Like many people half my age, I've got Halo 3 Beta fever. I've already played about 70 games online and have ranked up a bit, but not up to my usual standing. This week I'm out of town again and away from my console. Now that I've heard that they added a banshee to Valhalla, my fever temperature has risen again. So last night I looked for a gaming cafe in Houston.
Oh the pathos.
Somehow I just don't understand PC LAN party style gamers. I mean I think I understand what they are trying to do, but the very idea of paying 40 bucks or so for all the fun you can have on a rented PC in some dark room that's not your own dark room? How sad. And these guys are out there still playing Counterstrike. How absolutely pathetic.
There are about three gaming cafes in Houston if google is to be believed, but all of their websites appear out of date. None of them have XBox 360s and none of them appear to have more than 30 PCs. It basically means you'd be gaming with the same folks, which I suppose is not so bad if you're 13 and your mom wants to know where you are at all times IRL and virtually. But I can't even conceive of gaming without thousands of folks online. I mean, my Friends List on XBox live is 77 long and I've taken a lot of time to pare that down from 100. I could easily have 256 friends, I wonder if XBox Live might let me, some time in the future.
I understand Warcraft and all that. I understand Second Life and all that. What I don't understand is how gaming cafes manage to stay open or how their business model will remain useful. As a kid and young adult who has been to all of America's greatest and seediest arcades, I've seen the end of that era. Gaming cafes are just extended life support. Broadband to the home is real and the need to go to the local cafe can only continue if they become part of a network of semi-pro and professional competitions.
I haven't been much of a sports gamer, so I can't tell you how successful the XSN (Xbox Sports Network) has been. I do know that XBox Live gamers continue to complain about EA's server network. But there might still be some reasonable expectations from the conventional tournaments held online by all of the gamers. Bungie's enablement of video sharing for Halo and the Heroes' Channel for Project Gotham Racing are good ideas. But none of that matches the thrill of a real sports venue with megascreens, glitz and chatter.
So I think I can manage to survive a week without buying myself a travel XBox, but I didn't think that gaming cafes, the alternative, would be so far behind the console times. Their loss.
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