Wired: The Bandwidth Capital of the World

Replies:

  • None.

Parents:

  • None.
A couple years ago I wrote about computer gaming as a spectator
sport [1]:

   eventually the very best computer game players will become
   celebrities like professional athletes, and millions of
   people will tune in to watch their games on TV or the net.

This has happened already in South Korea; here's a great Wired
article about computer gaming and net cafes there:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea_pr.html

> Starcraft is not just a game in South Korea, it is a national
> sport, what football was in America in the 1970s. Five million
> people -- equivalent to 30 million in the US - play. And three
> cable stations broadcast competitive gaming full-time to a TV
> audience.

my favorite bits from the article follow (though the whole thing
is worth reading)

> W I R E D
> Archive | 10.08 - Aug 2002 | Feature
> The Bandwidth Capital of the World
>
> In Seoul, the broadband age is in full swing - online games have
> become a national sport, and cybercafes are the new singles bars.

> AT FIRST GLANCE, Seoul seems like just another sprawling metropolis
:
> Burrow a bit, though, down the alleys, up flights of stairs, or into
> the corners of malls, and you find something that sets Seoul apart and
> fosters its passion for broadband: online game rooms, or PC baangs, as
> they are called here. There are 26,000 of them, tucked into every
> spare sliver of real estate. Filled with late-model PCs packed tightly
> into rows, these rabbit warrens of high-bandwidth connectivity are
> where young adults gather to play games, video-chat, hang out, and
> hook up.

> [...] the numbers are impressive -- South Korea has the highest per
> capita broadband penetration in the world. Slightly more than half of
> its households have high-bandwidth connections, compared to less than
> 10 percent in the US. The growth in broadband has surged in the last
> three years from a few hundred thousand subscribers to 8.5 million.

> When it comes to rolling out bandwidth, South Korea's population
> density is an advantage. Seventy percent of its citizens live in the
> seven largest cities, in residential towers nestled close to DSL
> switching stations. The capital city of Seoul itself accounts for a
> quarter of the population. To put this in perspective, consider that
> South Korea's national communications backbone consists of 13,670
> miles of optical fiber. Last year, Verizon laid down 20,500 miles of
> optical fiber in West Virginia alone.

> And right now, the place to be with your friends is a PC baang in
> downtown Seoul upholstered in Romper Room hues. A hundred monitors
> glow with the candy colors of computer games. There are also a handful
> of "love seat" stations, outfitted with two computers and a
> double-wide bench. Theoretically, this is so guys can play videogames
> while their girlfriends video-chat with pals.
>
> If you really watch the love seats, though, it becomes apparent that
> they're not so much a porch swing as an Internet-mediated bar stool.
> Every so often a girl will saunter by one of the stations, eye the
> occupant, and then sit down -- or not. As it turns out, singles are
> video-chatting in game rooms all over town. If they hit it off, the
> guy says something like, "I'm sitting at love seat number 47 at this
> particular PC baang, if you'd care to join me." If the girl is
> sufficiently intrigued, she hops on the subway or walks -- nothing is
> more than 20 minutes away in central Seoul. She cruises by, checks him
> out, and if she likes the look of him in person she sits down, hoping
> the lighting and shading algorithms she used to enhance her features
> in the video chat don't make her seem unglamorous in person.

> PCs have become the dominant game platform in South Korea --
> unlike in the rest of the world, where consoles rule. And in 1998,
> with Starcraft the most popular game on the market, PC baang owners
> started hosting tournaments to boost business.
>
> That snowball has now reached the bottom of the hill. Starcraft is not
> just a game in South Korea, it is a national sport, what football was
> in America in the 1970s. Five million people -- equivalent to 30
> million in the US - play. And three cable stations broadcast
> competitive gaming full-time to a TV audience.

> Why watch gaming on TV? Partly for the same reason millions of fans
> tune in for golf -- if you play, it's compelling to see the pros do
> their thing. But largely it's about production values. There is so
> much insane enthusiasm staged around an event, it takes on a kind of
> obsessive allure -- seeing a subject this arcane, broadcast with such
> a degree of adrenaline, described in frenzied, masterful detail, is
> riveting.

> "We had a 41 share last week of people who watch cable TV at that
> time,"

!!!

> says Chong Il Hun, 32, the lead announcer, who has become a
> celebrity TV personality in the three years he's been covering game
> tournaments.
>
> Chong points out a 20-year-old in an orange sweatshirt, immersed in
> online tactical warfare. "He's a pro gamer. Most of them practice 10
> hours every day, like musicians," he says.


> The merging of virtual and physical space has huge implications, not
> just for the players but also for the way companies operate and where
> their costs are carried. NCsoft has only a few dozen customer-service
> reps to deal with 3 million gamers. Why? Because if a guy in a PC
> baang has a question, he can turn to someone next to him and ask "What
> is this about?" or "How do you do that?" If the person doesn't know,
> there's always the proprietor, who's been trained by NCsoft to
> troubleshoot. Afterward, not only has the question been answered, but
> the person who asked it is that much more of an expert, in case the
> player next to him ever has the same question. Essentially, customer
> support has been completely decentralized, because players help one
> another -- and also market to one another. Buzz across the room sells
> broadband better than any targeted advertisement can.

> In Asia, where copyright law is only loosely enforced, massively
> multiplayer online games are less risky for media developers than
> movies, music, TV programs, or console games. Unlike freestanding
> content, online worlds are almost impossible to pirate. Someone could
> copy the client application, but the game itself lives on a centrally
> maintained network. Even if that person were able to duplicate the
> backend system (it costs millions to run Lineage as a reliable
> service), there is no way to replicate the presence of 2 million
> people and the dynamics that occur in a human system of that scale.
> The value isn't bound up in the content. It's bound up in the
> interactions -- in the group experience.
>
> South Korea's broadband commons challenges North American assumptions
> about what bandwidth is for and why it's relevant. In the US, cable,
> telephone, and media companies spin visions of set-top boxes and
> online jukeboxes, trying to "leverage content" and turn old archives
> into new media streams. There is a profound fear of empowering
> consumers to share media in a self-organizing way on a mass scale. Yet
> this is precisely what makes South Korea the broadband capital of the
> world. It's not a futuristic fantasy that caters to alienated couch
> potatoes; it's a present-day reality that meets the needs of a culture
> of joiners -- a place where physical and virtual are not mutually
> exclusive categories.

discussion on slashdot:

   http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/11/2236236&mode=thread&tid=95&threshold=3

[1] http://impressive.net/archives/fogo/[email protected]

--
Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

HURL: fogo mailing list archives, maintained by Gerald Oskoboiny