Undoubtedly the biggest thing in the world right now is Diablo 3. Throughout my life I've always been a bit jealous of PC gamers, as I've never had a computer powerful enough to play PC games. Although, that's probably a good thing.
I can't help but feel a bit jealous though when some big game comes out that is PC only. Such is the case with Diablo 3. However now I have a way to play it....the internet cafe!
Taipei is filled to the brim with internet cafes, some dark and dank, while others are as extravagant as clubs, with luxury seats and attractive interior design. Starting at just a dollar an hour and getting cheaper the longer you are there (2 bucks for 3 hours, and so on) they can be a pretty inexpensive way to play those games your computer at home can't handle.
I say play games, because i have never once seen anybody use one for anything other than gaming. With the small exception being those foreigners who have just arrived in Taiwan and they didn't bring a computer. I remember spending a half hour a day at an internet cafe for the first two months, looking for apartments online, emailing people, catching up with some news.
But yes, internet cafes in Taiwan are almost solely used for gaming. As such they are geared to the "home boy" culture in Taiwan. A "home boy" is similar to the Japanese "otaku" basically the stereotype of a guy who stays at home and plays computer games all day, and reads comic books, and is slovenly and cannot talk with girls. Therefore many of the workers at these internet cafe are girls who look like cute Japanese cartoon characters and dressed like whores. There is a pretty nice internet cafe near my house that I went into for the first time yesterday to find out about Diablo 3, but seeing the two children who worked there and how they were dressed, just kind of killed my soul. It's made all the more creepy by the fact that they went out of their way to hire these girls and make them dress this way to entice the guys to go there to play games. Granted this is a common practice in many businesses here, and i'll address that in future posts.
One other thing internet cafes are notorious for, are deaths. It seems like every few months, somebody in Taipei dies while at an internet cafe. Just back in February a guy died at an internet cafe nearby and he had been dead for 14 hours before anybody noticed that he was no longer alive. To combat this I believe there used to be a law about how long you could be at one internet cafe. Basically after X amount of hours you had to leave. Granted you could get up and walk across the street to another internet cafe and keep gaming, but at least it got your body moving for five minutes. Then again I'm sure that this law was never enforced.
NOTE: A friend helped me to look up the current law, and said that there isn't a consecutive time limit one. Only rules for minors and what times they can be there. Also the workers at an internet cafe must remind patrons to take regular breaks. But they are not required to take any break.
One final thing about internet cafes. Some are actually cafes and serve drinks and food. The local one I mentioned before has an amazing system. When walking my dog, I sometimes look in the window and see people eating and gaming at the same time. How does this work? Well the cafe has a special plate that is long and thin that goes right at the edge of the table, right in front of the keyboard. Basically a troth to facilitate convenient eating while still engaged in the game. This troth is both clever and depressing at the same time.
