sighs Kuwaiti nugget stuck:…

(my background: i’ve work in the JP console biz, since the ps1.)

the key difference actually is not money. why is it that poorer countries have computers, which are far pricier than consoles, for their predominant gaming platform? it’s all about the console gaming biz.

japan is the mecca of the console gaming biz. pc’s as gaming platforms in japan are a recent development, and almost entirely revolve around “adult” sims and mmorpgs. in china and korea, console gaming never obtained mass appeal. even today, sales are terrible.

some major reasons why console gaming never took off in china or korea? piracy is one issue — no one wants to publish games in territories with rampant piracy. you make next to nothing for your work. with online (computer) subscription gaming, piracy is no longer an issue. hence, mad online gaming in china/korea, moreso than japan. the other major reason — japan is the mecca of console gaming, and china/korea hates japan. something to do with imperialism and chinese/korean babies on the end of japanese bayonets… korea even legislated their hate: only recently did korea lift a ban on the import of all japanese intellectual property — it was illegal to buy any japanese console games.

technologically, pc’s are more expensive and more powerful than consoles. fps’s require more power than any other genre. it’s a no brainer that people who want to play the best fps’s play them on pc’s. publishers know this, and will continue to publish their games on pc’s. this process of natural economic evolution is why “the japanese don’t like fps’s.” catch 22. how can you like something you can’t even buy it? and of course, you wouldn’t buy it anyway, because you don’t like it, right?

~*~

as for girls and fps’s — i spend over 20 hours a week playing counter-strike:source. in that time, i’ve encountered many girls who play. the one thing i can confirm: they’re always chinese or korean. and the girls tell me the same: “the only girls who play are asian.”

even in the u.s., pc gaming takes a distant second to the console gaming biz. fps’s are just a small genre, relative to the worldwide gaming pie.

“What if my family had had a little more money to spare on video games? What if we hadn't had as much money to spare?”

Money! And culture.

In both Japan and Korea, high-tech is a way of life. However, there’s a large divide between them. Japanese and Korean culture is very different; the countries are almost hostile to each other. While Japan is built around consoles, Korea was home to a massive Lan cafe boom and is effectively the world’s center of online gaming. However, in much of the world, personal computers or gaming systems are far out of the reach of many or most people. Very few parents will spring for a gaming system of any type when the household is having trouble making ends meet for food. Unlike the U.S. where “poor” can sometimes include someone with cable, vast populations of people in China and Brazil are starving.

But computer access is life. Access to the internet, the ability to learn, to access unlimited material when you don’t even have a half-decent library.. the PC beckons. And thus, a multitude of enterprising persons threw together as many PC’s as they could afford with high speed ‘net and (mass pirated, in most countries >>) software, charging an hourly fee for use. it functions not just as a new type of arcade system, but one that connects people anywhere to the entire world.

.. and the computers might be cast-down relics or have five hundred dollar graphics cards and gigabytes of RAM depending on the location, wealth of the area; the 22,000 or so cafes in South Korea are likely very well kept up.

but one thing matters. They’ve got the same games, the games that the pros everywhere play, the games that the major clans train tirelessly. They don’t stock gaming consoles; they do, however, have the mainstays of competitive PC gaming:

Starcraft was THE Real Time Strategy game for a long time. In Korea, it still is and always will be. Capable of running on practically any computer, even if “computer” means a fridge and microwave patched together with a black and white TV used for a screen (it might be possible, who knows..) with bazillions of players online at any given moment and universal recognition even to non-gamers..

yes, they play it on national TV in Korea. And some people make several hundred thousand dollars a year in sponsorships from companies.

If you’ve got the smarts that would bring you to a chest grandmastership, well, you need those, and more. You need to understand the game, your opponents, think constantly and strategize..

except, you have to control all your units at the same time. The better you control, the better they’ll fight.

Got blazing fast handspeed,
hundred-plus word per minute typing speed, mouse accuracy precision up the wazoo..

it’s just not enough. You need typing tutor. That, is Starcraft.

Then, you have Counter-strike, *THE* FPS. Like Starcraft, capable of running on any PC or glued-together pack of transistors. The original Half-life was thought a good game, but someone threw together a home-made mod way back in 1999 which turned it into a team counter terrorist vs terrorist multiplayer experience. It went from good to universally-played. And it took hold and soon it completely replaced the original game in usage. Again, the age of the game makes the system requirements minimal, but the makers of Haliflife took over development of Counterstrike and released a new version of it (Counterstrike:Source:) based on their new Halflife 2 graphical game engine, so there’s something for people of all computing power.

CS: http://www.plainspot.com/blog/archives/img/040415-cs.jpg
vs CS:Source: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/image_viewer/frame.php?pid=922013&img=1&sid=undefined

So yeah. It’s twinge-reflexes, team-based gameplay, and it’s a worldwide ranked phenomenon.

So, you go to the LAN cafe, and as long as your quarters last, you browse the web, play the games. The only part of the world they haven’t taken over would probably be North America, Africa, and the Mid-East; I’d blame personal wealth and individualism along with cultural rejection of gaming in the first example, and abject poverty and government restrictions respectively for the other two.

