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Games Entertainment

PC Baangs In America 232

Posted by michael from the bang-bang dept.
VonGuard writes "Ahoy hoy! I've written a new article for the East Bay Express about the rise of the PC Baang in the Northern California Bay Area. While in Korea, Starcraft is still the most popular Baang game, here in the US, Counter-Strike reigns supreme. Are these to be the malt shops and arcades of our time?"
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PC Baangs In America More

PC Baangs In America

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  • Violence in Video Games (Score:5, Informative)

    by HBPiper ( 472715 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:42AM (#5142522)
    Saw on the news yesterday that one of the Dem's from CA is proposing that cyber cafe's be fined if minors are found to be playing violent video games. More to follow.
    • Aside from the fact that that idea is stupid, I think it would kill many cybercafes before they even get started. If your state makes a law that keeps a large percentage of your customers from being customers, how do you survive?
      • I agree the idea is stupid. Here is the bill. [gamers.com]

        • Re:Violence in Video Games (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:33AM (#5142815) Homepage
          That's California for you. Parenting by legislation. I mean, my god we can't expect the parents to actually PARENT now, can we?
          • The problem isn't always one's own kids. As far as an army of soccer moms is concerned, the problem is someone *else's* kid, and the law is meant to keep *him* from becoming a psychopath that guns down her own peace-loving, well-trained child.
            • I'm even less inclined to accept legislation that's intended to make the ignorant (soccer moms) feel better than I am legislation intended to allow parents to be lazy.

              Legislation like this that achieves both in one fell swoop is something California has perfected, and unfortunately tends to infect the rest of the nation with.

              Now legislation that would strip soccer moms of their license for endangering others by yaking on their cell phones and doing other things in their mini-vans and SUVs that interfere with their driving and endanger others... THAT I could support.

              Watched an idiotic soccer mom hang her SUV off an overpass because she wasn't paying attention while she was talking, scared herself by getting too close to the vehicle in front of her, and lost control of her vehicle. Luckily she didn't kill anyone (like me). Hopefully she's never allowed to drive anything bigger than a unicycle again.
              • California is far less censorious a place than much of the rest of the country. You should see the court battle now going on regarding medical marijuana - the Feds are trying to shut it down, the state is trying to protect it. The difference between California and middle America is than in Cal, when the soccer moms try to pull something like this, the ACLU is all over them like ants to a picnic. In the Bible Belt, these laws get passed without review all the time.
      • if minors are caught in 'R' rated movies?

        This is different how?
  • I found some of these in the Philippines back in March of 2000 in Manila. They had gaming cafes setup to play several 3-D games on a LAN. In addition they had standalone machines for surfing the internet. Nothing new.

    • You're missing the point (Score:2, Informative)

      by ryman ( 518071 )
      The article was highlighting the growth of PC Baangs in California in the United States of America. Everyone knows they've been extremely popular in Asia for quite some time.
    • I have to agree. I lived in the PHilippines since I was 4, and I remember Virra Mall like nothing else. Ever since Famicom with it's 3000 games in 1, and the SNES, and on and on, until about 2000 when PCs started taking over. By my senior year in high school, I was playing CS at a internet cafe, back in the day...*sigh* I'm getting old
  • I loooove Counter-Strike. I've been playing it for years.
    The thing I don't get is....why do I still suck? I mean I really suck. I'm most always the first one dead. I have a 2 ghz and a cable modem, so I can't blame the machine any more. ;(
    Guess I just go running in guns blazing cuz it's so damn fun.

    • Re:CStrike Rulez (Score:5, Informative)

      by Psmylie ( 169236 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:55AM (#5142601) Homepage
      ....why do I still suck?
      Relax. It's not you. Everyone else has a speed hack, wallhack or aim bot, and the top people usually have all three.

      • Re:CStrike Rulez (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Quill_28 ( 553921 )
        I struggle with this statement. I don't cheat and never have in cs. I am considered a good player but have played against players who were much better than I.

        I hate saying I am doing bad because someone is cheating, but sometimes it really seems like they are cheating.

        I have also been accused of cheating, and most times they don't believe me. Frustrating both ways.

        I don't play alot, and always from home(married with children), but if I was younger LAN parties would be great, at least so there would be no cheaters!
      • Why is the parent of this modded up as informative? The really good players don't use cheats (see CPL- some of the best players in the world come to play and obviously without cheats). Valve Software recently implemented into Counter-Strike which has cut down cheating considerably, it stops programs from hooking it, they can auto update the cheat protection (like PunkBuster, but much more reliable), and they also have a wallhack block in place that actually stops people successively running a wallhack (and if it's popular enough, the cheat will be sent to valve by someone and killed) from seeing enemies behind walls even with the wallhack turned on by not sending them the player data.

