[MUD-Dev] Re: Cybercafes a fluke? (was: Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #289 - 8 msgs)

[Scion Altera]

Tuesday, January 23, 2001, 10:30:20 AM, Dr. Cat wrote:

> Well, cybercafes in particular are of little interest to me, unless
> I get a contract to do work for a market like Korea where they're
> thriving.  I view such markets as perhaps being a fluke, a
> temporarily viable business model in places that are just partway
> down the road towards being information-age economies.  Certainly in
> the US, where we're further along than most countries, the attempts
> at cybercafes I've seen have fallen flat on their faces.

I went traveling last summer in Spain, where there are quite a few
cybercafes. I have also seen the phenomenon here in the US where they
have nearly all died out. The conclusion I came to, after asking
around a bit, was that the phone systems in Europe charge differently
from the US, making home internet connections unreasonable for many
people there.

Most (if not all) phone calls are billed by the minute in Spain. That
means your local dialup provider can grant you access to the internet,
but every minute you spend logged on is billed.

It's far easier to amble on down the street to the cybercafe, where an
hour on the computer is 300 to 400 pesetas.. roughly equivalent to $2
or $3. The cybercafes I visited in Spain were all clean, the computers
were well protected against malicious folks, and most of all they were
all crowded but spacious. I didn't feel like anyone was looking over
my shoulder and I was never crammed up against anybody. The fact that
they were pleasant places to spend an hour or two made quite a
difference when I could have been out enjoying the Spanish sunshine
instead (I did quite a lot of that too, though :D).

Fueling a several-hour-a-day addiction to an online game in Spain at a
cybercafe would be a comparatively cheap alternative to buying a
computer and possibly a second phone line, then paying ISP charges and
enormous phone bills.

Here in the US, computers are cheap, ISPs are cheap, and local phone
calls are free... meaning it's actually cheaper in the long run to pay
$20/mo for your online game, $20/mo for your ISP, and a one time $800
for a cheap computer at your local dealer. $40/mo for your own setup
or over $60 ($3/day for a month) for a cybercafe. This is, of course,
assuming that the computer pays for itself as it is useful for other
things than gaming (honest!).

I postulate that if the phone companies in Europe switched their
billing to the same model used in the US, the European cybercafes
would die out quickly as people started to buy their own personal
internet connections.

On a related note, I would like to mention that the phenomenon of LAN
parties is very closely related to cybercafes. Now that people are
starting to get broadband connections to the internet and are learning
about things such as DHCP, it is becoming possible to gather a group
of real live people and their computers at someone's house and play
multiplayer games online from there. During the summer a bunch of my
friends and I did that many, many times. We mostly played graphical
games such as Unreal Tournament or Diablo II, but I can certainly
envision a group of folks gathering around the cable modem for a full
night of MUDding (MMORPGing? :P). My experience has been that these
games are -far- more entertaining when played around others. Voice
communication software like Roger Wilco helps, but it doesn't beat
being able to see the look on your friend's face and shout an insult
out loud when you PK him >:)

-- Scion

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." --
Albert Einstein

-- keeler at teleport.com -- peter.keeler at brokat.com -- ICQ: 1824934 --


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