The gaming communities in all of the internet-connected countries are merged somewhat; through the WCG and CPL, ACON5, etc, the best of the best players from each country will meet in one location for deathmatches. And since the games are online, you could play anyone you want.

.. and that was long and probably uncohesive. But, hopefully it makes some sense x_X Ask for clarification on anything that doesn’t. To end with some links:

For more on the boom of internet cafes in Korea: http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200505/kt2005050916340712350.htm

as of february, over twenty million people play online games in China: http://www.ferrago.com/story/5156

Businessweek article about Pro Gaming: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2005/id20050921_149256.htm

Korea has far, far more of a gaming presence then any western country; three of the last World Cyber Games tournaments were held there (WCG includes Counter-Strike: Source and Halo 2 in its lineup). There are myriad CS:S clans across the country there.

As for China, FPS gaming is simply booming there. The last Acon5 (Mainly counterstrike) tournament was held there; http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23717

The vast majority of gaming in lower-wealth countries like China takes place in LAN cafes rather then privately owned gaming consoles. As a result, the three main game types are FPS (mostly counterstrike), RTS (starcraft, Warcraft 3), and MMPORG (World of Warcraft.)

Illidan, sorry, did I imply China and Korea were in the West? I believe I said (but I might be wrong) Brazil and Europe. For me, the West includes Europe and the Americas. Apologies for the confusion.

Muljo, some really interesting thoughts. I think, as has been mentioned before, it’s all a matter of trends and contingencies. You grew up in an exceptional situation from most male gamers. With that said, everyone’s situation is a little different. There is no one norm. And I think you’re idea of polling gamers is a good one, but a hard one to put into place. If you have any ideas of how to do it, I’d be happy to help.

Also, you speculate what would have happened if you were the older sibling, and your sister the younger, and how your tastes would have influenced hers. I am myself an older sister, but when my household bought our first system (a N64), my little brother had total control. He purchased the games. I had no idea what a video game was. In theory, this should have turned me into an “male”-game loving gamer. Thing is, my little brother isn’t very “manly”. He likes action/adventure games and RPG’s. His tastes definitely influenced mine, but in a way you might not have expected. Again, it all comes back to the infinite possibility of individual situations.

I’m a 21 year old American male. According to stereotypes one might expect me to prefer FPS and sports games and just about anything violent. Not even close. Most of those types of games hold practically no appeal to me. It seems to me that a gamer’s preferences must be deeply rooted in what he/she grew up with though, and thinking about my own gaming history makes me wonder what experiences others had growing up and how that contributed towards preferences towards one type of game or another.

So, my gaming past:
My family’s first system was the NES. It came with Super Mario Bros./ Duck Hunt, two controllers, and the orange lightgun. Since I was just and my sister is six years older than me, she was pretty much in control of what new games we got all through both the NES and SNES.

Because of this, instead of growing up on Mega Man, Metroid, Contra, Bomberman, etc. (basically 75% of all games that “everyone” has played) I had things like Deja Vu, Shadowgate, Uninvited, Nightshade, Pinbot, Pinball Quest, Maniac Mansion, various Mario games, various Zelda games, Startropics, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Uniracers, Breath of Fire 2, and the first Final Fantasy.

You may notice a lot of those are either adventure games of one type or another or RPGs. And these are genres that I came back to a lot on PS/ PS2 and on the computer through all the various Final Fantasy games, Breath of Fire, Summoner, and most of the old Lucasarts adventure games.

At some point or another I got a Gameboy Pocket for Christmas, and I have moved up through Color, Advance, and Advance SP since then. The SP was the first system I bought with my own money instead of receiving as a gift. The second was Gamecube, and the third was Nintendo DS. I’ve been very selective about portable games but there’s quite a few RPGs in my collection there too. (I won’t touch that Pokemon crap though.) I just bought Trace Memory the other day. Hooray for the return of adventure games! RPGs are a bit lacking in my Gamecube collection though. Zelda, Mario, Metroid Prime, Viewtiful Joe… only RPGs in sight are Baten Kaitos and Tales of Symphonia.

Wow… I tried to keep that short, I really did. Anyway, the point of that was to show that my preference in games today is a direct result of my sister’s preferences 15 years ago (give or take).

But more important than what I was trying to decide when I started thinking about this is to point out the complexity involved in the birth and evolution of an individual gamer’s preferences. What if I had been the older sibling? What if we had opted for a Sega system instead? What if our first computer (and only computer for the better part of a decade) hadn’t been a Mac (that was already outdated when we bought it and only played SimEarth and SimFarm)? What if my family had had a little more money to spare on video games? What if we hadn’t had as much money to spare? If you want to get a good comprehensive view of what factors lead to what kinds of gaming habits I would suggest polling all sorts of gamers for similar (but perhaps even more detailed) summaries and pick apart the results. What do two people who like _____ have in commmon and what are their differences?