Bud Pong involves two teams of players who stand around a table and try to toss ping-pong balls into cups of beer. When one team scores, the other team drinks. "It's awesome," said Chris Shannon, 22, a senior at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "If you win, you win. If you lose, you drink. There's no negative."

Anheuser-Busch claims that the game does not promote excessive drinking because the official rules call for players to drink water, not beer. But Jessica Twilley, a South Carolina bartender, said she has "never seen anyone playing with water."

"It's always beer," Twilley said. "It's just like any other beer pong."

Other similar games include Bombed, a beer-pong game produced by Urban Outfitters, and the first World Series of Beer Pong will be held in January 2006 in Las Vegas.

Busch is promoting Bud Pong through tournaments and by giving game equipment to distributors. "It's catching on like wildfire," said company spokesperson Francine Katz. "We created it as an icebreaker for young adults to meet each other."

But Henry Wechsler, who directs the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said he was "aghast that companies who posture themselves as promoting responsible drinking promote drinking games, which by their nature involve heavy drinking."

"Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water?" he asked. "It's preposterous."

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