With the Carolina Panthers in the lead, fans had their eyes glued to the big screen TVs when the Patriots suddenly rallied and scored a touchdown, bringing them within 8 points of the Panthers late in the fourth quarter. The Patriots then tried an onside kickoff, but Carolina recovered it and, after the last seconds of the game ticked down, the Panthers emerged victorious, 29-21.
OK, maybe the real Super Bowl didn’t turn out that way. But the Panthers will always have bragging rights as the champions of the ninth annual “Game Before the Game,” a celebrity event in which players from the AFC and NFC championship teams face off in NFL GameDay, a Playstation football video game produced by Sony’s 989 Sports. This time around, Steve Smith of the Panthers and Tony Brown of the Patriots went head to head (or thumb to thumb) at the Hotel Icon in Houston three days before the big game. Tragically for Panthers fans, this was the first time in eight years that the winning player’s team didn’t go on to win the real-life Super Bowl.
It’s fitting that a video game now serves as a precursor to one of the biggest sporting events in the world. One day, it may be the other way around. While no one was watching, the video game industry has conquered music, movies and TV to become one of the most dominant forces in American pop culture — not to mention that it’s a $30 billion industry.
No longer just for pimply-faced junior high school geeks, video games have become a favorite pastime for the rich and famous and, apparently, nearly everyone else. On MTV’s Cribs, rap and rock stars, pro athletes and movie screen idols are sure to show off their Playstations or Xboxes along with their big screen TVs. And both new and established musicians are scrambling to get their tunes on video game soundtracks, knowing that millions of kids with plenty of disposable income will be listening (Korn, Filter, and KRS-One are just a few).
These days, movies are continually revamping their special effects to remain competitive with the mind-blowing advances in video game graphics. In fact there’s been a glut of movies in recent years based on video games, including Resident Evil, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat.
Then there’s the subculture of hardcore video game enthusiasts known as gamers — people (the majority of whom are male) who dedicate tremendous amounts of time and money to playing video games. The explosion in the number of gamers has led to the newest trend in the industry, gaming centers. These businesses, with multiple computers and “platforms” like Xboxes where enthusiasts can compete against their buddies and other gamers from all over the world, give gamers a place to gather and do their thing. Three such businesses have popped up in Charlotte since December.
Unless you’ve been in a cave (or too busy playing video games), you know that controversy has accompanied the games’ growing popularity. We’ve all heard the criticisms that video games are anti-social, unhealthy and instill violent tendencies in impressionable players. Nearly everyone knows at least one video game zombie who’s reduced to grunts and mumbles while plugged in to his game of choice. Defenders of video games, however, dismiss those criticisms and argue that playing the games helps develop reflexes, concentration and computer skills and actually qualifies as a form of self-expression.
While the video game industry is certainly creating a cultural change, just what kind of new culture is emerging? A good place to start looking for an answer is with Larathiel the Death Elf.
Behold the Death Elf
The gamer called Larathiel the Death Elf is co-captain of the Kore clan, and, as he will tell you, he is feared across cyberspace as a ruthless and cunning techno-gladiator who frags and smites without mercy. Kore is one of thousands, if not millions, of clans across the globe that compete in online gaming tournaments. As a Kore captain, Larathiel’s duties call for him to update the league rosters, mediate problems between players, and schedule matches with other clans. (“At least that’s what good captains do,” he explains.)
At one time, Kore had over 50 members, but Larathiel says they’re down to about a dozen, ranging in age from 16 to 38. “Things are kind of slow right now as we’re waiting for the newest version of Unreal Tournament to come out,” he says. “We’ve been around for over five years, though, which is pretty long for a gaming clan. We all consider ourselves friends, which is why we don’t let just anybody in. Our foremost concern is having fun with the games and each other.”
Any female Kore members?
“There aren’t any right now, but female gamers aren’t unheard of,” he says. “They’re still fairly rare though; I won’t kid you about that. Some of the less mature guys can act kind of stupid around them from time to time.”