        The parent's post is a typical mentality among many people who don't know what they're talking about in regards to Half-Life. Some of these people even justify cheating because "everyone else is doing it" regardless of if it is true or not.
        • Actually, I was joking. I forgot to use my /sarcasm switch :)

          What's funny is that I was modded up as informative, and not a single mod for "funny"

  • Orthography (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:44AM (#5142535) Homepage

    Does anyone know why the korean word is being transliterated 'baang' with two 'A's? I don't remember it being anything other than a regular A sound in Korean.

    • Re:Orthography (Score:5, Funny)

      by fr2asbury ( 462941 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:48AM (#5142562)
      I think "PC Bang" might be a registered trademark of the Pr0n industry.

      Jonathan

    • Re:Orthography (Score:5, Informative)

      by dochood ( 614876 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:51AM (#5142578)
      Yes.

      It is being transliterated that way, or else Americans would pronounce it "Bang" as in "Bang, Bang, you're dead."

      The a makes the sound of a in "father".

      Almost like "bong" (like the pipe), but with a longer, drawn out sound.

      It's not the standard way to transliterate, but Americans get most of the standard tranliteration sounds wrong (unless they are familiar with the system and the Korean alphabet, Hangul.)

      dochood
      Former USAF Korean Linguist
      Husband of Korean Woman
      Watcher of Korean Sit-coms and Soap Operas
    • "Does anyone know why the korean word is being transliterated 'baang' with two 'A's? I don't remember it being anything other than a regular A sound in Korean."

      While I don't know any korean (ok, a few characters and a few swear words) the two places near me (central MD, rt. 40) name themselves PC-Game in white letters on a green background, as well as the accompanying korean text. One of them does have "bang" and not "baang" on their store awning. (One of them inhabits the place that a christian bookstore once occupied, but the bookstore moved a few plots away, in the same shopping area.)

      One thing that I found interesting was that both the stores sell manga and other books. I'm a little curious as to whether this is market-driven or ordinance-driven, as I remember a porn store (conveniently located on the opposite side of the street from above-mentioned christian bookstore) that started stocking a whole huge amount of old used books, in order to comply (or skirt) an ordinance about its products and the nearby housing developments (being within 1 mile of them or something). Erm... I only went into the porn store because the paper said they were closing... Yeah... That's plausible... Besides, it is easier to buy things online! Doh! Did I say that out loud?
      • I'm in Catonsville often...where on Rt. 40 are these places at? Wouldnt mind taking a look for curiousity's sake.
        • One is in the Normandy Shopping Center, near the Ledo's Pizza (formerly Giovanni's, I think). The Adult Video store is on the other side of 40 (the north-going side), Normandy Shopping Center, and the 2nd baang is up the road (closer to Baltimore) from it next to the Papa John's pizza. Look for white text on a green background in english ("PC-Game") and korean. One of them used to be next to the Burger King that is farther down rt. 40, away from Baltimore, but that whole building is getting emptied. There was the baang, and an auto glass shop, and a hair salon, and a golf shop, etc. Well, whatever. I hope those are OK directions.

          I went once when they just opened, and it was $2/hr to start, but they said it would be $3/hr for the 1st hour after that. The rates go down the longer you stay. Hopefully no one will die from fatigue while there. Then again, that might be the only way to actually win a game with some of the people there. :-)

  • Starcraft still R0x0rs! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gerf ( 532474 )

    *craft takes strategy, which is probably why c-strikers don't play as much. yes, i played c-strike, beta 3 - v1.1, and i must say that i now like to play starcraft broodwars a LOT more than cs.

    of course, i also wonder if those koreans have hella old machines that won't play cs, but will play starcraft. you know, that whole i-want-to-eat-so-i'll-delay-upgrading-my-computer deal. (i'm late for class, so, no, i didn't read the article.)

    • They are up to snuff in Asia. Most everyone I met in Philippines was running Win 95/98 on Pentium II's. This was 2 years ago. And Korea standard of living is much higher than the Philippines. Once again, the US view of the world is skewed. If anything, more is available in Asia and Asia is plugged in. When I was in Tawain, there were street vendors selling hardware and software!!! In addition to huge indoor markets selling everything from digital cameras to power supplys. This was back in 1999.
      • Not to nit pick your view (which I appreciate hearing) but I've heard that many of those street vendors are selling "perfect forgeries" of real software cheap. Meaning that it has been pirated and pirated so well that you can't tell. The software works, sure, but its been manufactured illegally. (Like fake the Rolex you might buy on the streets of any major city in America)

  • spam relays (Score:4, Funny)

    by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:45AM (#5142542) Homepage Journal
    So *that's* where all of those open mail relays are at - they're installed on game servers in baangs...

