The Korean games industry is a giant enigma to many observers and professionals in the western market. Their industry is so massive, so socially-accepted, so utterly all-encompassing that it makes legal tiffles in the US look like something out of a parallel Eastern interactive cultural Stone Age. I've often talked with games thinkers, designers and insiders about what goes on in Korea and more often than not they seem to slip into a kind of strange reverie, drooling slightly at the sides of their mouths as they look into the middle distance while a vague shadow of ""What if" dances across their faces. So not a lot of sense out of them, then.
I was terribly pleased, therefore, to discover Jim Rossignol's PC Gamer article, Sex, Fame and PC Baangs: How the Orient plays host to PC gaming's strangest culture. It's almost as good as getting the info first hand.
Here's a snippet:
While RPGs attract many players from all walks of life, the real fanaticism is to be found in the competitive games that have made it onto TV. Early on a Friday night in Seoul's vast COEX mall complex, Interpreter Yang and I stand amid the television show audience at a regular Starcraft league game. One of five major leagues, and one of the key events for gaming television, the Ever Starleague has gathered an audience of about five hundred people, with a few more standing outside watching the game on large screens. This is a small but regular occurrence, a far cry from the stadium events in which [RED]Nada Terran must defend his crown. For those events, says TV show manager In Ho Yoon, people will camp outside the night before, just so that they get the best place to sit when the thousands of fans file into the stadium. Vaguely mesmerised by the fast-paced RTS action, I a, jolted from my reverie by a sudden roar from the assembled fans. Men and women, who a moment previously had been silently and studiously watching the build up of Zerg and Marines, suddenly erupt into screams and chants. The chubbier of the two stone-faced players is in trouble, and will soon concede defeat.
Well worth the read.
