What I learned in Thailand
A Look at a Different Online Gaming Culture

Josh 'Moxie' Sprague, 2005-04-11

Before I even knew where Thailand was on a map, I read a story listed on Fark.com about the Thai government issuing a mandatory closing time for net cafés that offered online games. Apparently, the incident that inspired this "last call" on online gaming was the death of a young teen, who was said to have died denying all bodily needs while playing Lineage. The mysterious Orient became that much more mysterious as I tried to figure out how a person could be so manic about a game that he dismisses Maslow's entire hierarchy in his quest for a great sword or to see the character's level click up one more number. Six months later, an old friend and I set out to live in another country and decided on northern Thailand as I had connections there. It was here that the differences between Asian gamers and Western gamers became more apparent.

While I can't find a story about a Western gamer dying of self-neglect, one can find stories of failed marriages, suicides, and even mail bombs for Everquest alone. So, Westerners can definitely get obsessive about our games, but not so much for the East's games. The opposite seems to be equally true. Lineage and Ultima online are a good case study as both were marketed for opposite sides of the globe, but never did as well as they had in their respective territories. When NCsoft brought on Richard Garriott to Lineage and began creating servers that combined North American and Korean servers, minor hell broke loose. To the horror of the developers, racist gangs arose to grief the opposing cultures (which is probably about the worst PR one could hope for).

Now the cultural anthropologist may give you nifty descriptions of differences in worldviews and cultural values, but I'm beginning to think a lot may be determined by location. For Thais and other less wealthy Asian countries, owning a home gaming system or a home PC with a net connection is an expensive and luxurious option. For most, it is too expensive to justify. Because of this, gaming happens in sterile, rectangular rooms lined with PC's and covered in posters of Ragnarok and other indistinguishably identical games. These businesses always show up close to schools and can be spotted from a distance by the massive pile of bikes out front. They usually charge a small hourly fee and enjoy the most success from the time school lets out to the now 2 am curfew.

These places tend to pander to kids. The vast majority of the players that I saw were between 8 and 14 years old. There were some college kids that had their own cafés, but these weren't as common. When the youth of the clientele comes into the picture, it becomes much more apparent why clashes outside of culture occur. When it comes to PC gaming in the West, the age range skews a bit older (for reasons that demand a whole other article) and in any online game's forums, you'll quickly find players who are looking to avoid the stereotype of the infuriating 14-year old player. I don't know if Korea's players are similar in age demographics, but with roving gangs of griefers, take a wild guess.

Now, I do know Americans who are very, very into Ragnarok Online (RO, just in case). A few years ago, I worked at a dial-up internet provider in northern Indiana. One of our sys admins was the webmaster of maybe the most popular English RO site. He was actually about my favorite guy there, but I was completely bewildered by his and my co-workers excitement for RO. My roommate worked at the same place and he started playing RO hoping to get in good with our boss that played (maybe like playing golf with the boss at a non-geek establishment). So, I created a character and started playing a game that I soon discovered to be a clicking adventure. For anyone who hasn't played, you basically click on enemies and that's the whole game. There is experience (which you have to earn to be able to sit down), new weapons and armor, and the whole classes thing, but it's basically just clicking on enemies. I do realize most online games can be reduced in such a way, but RO has done such a beautiful job of streamlining it that I found absolutely no distraction or enjoyment in it at all. One co-worker in particular never understood my dislike for it and our conversations would usually go like this:

Him: So, are you into RO?
Me: I don't really like it that much.
Him: Huh…so last night…I was fighting this guy to get a +1 Fire Tanto…

This made for long shifts at time, though I admired their passion and the fact that they found something that fulfilling. It was just the utter simplicity of it that was hard for me to wrap my head around.

Now, when I bring that back into the Thai context, the simplicity of the Asian games begins to make more sense. If one is paying by the hour and is playing in very short sessions, depth can become more frustrating then fulfilling. EQ would never get off the ground if one is paying hourly to retrieve a corpse. One would probably just cry for a while and start a new game. It is also this time constraint that demands a short and smooth learning curve. EQ2 took me maybe 5+ hours to eventually make it past the beginner's island and a few more to become a citizen of my city. I loved this stretched out progression, but if I were paying by the minute, I'd be much more antsy to skip through the talking and start into the progressing.

If the Thai kids aren't worried about their money, they are still frustrated by play sessions interrupted by government-imposed play breaks. Every two hours, café customers are supposed to get up and walk around to combat deep-vein thrombosis (which was the rumored cause of death of the kid I read about). This is a condition that's always given me the creeps since my Mom told me to always walk around on a plane every few hours to keep from getting blood clots that could cause a brain aneurism.

A valid counter-point to this short play session theory is that these games have level treadmills that demand extensive hours and input. So, if Thais can't play long and my American friends love RO, how does this follow? I think that it's actually the accumulation of lots of short play sessions that add up over time. Plus, the guys I knew most into the game were married with kids and had a full-time job. A game with accomplishment that comes in short bursts rather than a 4-hour raid could be a much more attractive option.

My limited Thai and my inability to successfully navigate Thai Windows prevented some much-needed hands-on experience. However, the surface observations picked up along the way gave me some new thoughts on how our environment could affect our tastes. For the sticklers out there, there are definitely cultural tastes and worldviews that play into this in ways as well, but those are for another article.