A dark stage explodes with the light of sparklers and the heavy thrum of pop-rock. Flanked by giant banners and rimmed with stage lights, the curtains fall and two Korean youths are revealed, arms upraised to a stadium of hysteric fans. It is the final match of the Ongamenet ‘Star League’ (OSL) tournament, televised live, and it will determine which pro-gamer will succeed in the Quest for the Golden Mouse.
For years, Westerners have marvelled at the phenomenon of Korean gaming culture. It’s a world where playing “massively multiplayer online role-playing games” (MMORPG) can throw you into the $39 million industry that is e-sports. You will train in a team of ten for eight hours a day while a professional coach harasses you closer to the level of skill required of the 240 registered professional gamers in Korea. If you are blessed with the split-second reaction time and merciless concentration these games require, you may be sponsored by banks, telecom companies, even the almighty Coca-Cola Co. to compete in the OSL for the $20 million first prize and a mouse of gold.
Oh, you may also draw a harem of Korean girls eager to claw your clothes off.
What is this mystical world of gaming culture? How does a culture and economy evolve such that 240 Koreans can list their occupation as “Professional Gamer” on their tax forms? And why can’t Canada e-volve, too?
Jim Rossignol of the U.K.’s PC Gamer magazine provides a quick catch-up.
“During the 1990s, when gaming first really took off, Koreans were tucking in to much the same feast as the rest of the world,” Rossignol writes in his article, “Sex, Fame, and PC Baangs”. Thanks to decades of technological and political rivalry with Japan, game consoles like Sony or Nintendo were largely unattainable while broadband connection threaded across 60 percent of households in Korea.
“It’s almost like the net has been in Korea forever, such is the ubiquity of high-speed connections,” Rossignol writes. And riding in the wake of spreading internet connection came internet gaming.
But between Korea’s 28,000 internet cafés and Seoul’s five television channels dedicated to gaming, Rossignol only finds himself more perplexed. Gaming in Korea is so absolute, it has infected modern Korean culture from fashion to music. Rossignol digs deeper and proposes a sociological motivation for Korea’s awe-inspiring gaming culture.
“Korea has always been a shy, inward-looking country,” Rossignol writes. “These people want to be sociable, to have things to see and do, but many of them have turned to games, rather than bars and clubbing, to find that solace.”
On the other hand, where the U.S. occasionally hosts international gaming events, and television stations intermittently air paramount gaming moments, Canadian media remains stubbornly unperturbed by the international PC gaming movement.
Yet there is a growing inclination toward gaming in North America-from CBC’s coverage of a Korean man’s death due to 50 hours of non-stop gaming in 2005, to Bloomberg’s glowing economic forecast for Korean gaming culture, the flow of the underground gaming culture into the mainstream is by no means staunched.
Toronto-based website purepwnage.com documents the adventures of a growing North American stereotype: the hardcore gamer.
The webcast attracts a largely male audience, aged 17-25, and almost all prefer the more social PC games to console games.
With episodes premiering at the Bloor Cinema, the existence of an online store, and a growing international fan base, purepwnage.com is only the tip of the iceberg.
“I think the show is big enough now that we are having a significant influence on gaming culture in English speaking countries,” Kyle from purepwnage.com explains in an e-mail. “The success of the MMORPG genre shows that.”
And with the Korean gaming industry set to triple by 2010, it is near impossible for the West to remain unaffected.
“I’d say that the virtual world is being populated more and more by the general population,” Kyle writes. “Personally, I would much rather watch a RTS match than a hockey game.”