  • Virtual Cyber Cafe (Score:5, Funny)

    by patch-rustem ( 641321 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:46AM (#5142548) Homepage Journal
    Image if they could simulate that thrill of actually sitting next to the person you're killing. That would be a real killer app.

  • Baang? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:51AM (#5142584) Homepage Journal
    Why not just write "internet cafe" or "net cafe" instead of Baang, which nobody know what mean? later on you could tell us that they are call Baangs in korea.

    Why is it that people seem to go out of the way to make /. headlines either stupid or impossible to understand?

    Anyway, I've been playing C/S on net cafe for a couple of years here in Denmark (bi-weekly).

    Lately a lot of people has shifted towards Battle Field 1942 though.... could be the next big thing..
    • Why is this modded offtopic? The guy just said what everyone else was thinking: "Oh, you mean a net cafe! Why didn't you just say so?"

      The article leads off with "...Korean-style cybercafes..." which might make you think that a "PC-baang" is different from a net cafe. But they're not. I've spent years in Korea and the cyber/net cafes there are the same as everywhere else in the world. Crowded, not crowded, cheap, expensive, smoking, not smoking, waitress, no waitress, eating allowed, not allowed...

      Whatever.

    • Because a "NNN cafe" has drinks (coffee being the standard), and usually a small quantity of food as well as some NNN. A "NNN Baang" is nothing but a room full of NNN.

  • Not as long as people have their own... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember a place like this just off campus, when I was in school. They basically had a LAN, with VR headsets hanging over the chairs. We went in a played Quake and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter for an hour once. Since we were all accustomed to the setups on our own PCs, we all played horribly and decided that the whole idea sucked. I think as long as people have their own game rigs, they won't spend time in these places.

    It's the same reason that there's so many "cyber-cafes" in places like NYC. Living space is small with less room for desktops, so people go to a coffee house to use one.
    • I haven't really seen too many "cyber-cafes" in NYC. In reality, I've only found three: two in the Village and one in Chinatown. Compared to Asian countries it isn't really a large number to be found in one city. I'm sure there are more, but they aren't really advertising themselves very well. Appropriately enough, in relationship to this article, the place in Chinatown is almost always filled to capacity while the other plays usually have a good amount of empty seats.
      • Dude, you need to step offf the island more often. Here in Sunnyside there are something like 3 straight-up Baangs within 2 blocks of my apartement alone filled with Korean teenagers donning Eminem parephanalia any time I walk by them...

  • Playing D and D in high school (Score:3, Interesting)

    by joelwest ( 38708 ) <joel&joelwest,com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:55AM (#5142603) Homepage
    I find this reminiscent of when I was a kid playing D and D for hours and hours and hours in high school. Seems like ages ago -- okay it WAS ages ago. But for me at least, that was the time that I found that there were geeks like me in the world. Good memories!
    • I've got to second that one.

      Countless after school hours were dedicated to D&D. My teachers & parents could not understand the amount of time we spent playing.

      BTW - finally got a copy of Neverwinter Knights for xmas. Still haven't open it, because I know when I do, the hours will simply melt away on me.

  • We are behind the rest of the world on this one (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:57AM (#5142610) Journal
    The US is behind the rest of the world when it comes to businesses making money off the LAN Party concept. They've been doing it in Japan, Korea, the Phillipenes, etc, for quite a while now. You'll find a few in the US that do alright. Mainly in large cities like New York. Still, it is nothing like the number of them in other countries.

    I was thinking of starting one around my area, but the upfront investment is more than I can afford at the moment. I need to wait for better locations to open up anyways. You need to find someplace fairly large (but not too large), with really low rent.

    Location is key, at least with my idea it is. I didn't read the article (typical Slashdot :), so I don't know if they let you take your own PCs in, but I would. Because of this, you need to be in a nice enough location that people don't mind too much about tearing down their own PCs to set them up on the LAN. I would, of course, also rent PCs out to people that don't want to use their own.

    The potential for theft shouldn't be too much of a problem. Just make sure the business PCs are clearly marked, and take a collateral upon renting that you give back when they return it. Drivers licenses would probably be good. Wouldn't hurt to require a social security card or credit card upon first rental either. *shrug*

    Well, someday I'll start it up. Maybe in another couple years.

