Such was the scene at the first World Cyber Games, held at a convention center in Seoul this month. Beneath three overlapping Olympic-style rings, 400 competitors from 37 countries promised “fair play for friendship and harmony,” then grabbed their keyboards and mice and started (virtually) blowing one another away.
Some call this sort of thing escapism, and see it as the domain of spotty adolescents with too much pent-up testosterone pouring through their Pentium chips. Others are calling it sport, complete with leagues, sponsorships and, as in Seoul, substantial prize money. Still others call it the future: a glimpse of the consumer engine that could drive the online economy back into high gear.
According to several industry analysts, interactive gaming similar to the competitions in Korea–but over the Internet instead of in a closed arena–will soon play off against an explosive demand for new hardware. Consumers will want to use more powerful PCs, they’ll snap up TV-linked consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube and even start playing on third-generation mobile phones. The software–the games themselves–will do even bigger business.
In the process, online gaming could tame one of the biggest, ugliest white elephants left over from the New Economy, the so-called bandwidth glut. Over the past five years, billions of dollars have been buried under the ground and dropped to the bottom of the ocean in the form of fiber-optic cable. Back when folks were talking about the Information Superhighway, all this glass was supposed to provide the ultimate autobahn. But instead of carrying digital data, mostly it’s just been carrying debt. The proliferating dot-coms, third-generation telephones, video on demand and other projects expected to create a massive flow of traffic either folded, failed to materialize or are still aborning. So today there’s the equivalent of an eight-lane superhighway for a couple of Matchbox toys. And there are very few on-ramps, because telecom monopolies have been slow to surrender their control over the last few hundred meters between your house or business and the fiber-optic thruways. Despite a lot of publicity about high-speed digital subscriber lines and cable modems, the vast majority of Internet users still dial up their connections over snail-slow modems.
In the cautious business environment that prevails today, telecoms and governments need to be shown that masses of people really do want services–or entertainment–that only affordable high-speed broadband access can give them. And that’s where games come in. “Pornography or online stock trading don’t need broadband Internet,” says Oh Yoo Sup, CEO of ICM, which organized the World Cyber Games. “But because of their demand for the vast amount of data”–all those graphics, all that animation–“computer games need broadband service.” With literally millions of miles of unused cable available, and prices for bandwidth plunging, what’s needed to exploit the market is demand from consumers, pressure from industry powerhouses like Microsoft and either new broadband providers in deregulated telecom sectors, or savvier monopolies willing to deliver the services. In fact, like so many blocks in a game of Tetris, all those pieces are falling into place.
In the United States alone, the total hardware and software market for videogames is about $10.3 billion this year–on a par with Hollywood, depending on how you crunch your numbers. For the moment, most of those games are played in front of a TV or a computer, or on a handheld Game Boy. The Internet is not part of the experience. But analysts insist that’s about to change. A host of new or modified game consoles built to take advantage of high-speed Internet connections are just hitting the market. Xbox has a hard drive and broadband interface built in. GameCube and Sony’s Playstation 2 are due to get broadband adapters over the next few months. As software firms design more games for these machines, revenues from online gaming, a paltry $2.5 million this year and $138 million next year, are expected to soar to $2.3 billion by 2005, by GartnerG2’s estimates.
There are, as ever in the world of high-tech projections, plenty of imponderables. Will governments force the companies that control telecommunications to “unbundle”– open up the fiber-optic networks to competitors offering lower prices? Will kids in Atlanta sitting in their living rooms really want to play against rivals in Bangalore? Will the passion for online games reach beyond the young and the restless to embrace the mature and the curious?
Microsoft is betting that it will. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing its recently launched Xbox, Microsoft now has more people working on the online aspects of the project than on the console itself. “The possibilities are simply endless,” says J. Allard, Xbox general manager. “There’s not a game I’ve ever played that will not benefit from the online element.” He’s undeterred by the failure of Sega’s Dreamcast, which came out two years ago as the first interactive online console, and was recently discontinued. The difference: Dreamcast used a dial-up modem; Xbox is designed for broadband. “Online is the new revolution,” says Allard. “It will incubate for the next two years and it’ll run away from us and we’ll have a hard time keeping up.”
Visionaries like France’s Bruno Bonnell, cofounder of the French IT conglomerate Infogrames, talk about the trend as the evolution of Homo sapiens into Homo ludicus: gaming man. “Animals play, but they don’t play games,” says Bonnell. “They don’t build fantasies.”
