered users, and there's never been more posts on any topic than we've had about a video game," Carpenter said.
Carpenter, who founded the magazine 12 years ago when he played the sport at Duke University, said he considered the idea, but was reluctant to commit millions of dollars to develop the type of game that could be sold on a disk for $40 or so in stores.
"The lacrosse community is not huge, but the people who play it are obsessed with it," said Carpenter, who sold his creation to Conde Nast Publications a year and a half ago.
Sunseri's idea to use the XBox format, which allows people to play each other on the Web, is promising, he said.
Sunseri, whose family owns Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. in the Strip District, played lacrosse from fifth grade through his college years. He was a three-time captain at Robert Morris University, and an assistant coach there for two seasons after he graduated in 2007.
Sunseri said he originally intended to license a code for a soccer game he found that was created by Jonathan "Fritz" Ackerley of Scotland, then have a local company turn it into a lacrosse game. No one was interested, he said, and eventually, Ackerley agreed to have his game switched to lacrosse. Animator Joseph Daniels of Alameda, Calif., worked on the revisions.
The game will feel and play like lacrosse, which combines elements of basketball, soccer and hockey, Sunseri said, although the graphics aren't as slick as those in mass-marketed video games.
XBox creator Microsoft Corp. gets 30 percent of the sales proceeds, and the game developer collects a percentage, said Sunseri said, who is lining up sponsors whose ads appear on boards around the onscreen field.
"Lacrosse has been on TV," Sunseri said, "but the fact that you can sit down and play a game of lacrosse now, it will do wonders in spreading the game."
U.S. Lacrosse, the sport's national governing body, estimates on its Web site that youth participation has grown more than 500 percent in the past decade, to nearly 250,000 players.
Locally, 31 high school boys' teams and 30 girls' teams will play lacrosse next spring, according to the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League Web site. New boys' teams are at Norwin, Seton-LaSalle and Pittsburgh's Taylor Allderdice, and Hempfield just started a girls' team.
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