    • Re:We are behind the rest of the world on this one (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Megane ( 129182 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:03AM (#5142651)
      Just make sure the business PCs are clearly marked, and take a collateral upon renting that you give back when they return it.

      I think a $50 locking cable kit would be a much better idea.

      • I live in Las Vegas, and about 1 year ago this netgames place opened up. It was run by this hyper-active asian lady that honestly had no idea what she was doing. I knew she was crazy, but really no idea how much until one day when I decided to hit the place up after work. A friend and I stopped at a Taco Bell that was near it, and we saw some other guys that we knew frequented the place eating in there as well. They told us that Ms. crazy asian lady herself had to run home for an hour, and had moronically left 2 teenagers she had known for maybe 2 hours to watch the store. We really had no doubt what we were going to find once we got over there, but it was funny none-the-less. 30 COMPLETELY gutted PC'S and about 10 missing monitors. I still laugh my ass of at her stupidity to this day.

        Interesting addition to this story; about 1 month later she somehow had found out my friend's phone number, and having never really even spoken to him more than a few times at the netgames place months ago, tried to pay him $5,000 to marry a chinese friend of her's for her citizenship. She was truly, truly insane.

    • Re:We are behind the rest of the world on this one (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zebbers ( 134389 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:05AM (#5142658)
      You may think letting people bring their comps would be fun, but its prolly not..for either of you. For you, it'd be a constant coming and going, dealing with equiptment walking out the door. Whos was that? Was that really that kids?

      And furthermore. People bring their comps to LANparties cuz they last a day, two, three more. Why would someone tear down their comp to bring it to a lanplace just for a couple of hours. I dont disassemble my pool table to bring it to the poolhall. Think of it that way.

      Your business should be the renting of the actually lancomputers for play, not the space/location for people to come in and setup their own.
      • Well, that would be the advantage to bringing your own PC. The business plan doesn't have an admission fee. Just rentals and food. So if you bring your own PC, then you don't pay to play. If I had to charge admission, I'd charge less to people that bring their own equipment. The fact that they are bringing a PC in means that they are likely to stay longer, since it is such a bitch to set up and tear down all the time.

        I'd also have adjusted hours to make it worth while. Open all night on fridays and saturdays, that sort of thing. Having a nearby motel would be helpful, as it would give people a place to sleep if they got desperate.

        I'd also enforce a headphones rule. No external speakers allowed, as it makes it too easy for people to blast their m4d @ss syst3mz and ruin the fun for others. I'd have ambient music playing, with a web-based jukebox interface for requests. If you don't have any headphones, I'd have plenty to sell you. Some cheap, some not.

        Monitor size I could care less about. All the systems available for rent would have either 17 or 19 inch monitors. If you want to bring your badass 21", be my guest. The spacing of the stations would allow enough room for it.

        I'd also have events probably every month or so. Winners get stuff like free rentals, new video cards, new headphones, new mice, new PCs, cash, etc. All depending on how big the event was supposed to be.

        The place would, of course, have broadband access to the internet, and would have a few game servers running that were public to the net as well as internally. I'd also provide a few dialup points for access to the building for people that want to game with good ping times at home. (For a fee of course).

        Eventually, I'd like to open up additional locations, and get dedicated connections between them, so that people on the LAN can play others from across the state, country, etc. I'd probably strike a deal with an ISP to provide low ping game servers to their clients as well, in exchange for discounted monthly fees on the dedicated lines.

        But, I can go on all day about my nifty little dream. The hard part is making it a reality. :)
        • "So if you bring your own PC, then you don't pay to play."

          And you plan to make enough money to pay your rent, utilities, and salary how again?


        • I think you are still missing the point. Honestly, do you really see a market for making money letting people play games in a room you pay for, without them paying anything? I know somebody who owns and operates a business like this, however they simply charge per hour for the machines they have. They are big beefy machines, and 2 bucks an hour is a lot easier for most folks then trooping their own pc to some strip mall for nothing more then some table space and a net connection. Why in the world would a teenager do that? (they are the primary market.)

          What would you provide on top of the space they can't get at home? The whole point is to pay a low price, hang out with some people and play net games. Bringing in pc's would be a nightmare, waste much time, you'd have to hassle with users configurations, worry about the security of somebodies box plugging into your lan, etc. etc. Its not a viable business plan at all.