Most boys and girls, of course, just want to have fun. But the video graphics are enthralling, the action hypnotic. And many players never really stop. Industry surveys suggest that the median age of “hard-core gamers” is rising as kids grow up, get jobs, get married, have kids of their own–and keep playing. A few may even turn pro, like 26-year-old Briton Sujoy Roy, who quit a promising job as an investment banker with JP Morgan to return to full-time gaming. “It was my passion at university,” he says, “and when the opportunity came up to actually play games for a living, it was just a no-brainer.” One year he pulled down $200,000 in sponsorship deals from Razer, the competition-mouse maker, and others. He made this fortune playing Quake, a game in which you see through the eyes of a gun-toting hero blasting villains–other online players who, once killed, are out of the game–and collecting ammo in elaborate mazes.
The World Cyber Games and smaller events of the same ilk suggest the lengths players go to compete online even when broadband Internet access is unavailable. In Europe and the United States they converge by the hundreds on rented halls for BYOC (“bring your own computer”) competitions, wiring the machines together in a local network. Some players go for FPS (“first-person shooters”) like Quake and Unreal Tournament; others prefer strategy games like StarCraft, where intergalactic rivals plot against each other. Counter-Strike pits teams of terrorists against teams of counter-terrorists planting bombs or rescuing hostages. Many gamers indulge in fantasies like Age of Empires, building cities, developing civilizations, then clashing them. Sports buffs who might not be able run the length of a real soccer pitch set pixels ablaze in the virtual matches of FIFA 2001.
To be sure, many adults who didn’t grow up with a mouse in hand or a Game Boy in the their backpack may not appreciate the world of videogames, online or off. One French executive whose company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the industry never actually plays the products. Many fans of Angelina Jolie’s pneumatic depiction of Lara Croft in the movie “Tomb Raider” probably weren’t aware the original character comes from a third-person shooter game. When the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development did a world survey of broadband use, it barely considered the impact of online games. “That doesn’t sound too serious,” says Dimitri Ypsilanti, head of the OECD’s telecoms unit.
Yet even among the checkers and cribbage crowd, online competition is slipping steadily into mainstream life. “Tens of millions of people are playing free easy-to-play games,” says Schelley Olhava, a tech analyst with IDC. Sites such as Microsoft’s Zone boast 10 million visitors per month, attracted mainly by simple games that do not require any registration or downloads. “The key to growth is low barriers of entry,” says Eddie Ranchigoda, lead product manager for the Zone. Since introducing trivia quizzes and Alchemy, a razzle-dazzle variation on tic-tac-toe, the Zone has seen its daytime traffic increase tenfold. Many participants are playing while they’re supposed to be working, and a surprising 52 percent of the audience is female. Ranchigoda believes that “the first-time gamer needs to be educated on more complex games to slowly get them excited and make them hungry for what broadband has to offer.”
That progression was almost instantaneous in South Korea. In the mid-1990s Koreans opened high-speed Internet access–broadband–to extensive competition instead of allowing former state monopolies to maintain control over the market, as many European countries have done. Several Korean companies rushed for the opening with new products, including cheap Internet-telephone service and interactive games. Today 13 out of every hundred Koreans have broadband Internet access at least twice as fast, and often more than 10 times faster, than any dial-up modem. No other country even comes close, according to a recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The United States has 2.25 per hundred; France, 0.31; Britain, 0.09.
If you build the broadband networks–and give the public access to them at reasonable prices–they will play. “Online-gaming penetration will increase with broadband and vice versa,” says Rebecca Ulph, an analyst at Forrester Research. In Korea, broadband sports are so widespread that visiting players feel like they’ve been fragged and gone to heaven. “People recognize me in the streets and ask me for autographs,” says Guillaume Patry, a 19-year-old Canadian who plays professional StarCraft. Sujoy Roy, now retired from competition and organizing leagues in England, was frankly stunned by the spectacle in Seoul: the excitement, the money, even the groupies. “Nowhere else in the world,” he said wistfully after he got back to London. But, then, in much of the rest of the world the games are about to begin.
title: “Let The Games Begin” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “William Vigil”
But it’s still too soon to write the 2004 Olympic Games off as a Greek tragedy. Although the renovation of Athens is not yet completed, The International Olympic Committee’s latest report predicts that the work will be done in time for the Games. Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyannis has managed to improve street-cleaning services, reduce the number of stray animals and create more green spaces in the notoriously gray metropolis. Bakoyannis, known as the “practical politician,” has a long track record for overcoming Olympian obstacles.
The daughter of former Greek prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis, she has been active in government for 20 years. When her husband, parliamentarian Pavlos Bakoyannis, was gunned down by members of the November 17 group in 1989, she became a chief advocate for antiterror legislation in Greece, and succeeded in passing a bill that helped mobilize Greek law-enforcement efforts. Bakoyannis was subsequently elected to parliament herself, and in 2002 she was the first woman to be voted mayor in the 3,000-year history of Athens. Bakoyannis spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Karen Fragala about the nerve-racking preparations for the Olympics and the question of security in an uncertain world.
