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?"

Comments

Violence in Video Games

[HBPiper]

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.

Virtual Cyber Cafe

[patch-rustem]

Image if they could simulate that thrill of actually sitting next to the person you're killing. That would be a real killer app.

Re:Orthography

[fr2asbury]

I think "PC Bang" might be a registered trademark of the Pr0n industry.

Jonathan

Re:Orthography

[dochood]

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

Baang?

[tcdk]

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..

Re:Orthography

[dochood]

Oh, yeah...

And "Baang" simply means "Room".

PC Baang == PC Room
Norae Baang == Song Room (Karaoke Place)

dochood

Re:CStrike Rulez

[Psmylie]

....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.

This article is pretty twisted...

[kahei]

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.

Wrong!

[seizer]

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")

Writer is k-14M3

[mdxi]

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?

Re:CStrike Rulez

[Gropo]

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.