          The way these things make money is easy, and they do make money. You rent a space in a commercial building, such as a strip mall. Buy a bunch of kick ass machines (20-30 of them). You provide a nice infrastructure (network at 100mb at the minimum, why not just go gigabit while your at it.) Have some nice desks, nice comfy chairs, headphones, and a groovy monitor. You give them soda's and snacks, and charge like 2-3 bucks an hour. Have a fast net connection. Heck, I'd even have the machines simply sitting in a rack in the back. Host events, etc. Very similar to your idea but no home pc's. In fact that would be very much DISallowed. This way, you have all your machines configured, and can image them every night to clean out any crap left over by the 3l33t kidz using them. Its rather simple, just takes some capital (around $50-100,000) to start up and a good location. The kids will come if everything is right, and shell out a lot of money. And on top of that, its cheaper then the old format - arcades, which means more time spent in your location, which turns into more money. As a kid I could easily drop $20 in an hour at an arcade.

      • Your business should be the renting of the actually lancomputers for play, not the space/location for people to come in and setup their own

        OTOH, having a space/docking port for people to bring in laptops might not be a bad idea... you could even use 802.11b to provide LAN connections instead of fiddling with twisted pair.
    • The US is behind the rest of the world when it comes to businesses making money off the LAN Party concept.

      That's because we can sit in our homes where we have new computers and high speed internet. These types of parlors make sense in a country where the infrastructure isn't in place for lots of people on-line, or where the average person doesn't have a computer capable of playing these games. But, does it make sense to go somewhere for the same experience we have at home?

      The analogy in this country would probably be "Dave & Buster's" or "Gameworks" or one of the other similar concepts. These places survive because you get the electronic gaming experience you can't recreate (easily) in your homes. "Counter Strike" is a home game experience in the US, making it difficult to catch on. I can't imagine setting up parlors of Game Cubes or Playstation 2's either.

    • It's not just the upfront, it's the continual competition with people's home systems and consoles.

      We have a local fighter-pilot place that has the big fake cockpits you can fly in - they started up a number of years ago, but I stopped in just the summer before last and it was really pathetic, a bunch of tired P300's with VooDoo2 cards.
      The Mall of America has it too. There is a digital speedway shop with motion controlled stock cars, rather cool - except that their tech is definitely showing signs of age, since Vice City looks about 1000x better.

      Why pay $X an hour if I can

  • This article is pretty twisted... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:01AM (#5142630) Homepage

    But the hordes of young men -- and a few female hangers-on -- who pack this place probably seldom muster the nerve to go out dancing. This is the refuge of the young and the unpopular, the boys and girls who don't fit into the gangster-rap chic so popular at their high schools. Here, there's no bullying, no catcalls, no thumping SUV subwoofers.


    I don't actually do any of this 'online gaming' stuff, so I'm unbiased. Now...

    Was this article written by a football hero or something? It seems to be obsessed with portraying PCBang culture as stereotypical asocial loser nerd pervert stuff, when in fact it's pretty much normal social life in Korea (where these things come from).

    It spends whole sentences whining on about scantily clad cyber babes. It never once allows the possibility that playing Starcraft might just be a common pasttime for this particular generation in that particular area. It doesn't really describe PCBang culture so much as provide a handy toolkit for forcing it into that old Jocks-vs-Nerds idiom, the one some people don't quite grow out of.

    I read this article because the spread of Korean culture (such as it is :)) interests me. What I got was eight full pages of a guy going 'THESE PEOPLE ARE NERDS! THEY ARE PATHETIC! I AM NOT LIKE THEM! OH NO! AT LEAST NOT ANY MORE!'

    The writer aparrently has a few issues with self-image. That's fine. Some people get bullied, some people feel inadequate (in this case quite rightly), and that's normal. But he should have called the article 'My own psychological issues and how I work them out by randomly insulting groups of Asian teenagers', and then I would have known not to read it.

    Well, okay, it wasn't *quite* that bad.

    But lord, it sure wasn't good.

    • Hmmm, you may be unbiased... but your also uninformed. He may be writing this from an ignorant American point of view... but generally the gamers (like me) are geeky little non-rapper non-chic types. There are exceptions... but not many.

      THis is funny since i am going to go to a Cyber Cafe net place type thing today to play BF1942 =)

    • portraying PCBang culture as stereotypical asocial loser nerd pervert stuff, when in fact it's pretty much normal social life in Korea (where these things come from).

      As you point out, you're talking about Korea a place where Hello-Kitty and anime are nearly as popular as it is in Japan, and born-against Christianity is hugely popular partly because it provides a ready-made social circle. Even if it is "normal social life in Korea" (it isn't; it's still a minority of people who occupy themselves so), it doesn't make it any less asocial loser nerd stuff. If the phenomenon were to grow much more, I would be very, very worried if I were Korean and concerned about the next generation's social skills.