Larathiel’s non-gaming, i.e., real name is Michael Darnell. He’s a 27-year-old UNC-Asheville graduate with a BS in Computer Science; he moved to Charlotte about two years ago, works as a sales associate at a local video game store, and currently lives with his folks in Indian Trail. He estimates he spends about 20 hours a week playing video games. You know you’re speaking with a hardcore gamer when a simple query about his favorite video games elicits the following response:
“For multi-player role-playing games, it would be Neverwinter Nights. My favorite first-person shooter game is the Unreal Series. I play that on PC. There are variances of that for both PS2 and Xbox, but I didn’t care for them. The big difference between doing a first person shooter on a PC and a console is that on the PC the capabilities of the mouse lead to far superior aiming than the thumbstick on the controller. That’s why most of the hard-core, competitive first person shooter players prefer the PC for that.”
Although I spent untold hours and quarters in mall arcades during the 80s perfecting my skills at games like Defender and Galaga, I completely missed the boat on the current video game phenomenon, and am a bit mystified by hardcore gamers like Darnell. So what’s the big attraction?
“With video games you can actually be part of telling a story as opposed to just watching it,” he says. “There’s so many times when you’re watching a movie and you’re like “ah, you shouldn’t have done that, you should have done this.’ Well, when you’re playing a video game you can actually make that decision for yourself. Plus, graphics have become so much more realistic — it’s like actual people now rather than a bunch of pixels on the screen.
“I think video games have lost a lot of the geek stigma,” he continues. “A lot of the guys I deal with online are competitive gamers — electronic gaming is their sport, just like basketball might be a sport for others. People who are competent enough to compete and put their egos on the line aren’t necessarily going to be the shy kids who don’t have a life and can’t get a date.”
From Pong to LAN
The first commercially successful arcade video game was Pong. Atari introduced the home version in 1975, and the race was on for video game dominance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the industry entered a period of rapid growth with popular games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Then the CD-ROM era hit in the late 1980s, and soon the leading producers of video games included the Japanese manufacturers Nintendo and Sega. Then Sony introduced Playstation in 1995, marking the beginning of video games as a central part of the pop-entertainment universe. In 2001 Microsoft introduced Xbox, and the trend intensified.
Globally, the industry earned $28 billion in 2002, and in the US it’s growing at a rate of around 20 percent per year. According to Fortune magazine, Americans will spend more time playing video games this year — about 75 hours on average — than watching rented videos and DVDs. Electronic Arts, the world’s largest independent video game publisher, with 4,400 employees worldwide, generated some $2.5 billion in revenue last year. Some of their biggest selling games are Madden NFL Football (30 million units sold), The Sims (28 million) and Harry Potter (20 million).
For the uninitiated, let’s explain: there are two types of video games — one made to be installed and played on your computer, and one that requires a separate machine or “platform.” The best known and most popular of these platforms is Sony’s Play Station 2, which has sold about 60 million units worldwide. Overall, video games can be broken down into two main genres — first person shooters (FPS) and role-playing games (RPGs). In FPS the screen serves as the player’s eyes, and at the bottom of the screen is the weapon you’re wielding. In RPGs, the player assumes the persona of a character in a story, the outcome of which is often determined by a player usually called the gamemaster. Although both RPGs and FPS are often played according to complex and voluminous sets of published rules, they both employ the relatively simple point-and-click-technology of the mouse. However, some of the game platforms like Xbox may have over a dozen buttons on their joypad controller.
Then there’s the newest development in the video game universe: competition on-line, in real time, against friends or total strangers in remote locations. With the cumbersome and uber-geeky name, “massively multi-player online role-playing game,” MMORPG is rapidly becoming the Holy Grail of gaming.
It’s also a big drawing point for places like The Hub Gaming Center on South Blvd. David Godley, after noticing gaming centers popping up around the country, got together with his brother and opened The Hub in late December. Two other gaming centers have also opened recently, The Net Play Cafe in Pineville, and Atlantis in Matthews. Most charge about $5 an hour to play.
