neils clark

Tonight I’m lucky enough to be staying in a guest house with a serious Malaysian gamer, Evan. He’s got the perfect job for it – he mans the night shift and has constant access to a computer. While we’re in the middle of Malaysia’s capitol, KL (Kuala Lumpur), and not one of the residential areas where you’d find serious gaming cafes, Evan was really cool about answering a bunch of my questions about how games are played throughout the country.

Gaming Skill and Fistfights

If you start playing with gamers you’ve never met, and you’re not in your home café, then people are going to expect you to be good. He said, “We use the term noob.” Unlike some of the other places I’ve gamed, noob has serious derogatory connotations. As with Flo Chee’s work on Wang-tta, the Korean concept for the “weakest link” on a gaming team, there are serious consequences for playing out of your league.

Games like Starcraft and Counter-Strike are popular, but reserved for the truly elite players. “If you’re on a team with somebody that you’ve never played with before, and you screw it up, then expect somebody to walk up to you and scream in your face.” Said Evan. “That’s when the fistfight will start.” Sometimes it won’t be so brutal, and poor players, or less than sporting players will simply be removed from the game.

Game Localization and Micro-transactions

There’s also a serious MMO/online gaming scene. As with a number of Asian games, rather than charge a monthly fee, they operate on micro-transactions. Players will spend smaller amounts of money on powerful items or weapons. “People all want to be in that elite upper group.” Said Evan. “I’ve spent 13,000 Ringit ($3,713) on my character.” He then noted that most people won’t want to leave after that. They’ve spent too much time and money to switch games. It also seems to make sense that with the intense emphasis on performance, that starting from scratch with a new game may not appeal to very many people who are already accomplished

His game of choice, “Risk Your Life,” was originally from South Korea - where it went bankrupt. A Taiwanese company then purchased it, and a Malaysian company then started to run a server of the game. Maybe I’m the only one fascinated by this. Maybe.

Thailand as an Aside

Some other backpackers who’d recently been to Bangkok mentioned the intensity of playing in the city itself. This reminded me of the ethnographies done by my friend Dr. Aaron Delwiche, who spent a month each in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. According to the backpackers, some cafes fill up entire levels in shopping malls, providing hundreds of computers for gaming, and a number of sectioned-off rooms with televisions and couches, made for groups of people to relax with friends. One backpacker noted that these massive cafes were, “Absolutely full of boys having fun.”

Cool. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see some Malay and Singaporean cafes firsthand.

Neils Clark :: Sep.01.2007 :: Games, Research ::

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