  • Wrong! (Score:5, Funny)

    by seizer ( 16950 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:03AM (#5142644) Homepage
    From the article, talking about CS:

    The terrorists' goal is to plant a bomb and defend it until it explodes; the counter-terrorists must defuse the device or prevent it from being placed. If and when the charge is planted, a text message goes out to all players: "Someone set us up the bomb."

    Someone's pulling yer leg, mate. Did you even play the game?

    (Proper phrase is, of course, "The bomb has been planted")

    • Re:Wrong! (Score:3, Informative)

      by sheetsda ( 230887 )
      That can be modified. During the AYB craze the server I frequented had that plant alert, it ran admin mod and a couple other similar mods whose names escape me. There might have even been a version where it said that, I can't remember.
    • This must be an admin-configurable thing; I've seen it happen on some CS servers, but not others. It's definitely not completely unknown, however.
    • Sounds like a translation into Korean and back, no?
    • Yeah, they're pulling his leg...

      everyone knows it's "Somebody set up us the bomb!" [harvard.edu] :)
    • Can be right!

      On the default install of CS with adminmod and hlstats, it does, in fact say "$playername set us up the bomb" to the terrorists when they plant.

      This is how my server is right now.

      this is entirely customizable by any number of mods, primarily adminmod.

      HA HA HA HA!

  • Truth to the Saying: (Score:3, Funny)

    by 1WingedAngel ( 575467 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:08AM (#5142678) Homepage
    "Video games don't affect kids. If Pac-Man affected us as kids we'd all be walking around in dark rooms eating magic pills while listening to repetitive electronic music." -Karen Price, Nintendo Representative

  • Stacks here in Melbourne, Australia (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grantdh ( 72401 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:10AM (#5142689) Homepage Journal
    We have quite a number of PC-Baang sites setting up here in Melbourne (been around in the inner city for a few years). Sure, Cyber Cafes have been around for yonks and we used them while travelling, etc. For the PC-Baangs, it was the concept of the netbash that got our attention. We occasionally would go down to one for a mega-bash when we had more people than would fit in one of our lounge rooms :)

    For some, it's their life (no PC at home due to space, money, travel, etc) and for others it's just a fun excursion. Judging by the number of them springing up, there's a market for them all right :)
    • We've got a few here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada as well. Most of the people I know frequent either Ages [agescybercafe.com] or Naked [nakedcybercafe.com], but from my place there are another few within walking distance. A lot of people would rather spend the cash to go to a cybercafe/PC-Baang to hang out and game with their friends than lug their machines all over the place to set up a LAN. As well, by heading to a cybercafe, you get to skip the requirement of owning your own PC.
  • FYI you will find a lot of these "uniquely Korean" game-cafés in Europe, too. I live in Denmark and LAN-parties here died out five years ago. Nowadays, people just go to a game-café and play on the latest hardware while being served cold drinks.

    There's nothing "basement" about these places - some of them are in very fashionable locations.

    To have a peek check out Boomtown [boomtown.net] in central Copenhagen, just across from Tivoli Gardens.

  • This article sounds like some dark chapter from SnowCrash or Neouromancer.

    Rather depressing livestyle. Spending all of your time in some virtual gaming arena in dark basement pits with no one to really talk to.

    Psychologists will be figuring this one out for generations to come as our ability to socialize plummets into a level of communication limited to SMS, IRC, and other 'leet' short cuts to the process of talking to each other.

    • It's really not a whole lot different than when arcades had their heyday. The kids are socializing with the other people playing. Of course, arcade machines didn't let you type insults at each other, so you had to be sort of tactful when you talked to one another, so that's a bit weird, but still, I wouldn't worry about the future of our culture.

    • Re:SciFi (Score:2)

      by 56 ( 527333 )
      I think it's interesting that these people are playing Starcraft and Counter-Strike, and not the Sims online or 'There.'

  • The arcades of our time? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Are these to be the malt shops and arcades of our time?

    I remember when arcades were the arcades of our time.

  • "are these to be the Malt Shops and arcades of our times?"

    no way. in Malt shops, people actually talked to each other. in arcades, you still had to interact with people to get tokens. in a videogame room, all you do is shoot people on a computer screen.

    • There's usually lots of communication going on.

      Besides the usual online calls of "I need a medic", there's usually lots of clapping when somebody gets off a good shot, cheering and booing, misc. small talk between level loads.

