RE: Réf. : RE: [MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM*** s

[John Buehler]

Jeff Lindsey writes:
> John Buehler wrote:

>> Recall that we have a pretty ugly barrier to entry for
>> socialization - the inability to talk.  I don't know what Koreans
>> use to talk to each other, but I suspect that it's either painful
>> to enter it as text or they use English.  That is, their barrier
>> may be greater than in cultures that fit the ISO-LATIN 1
>> 'culture'.

> Actually, there's a pretty good article in the latest Wired ("The
> Bandwidth Capital of the World", August 2002) that indicates many
> Korean players actually do talk while playing, as they tend to
> group up based on being in the same 'internet cafe'. It's a very
> interesting read if you get the time.

It was an interesting read and only goes to support my theory that
players want to communicate verbally.  Well, South Korean players,
anyway.  The South Koreans are very social players and they like to
play together in the same room.  As you mention, groups of players
tend to take over an Internet cafe in order to play Lineage as a
group and they don't message each other - they yell at each other.
This is a model that I've speculated on for American gamers so that
we can socialize effectively during gameplay, but we're a different
society.  It might just be a bad idea for Americans.

Here's a link to the article that you referenced:

  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea.html

JB

<EdNote: Below>

--<cut>--
The Bandwidth Capital of the World

In Seoul, the broadband age is in full swing - online games have
become a national sport, and cybercafes are the new singles bars.

By J. C. Herz

AT FIRST GLANCE, Seoul seems like just another sprawling metropolis:
Its buildings, hastily constructed with dubious financing in the
months leading up to South Korea's 1997 economic crisis, are the
sort of blocky, concrete-and-glass high-rises that give many modern
cities the air of prefab homogeneity. Wide boulevards are choked
with the oppressive traffic common in East Asia or, for that matter,
Silicon Valley. Megamalls and underground shopping centers filled
with Body Shops and Burger Kings cater to teens and young
professionals. There's none of the high tech visual overload you see
in Tokyo, or the clean-scrubbed, old-meets-new urbanism of
Scandinavia - nothing to indicate that Seoul is the most wired city
on the planet.

Burrow a bit, though, down the alleys, up flights of stairs, or into
the corners of malls, and you find something that sets Seoul apart
and fosters its passion for broadband: online game rooms, or PC
baangs, as they are called here. There are 26,000 of them, tucked
into every spare sliver of real estate. Filled with late-model PCs
packed tightly into rows, these rabbit warrens of high-bandwidth
connectivity are where young adults gather to play games,
video-chat, hang out, and hook up.

They are known as "third places" - not home, not work - where teens
and twentysomethings go to socialize, to be part of a group in a
culture where group interaction is overwhelmingly important. As
elsewhere, technology scratches a cultural itch. It is the social
infrastructure, as much as the hardware and software infrastructure,
that's driving the statistics.

And the numbers are impressive - South Korea has the highest per
capita broadband penetration in the world. Slightly more than half
of its households have high-bandwidth connections, compared to less
than 10 percent in the US. The growth in broadband has surged in the
last three years from a few hundred thousand subscribers to 8.5
million.

When it comes to rolling out bandwidth, South Korea's population
density is an advantage. Seventy percent of its citizens live in the
seven largest cities, in residential towers nestled close to DSL
switching stations. The capital city of Seoul itself accounts for a
quarter of the population. To put this in perspective, consider that
South Korea's national communications backbone consists of 13,670
miles of optical fiber. Last year, Verizon laid down 20,500 miles of
optical fiber in West Virginia alone. This fact doesn't make the
Korean information infrastructure any less impressive. But the
country does have an easier job on its hands than say, Indonesia, or
the Philippines, or Mexico.

As luck would have it, urban apartment dwellers have a lot of
broadband capacity right under their noses, courtesy of Kepco, the
public power utility, which developed a network of fiber-optic
cables for its own use years ago. In 1996, South Korea allowed Kepco
to lease the unused 90 percent of its capacity, giving upstart
providers a cheap, instant last-mile solution. Sharp competition
with Korea Telecom, which the government forced to open its network
in the early '90s, has driven broadband prices down to the world's
lowest levels. All-you-can-eat service is available for as little as
$25 a month.

