East meets West: PC Gamer's trip to Korea

by Jennie Lees on Jan 4th 2006 5:00PM

Jim Rossignol, from UK magazine PC Gamer, took a trip to South Korea last year and this account of the gaming culture there takes a look at everything from Starcraft superstars to gaming television and MMO addicts.

A culture that revolves primarily around PC gaming, playing games is a very social activity in Korea, and high-profile gamers become celebrities with huge fan clubs. It's not without its problems, though: with many poor quality games, strict censorship and licencing problems, gamers don't have as much freedom to choose as they might like.

It's very different to how we work in the West, although some aspects of our culture are converging. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live in a gamer's utopia, where everyone understands your passion, the answer's quite simple: move to Korea.

Source

Tags: eastern, korea, PC, pc gamer, PcGamer, starcraft

Reader Comments (4)

DAE HAN MIN GUK !!!

Yeah I read that article in the mag few weeks ago, pretty cool read. Made me wanna live in korea :P , just the language is hard...

I live in korea. The gaming isnt all that great here. Counter strike is just starting to get reconized here. They were years behind on starcraft and warcraft 3. They have some innovative games coming up but most of their games are straight rip-offs of american games. Nobody really plays guild wars here and the most popular game from children to adults is a came called Cart Rider which is taken from Mario Kart, rainbow cubes and all.

Lan parties are easy to have. You just hit up the local pc room and play the game you want. Unless it a game that they dont have and you can't download then you are screwed. And it doesnt have the same feeling as having your pc with you. There isn't any excitement its just something to do to pass the time. Playing at pc rooms with friends is about as exciting as playing online at my house.

Korea comes off as a great place to play games. In practice its stuck 5 years in the past compaired to the west. The games that you can play are few and far between and if you want to play battlefield 2, Age of Empires 3 or any new game that is out come here in 3-5 years and it'll be the new hot thing. (That is until a korean company rips it off and gives it to them for free, but hey what can you do???)