      We actually meet an hour before our bi-weekly sessions and eat together. Lots of fun.
  • According to the article they pay only 1$ per hour, you know here thy would be more expensive.
  • Seems like everyone here is trumpeting the virtues of these cyber cafes, but to me it seemed like all the people they profiled were absolute social retards. The first guy can't carry on a conversation, can barely seem to do his job (he is customer service after all), can't even fold a damn shirt, and if I had to bet would be severely lacking in a whole host of social skills . If we're on the verge of seeing tons and tons of places like these, this is NOT a good thing.

  • I really hate these types of stories (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) <mrpuffypants@gmailTIGER.com minus cat> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:40AM (#5142849)
    Every few months a journalist thinks that he is 'hip and cool' and writes a story about online games. Truth is, it just comes off as highly superficial and makes the people involved look rather shallow.

  • Is it just my perception (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:45AM (#5142878)
    Or does the writer actually seem to have more of an interest in Ricky than his game playing? Read some of that text again. His cologne. His grace. His car. His... nipple?

    Ref: Pages one and two of this story.
  • Can anybody who hangs out at these places heavy on clan gaming comment on the racial profile of customers ? In the old days, when I used to MUD, 95% of the people were Asian. Is there a disproportionate number of Asians (i.e. a greater proportion then Asians are represented in the surrounding population) in these places -forgetting, of course, the places located in Asia ? I'm betting there is, and if so, I wonder what this could mean ...

  • Writer is k-14M3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by mdxi ( 3387 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @11:00AM (#5142980) Homepage
    To wit:
    "It's called "L337-speak" -- pronounced 'leet-speak,' as in 'elite.' The code was invented by Quake players to expand naming possibilities for their online personas."

    There were a couple of other niggling inaccuracies before this, but I let them slide as pandering to a non-technical audience, but this is so wrong it hurts. (See http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Leet-speak.ht ml for a more historically accurate description of the phenomenon.)

    I wonder: did the writer make this up off the top of his head, or did the m4d g4m3Rz he's doing his best Katz impression over tell him that?

  • There's one fairly close to my house... I'm not going anywhere near it! I can play games a heck of a lot safer in my place.

    The place was robbed at gunpoint by an asian gang in the summer, and some guy was just beat up and shot inside the place this week.

    I should move...

    N.

  • American Generalizations (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alric ( 58756 ) <slashdot@tenhund[ ]d.org ['fel' in gap]> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @11:12AM (#5143056) Homepage Journal
    /*I'd love to moderate this discussion, but I feel the overwhelming need to comment. When I say, "America," I mean the United States. */

    America is big. America is digitally divided.

    These facts preclude cyber cafes from being popular in every community that is not a large metropolis or a very hip compact area.

    We have too much land, and we live too far apart. Those who are greatly interested in computers can afford one or a few.

    If I could walk out my door or hop on the subway and be in a comfortable Internet cafe in ten minutes, I would consider it. If this cyber cafe offered many attributes over my home setup, I might consider it. However, I live in a heavily-suburban metropolitan area of about 450,000 people. I would have to get in my car and drive twenty minutes from my home to the closest cyber cafe, which offers high usage fees, sophomoric l33t teenagers, and bad grub. There is an Internet cafe very close to my office downtown, but I have a better free connection at work, on which I can use my personally-owned laptop.

    With blindingly fast computers becoming dirt cheap and especially with broadband proliferating, Americans have few incentives, from a technological standpoint, to patronize an Internet cafe. Some kids/adults who want to play LAN games might enjoy it, but the best part of playing a lan game is yelling profanity across the hall at your opponent, excepting the low lag. It just requires too much effort for most Americans to get to the cyber cafes, and the only benefit they get is maybe a little camaraderie. Save your money and setup a home LAN.

    For some areas, like NYC or any dense urban environment, cyber cafes can be successful. Success requires two things, assuming for the moment that you already have an incredible business design with enough startup capital. First, many people need to live within a ten minute travel time. Second, living space needs to be prohibitively expensive for an average family to have a LAN room. Most of America does not meet those two criteria.

    I might be simplifying the situation, but I've participated (as a free network consultant) in two failed Internet cafes, one in outer New Orleans and one in Birmingham, AL. So I hope I'm not totally ignorant.

    • I'd beg to differ. I live in a rural area where the is NO broadband (unless you want to shell out $70/month for satellite - but then satellite is useless for internet games). As there is no broadband and none coming in the near future, smallish rural town areas might see a reasonable level of interest in such a PC game room even if they had home PCs. Shell out for a (fractional) T1 (if available...I have been told by several different providers that I couldn't even pull a T1 where I live) and setup and you might get a decent regular showing from the youngins in the area.