The government has even set up a certification program to rate
buildings based on the quality of their data lines. Developers who
install fatter pipes take the opportunity to bump up their prices -
not an insignificant policy in a country where 50 percent of the
population lives in large apartment complexes. Fast connections are
even getting bundled into the rent, as construction companies
repackage minuscule high-rise people-boxes as cyber-apartments. (A
typical four-bedroom is 1,150 square feet and costs $2,000 a month,
not counting utilities, cyber or otherwise). Built by conglomerates
like Daelim Industrial and Samsung in partnership with broadband
carriers and content providers, the sales pitch is oddly reminiscent
of 1950s American suburbia - except that instead of lawns and trees,
developers promise an endless expanse of bandwidth allowing
residents to buy flowers, chat with neighbors, and search for the
perfect kimchi recipe on the local Ethernet. It's all very Epcot.

DESPITE THIS UTOPIAN vision of e-domesticity, the real allure of
high-rise broadband is escape from the constraints of real
estate. Escape into the wide horizons of a computer game, or into
the welcoming company of other micro-apartment dwellers - preferably
at the same time. Not only is South Korea a more wired country than
the US, it is also a more gregarious one. Even if most Koreans had
an American-style mega home-theater cocoon, they would still go
out. These people do not bowl alone, particularly if they're single
(most don't move out of their parents' place until they get
married). They want to be with their friends.

And right now, the place to be with your friends is a PC baang in
downtown Seoul upholstered in Romper Room hues. A hundred monitors
glow with the candy colors of computer games. There are also a
handful of "love seat" stations, outfitted with two computers and a
double-wide bench. Theoretically, this is so guys can play
videogames while their girlfriends video-chat with pals.

If you really watch the love seats, though, it becomes apparent that
they're not so much a porch swing as an Internet-mediated bar
stool. Every so often a girl will saunter by one of the stations,
eye the occupant, and then sit down - or not. As it turns out,
singles are video-chatting in game rooms all over town. If they hit
it off, the guy says something like, "I'm sitting at love seat
number 47 at this particular PC baang, if you'd care to join me." If
the girl is sufficiently intrigued, she hops on the subway or walks
- nothing is more than 20 minutes away in central Seoul. She cruises
by, checks him out, and if she likes the look of him in person she
sits down, hoping the lighting and shading algorithms she used to
enhance her features in the video chat don't make her seem
unglamorous in person.

Young-Baek Kim, 50, the proprietor of this PC baang, spends his days
watching these scenarios play out. A former pharmacist, Kim used to
work in a PC baang as a second job. Now he's the boss, and the
business has expanded to seven locations staffed by his aunt, uncle,
and cousins. Overhead is low, and margins are high - two years ago,
South Korea's PC baangs raked in $6 billion. They are a great
small-business opportunity.

But they are also the product of a huge business crisis. In 1997,
when the Korean economy imploded, thousands of middle managers were
laid off, with no hope of finding new suit-and-tie jobs. They had
tightly knit extended families, though, and as a result, access to
moderate amounts of capital from relatives (the cornerstone of the
nation's small-business culture). A lot of them opened PC baangs -
it cost the same as opening a restaurant, and it was less
sweaty. Their out-of-work compatriots needed an inexpensive way to
spend time. Tech-savvy students wanted to get out of the house. All
the PC baang owners needed was something to draw people in groups
and keep them paying a buck an hour while laying down extra cash for
sodas and instant noodles.

THAT SOMETHING was online computer games. Because Korea was a
Japanese colony for 40 years, until the end of World War II, it has
had an acrimonious relationship with Japan. The latter's consumer
electronics have traditionally been all but verboten thanks to both
trade policy and cultural resentment. No PlayStations, no Sega, no
Nintendo. As a result, PCs have become the dominant game platform in
South Korea - unlike in the rest of the world, where consoles
rule. And in 1998, with Starcraft the most popular game on the
market, PC baang owners started hosting tournaments to boost
business.

That snowball has now reached the bottom of the hill. Starcraft is
not just a game in South Korea, it is a national sport, what
football was in America in the 1970s. Five million people -
equivalent to 30 million in the US - play. And three cable stations
broadcast competitive gaming full-time to a TV audience.

Why watch gaming on TV? Partly for the same reason millions of fans
tune in for golf - if you play, it's compelling to see the pros do
their thing. But largely it's about production values. There is so
much insane enthusiasm staged around an event, it takes on a kind of
obsessive allure - seeing a subject this arcane, broadcast with such
a degree of adrenaline, described in frenzied, masterful detail, is
riveting.