Gaming centers capitalize on a phenomenon among devoted PC game players called LAN parties. During a LAN party, gamers, armed with cables, wires and all their computer equipment, take over private garages, bedrooms or rented hotel ballrooms for weekend gaming marathons. Typically, participants connect their PCs to a hastily assembled local area network (LAN) where attendees then get to blast away at each other for the next 24 hours, often fueled by coffee, energy drinks and the occasional nap. The main attraction for most enthusiasts is the multi-player games, typically played over an Internet connection, which is usually better when played over a LAN. Technically, games are faster and more responsive without the “latency” — or fraction-of-a-second delay in response — of Internet connections.
Gaming centers like The Hub provide all the hardware, network capabilities and games without the hassle of having to lug equipment all over town and setting everything up. It also provides the social component of being able to frag (gamer speak for kill) your buddy while sitting across the table from him.
“Gamers can come in here and play against each other and toss insults back and forth,” says Godley, 35, who also runs a computer repair and web design company. “We thought it would be kids and that we’d have to be baby-sitters, but so far our customers are mostly 20- and 30-somethings. There’s a cult following for this kind of thing. People would be shocked by how much time people spend playing games.”
Godley has decorated The Hub, located at the end of a strip behind a self-storage business, to give it a “nightclub” ambience, with dark colors, funky artwork and subdued lighting. And for a computer gaming center, it does have a relatively sleek, modern feel. Near the entrance are two big mattresses with green slipcovers to accommodate the marathon gamers when they need to take a break. Next to that is a foldout table with an assortment of drinks and snacks. The Hub used to be a hair salon, and when Godley moved in last year he kept the stylists’ booths, painted them black, and situated two computers in each. There’s also a four-man computer station in the back. All the tables and chairs are black, and Godley’s custom-built computers glow orange and blue in the darkness.
“Technology and the Internet have made people isolated,” Godley says. “Gaming centers like this make gaming social again. It brings people together, even if it’s not physically.”
Mike Boyter, 25, is a regular at The Hub. He moved to Charlotte from Asheville about a year ago, and currently shares a house with a couple of roommates. He drives a forklift at a manufacturing plant six days a week from 11pm to 7am. He comes to The Hub whenever he has time off and plays his favorite game, Call of Duty, a WWII first-person shooter.
On a recent Thursday afternoon he pulls up to The Hub in a late model two-door Nissan. He’s about an hour late for our scheduled meeting. He’s dressed in ragged jeans, a brown jacket and well-worn black tennis shoes. He looks a little weary, and has about two days’ worth of beard stubble.
“Sorry I’m late, I was at confession,” he says with an odd half-grin. He tells me later he was just messing with me.
Intense and a little sullen, Boyter doesn’t seem like a stereotypical “gamer,” but says he’s at The Hub every chance he gets, sometimes for 12 hours straight.
“I haven’t had a chance to get out and find everything, so I pretty much spend all my free time here,” he says. “I’ve told some people about it, but they’re busy, or their wives don’t really want them to go. So right now it’s just me. They keep getting more games. I just wish I had more time to play them all.”
Boyter says he first started playing video games in the 7th grade, and has been hooked ever since. “You get a chance to escape for a little bit,” he says. “You get to be a different person. You’re able to frag your friends; it’s exciting . . . I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”
Virtual Brothers
Like Hub proprietor Godley, both David Schew and Jamie Arnette noticed all the gaming centers popping up around the country, and figured they’d give it a shot.
“It’s a new concept for Charlotte,” says Arnette, who opened Net Play Cafe in Pineville in December. The Net Play Cafe is the biggest gaming center in the Charlotte area, with about 30 computers. “It’s still kind hard to convince people that playing Battlefield at home is different than playing here in the store. But this makes it more interactive. You can play with people you know and with people all around the world. It’s a whole other community.”
