Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Online Gaming in Korea




Online gaming is huge in Korea. You may have heard that Korea even has TV channels dedicated to it.  This is true! The best way I can describe it is how in the US you sometimes see poker on TV. They have commentary in the background and everyone looks very serious as they plot their next move. There are a lot of famous players and they even have their own fanclubs.  Gaming in Korea is just like that. There are these huge tournaments where the games are placed up on screens and the players are put into soundproof cubes where they compete against one another.  These players play ten or more hours a day. This is all professional level though.

With the normal population, gaming is still huge, in fact there are a lot of government programs to help stop gaming addiction. Though, at the same time there are actually gaming acadamies where people go to learn and improve their gaming skills. 

You see, in Korea there are these places called PC bangs. (Literally PC 'rooms') They are all over Korea and every street has at least one or two.  They are high speed computers where people go to play games.  You pay a small fee, like a dollar an hour. I know a lot of my students go there after school.

The level of addiction is getting greater though, and there is an actual ban on underage students so they cannot be online gaming from certain hours at night.

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