As an Enigma-esque theme song introduces the broadcast, a
three-camera studio crew stands by in a PC baang in the basement of
one of Seoul's largest malls. Two opponents decked out in metallic
vinyl armor face each other across flat-screen workstations,
steeling themselves for a five-game session of Kingdom Under
Fire. Dry-ice fog rolls across the floor. As the music builds to a
gothic intensity, YES or NO appears on the TV screen, giving at-home
viewers a chance to vote online for the contestants: Maxim, a
two-time winner from the Cherry Clan, versus Fusion, a rising star
from the Saint Clan. Their faces zoom briefly onto the screen as the
commentator, sequestered in an adjacent room, announces the Korean
equivalent of "Let's get ready to rumble."

Kingdom Under Fire, like many real-time strategy games, is a mixture
of Tolkienesque imagery and resource allocation. Players micromanage
supply chains staffed by tiny serfs while casting flashy magical
spells to vanquish their opponents. Televised games are played in
fast-forward, like speed chess, creating a spectacle of medieval
Europe on Benzedrine: villagers frantically mining, keystone-cop
masons bricking up buildings in seconds, antlike armies on the
march. The excitement builds. The villagers are smelting! Six
minutes in, swarms of little soldiers are wreaking
micromayhem. Flocks of bats and fire-breathing dragons are on the
wing - all accompanied by color commentary and a soundtrack.

The music reaches a crescendo as the challenger finishes off the
defending champion in round one. Cut to a commercial: sexy teens on
the run, snacking on Atlas candy bars. Then the commentators are
back, trading banter and postgame analysis, replaying the highlights
and gearing up for round two. More music. More frenzied medieval
villagers. One hour and 55 minutes later, the defending champ
prevails.

"We had a 41 share last week of people who watch cable TV at that
time," says Chong Il Hun, 32, the lead announcer, who has become a
celebrity TV personality in the three years he's been covering game
tournaments. His station also airs online tutorials - playback
footage of pro players along with voice-over commentary ("In this
situation, I chose to go for the Yamato Gun, as opposed to the Optic
Flare").

Chong points out a 20-year-old in an orange sweatshirt, immersed in
online tactical warfare. "He's a pro gamer. Most of them practice 10
hours every day, like musicians," he says. "In Korea, people play
games using the Internet like that. It's a kind of boom. It's the
culture, it accelerates things. The first person gets something,
other people get jealous, it spreads to the mainstream." Seventy
percent of the country's Internet users are also online gamers, as
opposed to 20 percent in the US.

SOUTH KOREA'S hypersocial culture affects how people connect in
virtual space. Lineage, a homegrown online world, is a testament to
the overlay of virtual and physical environments. It hosts more than
3 million players. On any given night, 150,000 of them are signed on
simultaneously. Most play from PC baangs, which buy Lineage access
for 20 cents an hour and sell it for a dollar, but an increasing
number - those with wives and families - pay $25 a month to
subscribe from home.

Like its Western counterparts EverQuest and Ultima Online, Lineage
is a role-playing game set in the Middle Ages. Based on a comic
book, the story involves the efforts of an evil king's stepson (the
rightful heir) to rally a group of faithful followers (the Blood
Pledge) and topple the usurper. In practice, it unfolds like a
massively multiplayer king of the hill. The goal is to capture the
castle, which allows you to raise money by levying tariffs on chain
mail and mead. That enables you to buy more weapons and recruit
soldiers to guard the castle against the onslaught of other
attackers who want to do the same thing. Competing Blood Pledges -
large gangs of players that can number in the hundreds - lay siege
to one another's castles for hours at a time on fat broadband
connections that allow the battles to play out in full glory.

What makes Lineage a distinctively Korean experience is that when
players assemble to take down a castle, they do so in person,
commandeering a local PC baang for as long as it takes. In the
middle of a battle, these people aren't text-chatting. They're
yelling across the room. Platoons sit at adjacent computers,
coordinating among themselves and taking orders from the Blood
Pledge leader. Lineage has a fixed hierarchy, unlike American
role-playing games, in which leadership structures emerge
organically. At the outset, you choose to be either royalty or a
commoner. If you're a prince or princess, your job is to put
together an army and lead it. If you're a commoner, your job is to
find a leader. You pledge loyalty and fight to take over castles,
and no matter how great you are at it, you can never be in charge.

