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PC Baangs In America
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?"
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.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
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.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
*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.)
So *that's* where all of those open mail relays are at - they're installed on game servers in baangs...
Image if they could simulate that thrill of actually sitting next to the person you're killing. That would be a real killer app.
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
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.
/. headlines either stupid or impossible to understand?
Why is it that people seem to go out of the way to make
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..
TC - My Photos..
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.
....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.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
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!
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.
:), 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.
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
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.
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
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.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
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")
"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
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
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
There's nothing "basement" about these places - some of them are in very fashionable locations.
To have a peek check out Boomtown in central Copenhagen, just across from Tivoli Gardens.
I remember when pinball machines had a little plunger under the ball launcher that you had to push in to serve up the next ball. No candy-ass auto eject mechanisms for us!
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
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.
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.
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?
Posted with Mozilla
Now THERE is a F$ck!ng thought!
Intorduce Matrix 'Agents' in to a server that sense a hacker and ghost through walls at 400% speed to knife/chainsaw/razoredge their ass in the heart every time they respawn.
So much more frustrating to the hacker than being kickbanned.
I hate Grammar Nazi's
/*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 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!
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.
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.
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
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.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
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.