NEWSWEEK: What is your strategy for securing Athens during the Olympics without making it feel like a city under siege?
Dora Bakoyannis: We are the first city to organize a summer Olympics Games after September 11th, and we know that our challenge is to keep the balance between being a city that is secure, but also a city which is partying. On every corner you will have street events, music, dance and exhibitions. But we won’t make any compromises in security. Our security plan is very expensive–[it’s] costing $1.2 billion–and we have 75,000 trained men who will be on the team. We asked for NATO’s [help] during the games, and we are in very close cooperation with several countries, which gave us their expertise.
After the bombings of the police stations in May, was there anything that you decided to do differently to improve security?
In Greece and in Europe we know the difference between terrorism and some guys who just want to get the press’s attention. They got the attention of the press, and that’s just very unfortunate, but that’s all. They didn’t mean business.
Some American basketball players have decided not to participate in the Olympic Games–due in part to security concerns. How would you address their worries?
Not participating in the greatest endeavor for them is like admitting that terrorists have [won]. I would never like to admit this. We believe that in taking part in the Olympics, we are giving the strongest answer to all those people who believe that they wanted to change our lives, and that is why I completely agree with New York. New York wants to get the Games in 2012, and we understand why [the Republican convention is] taking place in New York: life will go on without violence, with our determination.
You’ve played an active role in strengthening antiterror legislation in Greece. What are some of the advances that Greece has made in this area?
The most important thing is that the Greek society decided they will not accept this anymore. For me politically, it is a great fact that both parties in Greece voted in favor of the antiterror legislation. I was somebody who fought for it for years and knew very much the difference between being alone and having everybody agree. We must be very careful, with this kind of legislation, because in order to fight terrorism we must not deny our main democratic rights. Because that would be exactly the wrong message. But legislation is not enough. You need the active support of the people.
What effect will the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have on the games?
You must take into consideration that Greece is a country which has very good relations [with] the Arab world. Greece is a country that was never menaced by international terrorism. That does not mean that nothing can happen, but it makes sense to take all the security measures which are needed. We believe that the answer to terrorism isn’t only guns but also a moral one. This moral answer can come out of Greece, from the Olympic games because it is a big peaceful event which symbolizes all the values we believe in: democracy, human rights, solidarity, participation–so it’s worth it.
How will the historic past of the Olympics be commemorated in these Olympics?
The marathon will arrive at the [Panathenian Stadium], which is 3,000 years old and was restored in marble for the first modern Olympics in 1896. The cyclist road will go around Acropolis Hill. The ancient stadium of Olympia, which was the stadium where the Olympics games took place [in 776 B.C.], has been completely excavated and will host athletic competitions, for men and women. That’s a radical change because at the time there were no women allowed.
Reports earlier this year indicated that the construction for the Olympics sites was dangerously behind schedule, but now the IOC says that things are falling into place. Is there anything that still concerns you?
My greatest concern, I must admit, was the [Olympic Stadium] roof. The stadium was ready and approved by the IOC without a roof, but the Greeks decided to make a roof so that it could represent the architecture of modern Greece. But we had a lot of troubles. It is the first time in the world that this kind of experiment happened, all these thousands of pounds of metal and glass coming together. At last, they were two centimeters away, and everybody waited. Will it click? I made absolutely sure they called me from Athens on [June 4], and told me, “Yes, we did it.”
Some reports have indicated that hotel bookings and tourism for August are below expectations. How are the numbers looking to you?
I have to rely on the experts who have been through this with other Olympics Games. They say that Athens will have more participation than other Olympic Games in the past, due to our location. We are in Europe, close to other European countries, and people can get to us easily. The hotels are booked, the tours look as if they are going OK. Of course, we still have two months. Until then we still have to watch out.
When the Olympics were in Barcelona in 1992, it brought a lot of attention to Spain and ushered in a wave of prosperity and international tourism. What are your expectations that the upcoming Olympics will have on Athens?
We hope it will have the same [effect]. Athens has an infrastructure a lot like Barcelona, which it probably wouldn’t have gotten for a few years if the Olympic Games hadn’t been on this concrete date. Athens had a reputation which was not very favorable, due to problems it faced at the beginning of the 1980s. All this has radically changed, due to the new infrastructure and political decisions made. So Athens today is a clean city with a lot of possibilities, and we believe that the people who come visit us will become very good ambassadors for Athens.