This kind of tightly defined clan structure, which mirrors the
Confucian hierarchy of Korean society, would be anathema to American
players, who generally want to be the hero-king Lone Ranger. "In
Korea, everyone is very comfortable with taking on subordinate
roles," says Richard Garriott, who created Ultima and now runs the
US division of Lineage's developer, NCsoft. "Their groups are
extremely well structured, to the point where they march in lines,
attack in waves, and have a style of coordination that you could not
possible match in the United States."

Arguably, it is the tight-knittedness of Korean society, and its
people's tendency to physically gather around technology, that makes
Lineage and the PC baangs a success. Unsurprisingly, Lineage hasn't
taken off in North America, partly because it's a game in which not
everyone can be the boss. More fundamentally, the distance between
Americans, physically and socially, makes it impossible to replicate
the contagiousness of the game, which is also the contagiousness of
PC baangs in South Korea and of broadband overall in the country. In
the US, going online is not generally a group social experience and
almost never a face-to-face social experience - in fact, we presume
that if you're online, you're not talking to someone who's in the
room.

The merging of virtual and physical space has huge implications, not
just for the players but also for the way companies operate and
where their costs are carried. NCsoft has only a few dozen
customer-service reps to deal with 3 million gamers. Why? Because if
a guy in a PC baang has a question, he can turn to someone next to
him and ask "What is this about?" or "How do you do that?" If the
person doesn't know, there's always the proprietor, who's been
trained by NCsoft to troubleshoot. Afterward, not only has the
question been answered, but the person who asked it is that much
more of an expert, in case the player next to him ever has the same
question. Essentially, customer support has been completely
decentralized, because players help one another - and also market to
one another. Buzz across the room sells broadband better than any
targeted advertisement can.

IN THE US and Europe, where media companies are obsessed with
pumping copyrighted content into living rooms, online games are not
acknowledged as the market driver for broadband. But in other parts
of the world, especially where population density is high and PC
game rooms are giving millions of people their first taste of
connectivity, online games are becoming the hottest high-bandwidth
ticket in town.

"We're talking to Singapore, Thailand, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South
America," says Heo Hong, NCsoft's CFO. In Taiwan, there are a
million Lineage players, most of whom play from home. In Japan,
NCsoft has a joint venture with Yahoo! and Softbank to package
Lineage as a subscription service. Last year, the game launched in
Hong Kong. This year, a Chinese partner will roll it out in Beijing.

In Asia, where copyright law is only loosely enforced, massively
multiplayer online games are less risky for media developers than
movies, music, TV programs, or console games. Unlike freestanding
content, online worlds are almost impossible to pirate. Someone
could copy the client application, but the game itself lives on a
centrally maintained network. Even if that person were able to
duplicate the backend system (it costs millions to run Lineage as a
reliable service), there is no way to replicate the presence of 2
million people and the dynamics that occur in a human system of that
scale. The value isn't bound up in the content. It's bound up in the
interactions - in the group experience.

South Korea's broadband commons challenges North American
assumptions about what bandwidth is for and why it's relevant. In
the US, cable, telephone, and media companies spin visions of
set-top boxes and online jukeboxes, trying to "leverage content" and
turn old archives into new media streams. There is a profound fear
of empowering consumers to share media in a self-organizing way on a
mass scale. Yet this is precisely what makes South Korea the
broadband capital of the world. It's not a futuristic fantasy that
caters to alienated couch potatoes; it's a present-day reality that
meets the needs of a culture of joiners - a place where physical and
virtual are not mutually exclusive categories.

When NCsoft, originally a systems integrator, decided to move into
broadband media, it could have chosen to distribute "webisodes," or
online animation. After all, South Korea is the third-largest
producer of animation after the US and Japan. Instead, NCsoft's Heo
says, the company "wanted to focus on interaction. And what is more
interactive than games? We made this market. We made new
sectors. American media companies were just using online capacity to
distribute offline media."

So what about those of us in channel-surfing American cocoon-land?
The vision of streaming media piped into the home, video-on-demand
24/7, and needle-narrow target markets is heralded as the way
forward. Yet it is possible that this vision is holding us
back. Perhaps the real market opportunities have nothing to do with
connecting people to the Universal back catalog and everything to do
with connecting people to each other. If Seoul is any kind of
signpost, the way forward does not lie in the single servings of
media we consume but in the playgrounds we share - no matter who's
manning the turrets and storming the castles.

J. C. Herz (jnhq at yahoo.com) wrote about Star Wars Galaxies in Wired
10.06.
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