I Just Stumbled Into a Beijing MMO Cafe & It Looks Like This

So after months of being in China and on my third trip here, I finally stumbled into an Internet cafe where MMOs are played, on a random Beijing street with a name I don't remember, and it looks like this:

Maybe 200 dudes (and it was 99% young males) in a wide wide room with fancy lighting, playing various MMOs at Midnight in the middle of the week. It's been a few years since the last major Chinese government crackdown on Internet gaming cafes I'm aware of, which is probably why I'm only seeing one now, but this one was wide open to the public, and you could even glimpse the gamers from the street, so I guess there's not much concern another crackdown will come any time soon. In any case, it was a quick surface glance at a world where real life prisoners must reportedly mine for virtual gold, or play Second Life on company orders, so they can find a Linden Dollar bonanza.

Oh, and the MMOs and other games they were playing?

Mostly DoTA, by the looks of things, with a smattering of WoW, CounterStrike, and various Chinese-made MMOs. While some guys just watched online videos instead.

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Comments

[Damien Fate]

I wonder what kind of internet speeds a place like that needs to provide a good experience for so many players at once.

Love the lighting :D

[Wolf Baginski]

Not as much as if they were playing Second Life. The highest speeds I have seen advertised for ADSL, here in the UK, would give 200 customers about 100 kbits/sec each, which feels a bit low if some of them are streaming video. And whether the telco can deliver that speed over real lines seems questionable.

And a friend has just upgraded to 65down/20up with what's labelled as "fibre to the cabinet".

So maybe an operation like that can run on a single line, but there is more than just total speed: latency matters too.

[Metacam Oh]

Looks like PC's are dying by the looks of that pic. /s

[Adeon Writer]

I'm jealous we don't have those. That's my scene right there.

[Ciaran Laval]

Throw in some beers and peanuts and that has potential to be a good night out!