Gamer Nation

The Escapist this week has up a feature called Gamer Nation, with a look at the games-centric attitude of South Korea. From the article: "The coolest kids in Gamer America high school go out for the StarCraft team. Gamer America's Commerce Department heavily funds a Domestic Gaming Agency to promote games to your mom and your grandma and the world. And there's a Gamer America network TV channel (not cable, network) broadcasting online game tournaments round the clock. No, wait, there are two channels. Sounds like an EverQuest fever dream? A console fan's Robitussin high? Okay, Gamer America doesn't exist - in America. But it lives for real - right now! today! - in the Republic of Korea (RoK)."

Comments

Blizzard

[Pxtl]

Really, with a whole country living, eating, breathing, and sleeping StarCraft, you'd think Blizzard would do more with the license rather than constantly running back to old WC, which I personally found to be a much more derivative and uninspired setting.

Re:Blizzard

[Nasarius]

I know. Starcraft 2 would be a sure win. Instead they make some FPS. *shrug* Personally, I don't see why StarCraft is still so popular. It's a fun game, but it's not nearly complex enough to encourage deep strategy.

Why not in America?

[alvinrod]

I don't really see much of a problem for this to happen most parts of America. In big cities it wouldn't be hard to have the government wire the whole city and allow many different companies to compete for customers. I don't see it happening in rural America because it's really not cost effective to string 10 miles of fiber to farmer Joe.

But the government doesn't want to get involved. They'd rather let a company do the wiring themselves and then charge that market all it can bear. Rather than creating a service that's good for everyone, we're all living the American dream, shouting a big FU to the country so that we can all scheme to get rich for ourselves. Then again I guess that suggest is communist for thinking that a minority of the population shouldn't hord a majority of the wealth.

Sometimes I think America's worst enemy is a America itself. We'd rather make a lot of money than offer a quality product that's affordable for almost everyone.

Re:Why not in America?

[Iriel]

In a lot of ways, you're quite right. Not only would the American government not want to get involved, they probably can't. Only when we're so behind the times that we have the largest percent of the population in a developed nation without broadband would the government push legislation to only make it easier for companies to provide it to us; They wouldn't do any of the actual work to set it up.

If someone proposed that they should, then we'd have arguments comparing it to socialized healthcare and communism and others called it a waste of funds or a threat to the 'American Way'.

Korea, also, has a slightly easier time wiring a nation for the fact that they have much less real estate to wire and fewer people to manage. We have a rather stretched out government that can hardly agree on anything on a scale larger than a city without riots over policy changes.

To some degree, I can see where people would want us to concentrate government spending on other issues, but I still have something nagging what little is left of my conscience. That little something tells me that if America wants to stay in the game when it comes to the entertainment and technology industry, maybe we need a push to get us up to date. Get us using fiber lines (or at least CAT6, I'm not sure which is better for what), start implementing IPv6, make broadband affordable. How can Americans expect their youth to become the next rising stars in the technology/gaming entertainment market when the common protocols are outdated and the new ones are usually too expensive? It's hard to create a masterpiece with broken brushes.

The problem with "Gamer America"

[malchus6]

I can only imagine the religous group uprisings and congressional hearings that would follow if schools had CounterStrike or StarCraft teams. The problem here is that we have unlimited appetites when it comes to violence in tv, movies, sports, etc. God forbid there is violence in video games and it is promoted in schools and gaming centers all over the place, there would be an uprising on the right that would make the Rockstar "scandal" look like a joke...

Re:Get your ass to Korea.

[ZosX]

I was just in Monterey (on vacation) and we drove by the Defense Language Institute. Interesting looking place. Hope you had a chance to go up to Carmel by the Sea, as it had one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. The sunset there was quite lovely too and hell, where do I even begin on Big Sur? Truly one of the most beautiful places in this nation and very likely the whole damn planet. Every american should at least once go to California and drive the 1 down from Crescent City. I cannot think of many places that I would rather go to now that I have seen that area of this fine country. If you would like some fine pictures of the area for nostalgia, I'd be happy to send you a few. Other than a lot of strip mall development, a lot of the place probably looks just about the same as it did 20 years ago.

To be somewhat on topic, I have a friend that went through the language school a few times. I don't think he was there for 47 weeks however, but maybe they spend more time with eastern languages because they are so much harder to learn than Roman based languages, at least when you are coming from a purely english-centric perspective.