Schew is the newest proprietor to enter the gaming center market, having opened Atlantis in Matthews about a month ago. “This is really the arcade of the millennium,” Schew says. “This is the future. You don’t walk into an arcade with video games lining the wall anymore; now there’s Xboxes and Playstations and PCs.”
Like the others, Schew says one of the best things about gaming centers is that they take a technology that’s inherently isolating and make it more social. “So many kids sit at home by themselves and play video games or surf the Internet,” he says. “One reason we’ve done this is to try to create an environment that’s safe and social for everyone. There’s a camaraderie to it. When you’re playing your best friend and he’s at his house and you’re at yours, you really can’t brag.”
But does he ever think that kids (or in many cases adults) would be better off doing something else? Perhaps something a little more, um, active?
“There’s definitely a good and bad side to it,” he says. “When I was kid we were sent out to ride our bikes or play ball. I was also given a lot of attention. Both my parents worked, but they still spent a lot of time with me. Today, that’s not the case. I don’t think there’s a happy medium any longer. Kids do need to get out more. I think kids are given less opportunity to express themselves in a way that’s productive. Are there video game junkies out there? Absolutely. But it’s not just 16-year-olds. I’ll sit and play till 3am myself, and I have lots of friends in their 30s and 40s who do the same thing.”
Similar to The Hub, Schew was aiming for an “anti-computer lab” look when he designed Atlantis, which is located in a strip mall next to a Radio Shack beside a dead big box retailer. Six cushy black pleather chairs sit in front of three 30-inch high-definition TVs, all hooked up to Xboxes. The textured walls up front are painted a dark cream. In the back section, where the walls are painted blood red, there are six different stations — essentially several tables pulled together — each with four computers. A bead of lights is strung across the black drop ceiling.
Plopped down in one of the chairs up front playing Counterstrike is Cody Keck, 19, a regular at Atlantis. Keck moved to Charlotte from Maryland about a year ago. He’s currently unemployed, but plans to start taking computer science classes at CPCC in the spring, and hopes to one day create his own video games. Unfailingly polite and well spoken, Cody stands up and gives me a soft handshake. He’s dressed in tan pants and a blue button-down shirt. He often begins his sentences with “Oh jeez, let’s see here,” and finishes them with “and whatnot.”
Keck estimates that during the week he spends about five hours a day gaming, and even more time during the weekend. Unbelievably, he says he’s actually cut back the amount of time he plays compared to when he was in high school. Keck says he first started playing video games when he was 13. His all time favorite is Battlefield 1942, but he’ll “always have a place for Counterstrike.”
Although Cody assures me he has “a healthy life” aside from video games and plays basketball and hockey, I’m still amazed how anyone could spend so much time playing video games or, really, doing any one activity. What gives?
“My whole computer gaming got started when I was in high school,” he says. “I didn’t join a clan or anything, but I joined a bunch of people who played Counterstrike and whatnot. I really enjoyed the camaraderie with them. I became friends with them; we knew what we were all capable of. We were an army in a sense. Brothers, really. We trained together. It’s a good feeling to know that someone — even if they’re far away — is watching your back and making sure you don’t get killed. It gives you a sense of value, especially after 9/11.”
So as video games enter their fourth decade of commercial expansion, is the industry ushering in a new culture in which innovative technology allows creative types to express themselves, or one where flabby, pale geeks get to act out revenge and sex fantasies while holed up in their bedrooms? The answer may be a little of both. Fortunately, it mostly seems to be about connections — both virtual and real. While some guys bond over downing brews or shooting hoops, others bond while doing battle in the pixilated world of video games. Is it a kind a pseudo-interaction, where people are socializing but mostly through wires and cables? Maybe. But in an increasingly fragmented world, as long as people are connecting, albeit sometimes from vast distances, maybe a “virtual” kinship is better than none at all.
Contact Sam Boykin at sam.boykin@cln.com or 704-944-3623.
This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2004.