      Really big cities don't seem logical to me. In such places you can get broadband easily and groups of friends can get together and play together. It wouldn't be the crowded PC gaming room but it would be warmer and likely nicer and more comfortable (someone's den or basement).


      There was a PC gaming room/shop for a little while in a mall area near where I lived in Salt Lake city several years ago. You could go there and play Quake, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad (none of the fancy-smchmancy games like CS, Quake II, etc, back then) in networked play. It wasn't connected to the internet, just a local lan for localized lan parties/tournaments. They then built one or two other shops around the area and networked those so they could all take part in tournaments. They even shelled out for goggles - little LCD screen for each eye. Pretty neat when you got used to it but it left you disoriented and dizzy for a period after gaming when moving about the real world.


      These shops lasted about a year, year-and-a-half. Not sure if they could be tried again only with full internet access. I think it would require several things to work out well: 1) LOCATION (a good location is a must), 2) atmosphere (it needs to be attractive to the users, a place they would feel comfortable hanging out), 3) upkeep (gotta maintain the hardware in good shape and keep a decent selection of software).


      I think the margin would be tough. Charge enough for rent, equipment upgrade/maintenance and profit while having the right number of PCs/consoles available to be a draw to groups of friends without also breaking the bank.


      Setup a few of these in Vegas so parents can dump their kids there while they go and burn up their kid's college money at the crap table. That would almost assure that it makes money. Problem is, you'd likely be part of a casino or quickly crushed by casinos who would then do it themselves if your shop actually worked out.

  • Did anyone else find this article full of mistakes (a Eclipse 3000GT? they are two different cars) and over generalizations?


  • From the article:
    PC Baangs are a unique Korean institution

    Unless I didn't understand the description in the article, I would say that's plain incorrect. On a Sept 01 trip to Turkey, I saw plenty of "internet cafes", mostly being used as gaming rooms. I was one of the few people in there actually using it to browse the web and check email; most others were playing, I think, Counter-Strike.

    Cheap, but smoky.

  • PC bangs, succecssors to Nora Bang, and BiDio Bang (Score:3, Interesting)

    by psplay ( 572886 ) <J@ps p l a y.com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @12:02PM (#5143348)
    Norabang = Karaoke Room
    Bidio Bang = Video room (rent a DVD and watch it there and then)

    Bidio-bang Never caught on overseas. And while Karaoke came and died in the west, it remains an oriental sensation (I can only talk for Japan and Korea).

    Similarily, I dont think the PC Bangs (somebody change that name plEase) won't last long in the US.

    Three steps to failure.

    1, Their profit margin is too low, cut maintenance costs.
    2, They will start to look run down and become scary places,
    3, Kids won't want to go there.

    Lifespan = 28months.

  • Author needs to check facts (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quintin Stone ( 87952 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @12:29PM (#5143601) Homepage
    After I got through the pointless paragraphs of mall details and got into the actual meat of the story, I was faced with an immediate factual error. Valve did NOT create Counter-Strike. It was an amateur mod effort done as a personal (unpaid) project. It was only later, after a slew of releases, that Valve hired CS's creators and acquired the mod as an official add-on to Half-Life.

    At that point, I stopped reading the article.

  • Errors, Cheating, Good Investment, and Old Age (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kong99 ( 618393 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @01:24PM (#5144020)
    The article was rife with errors, "Valve created Counter-Strike", wrong, it bought Counter-Strike a Mod created mostly by two guys. I would give the creation date at the earliest as '99, it really began to take off in 2000. Ricky did not create the term "Deagle" for the Desert Eagle, commonly used in the community for years. I could go on. I stopped playing CS long ago due to the rampant cheating. I know steps have been taken to help stop some of it but I am sure it still exists. The Cybercafe/PC Baang (which btw is nothing new in the US) would be good to make sure that your opponents are not cheating, which is impossible to truly verify playing online. That $50 I spent on Half-Life is the best money I ever spent. HL was a great game and well worth the $ all by itself, then throw in Team Fortress Classis, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Front Line Force, to name but just a few. It is difficult to keep with the young 'ins though. I am 34 and I just don't have the reflexes anymore. I can no longer keep up in UT2003, however I find America's Army to be a game for me as it is more realistic, therefore it moves at a slower speed, and rewards patience and stealth well.
    • Your points about not being able to keep up with the frag-kiddies hit close to home. I sure didn't have the reflexes when I was 16, and now I'm 31 and completely hopeless.

      I've been playing No One Lives Forever in the hopes that the stealth required in the single-player campaign would be mirrored in multiplayer games, but no such luck -- just a bunny-hopping frag fest.

      If only there was a way to filter games based on age...

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