High-tech game market is a real-life battlefield

Walk into an Internet cafe any time, day or night, and you'll see a new subculture of computer gaming, currently dominated by the game Counter-Strike (CS). While CS, produced by US-based Sierra Studios, is bringing in the bucks for its Taiwan distributor Unalis Corp (松崗電腦) and for Internet cafe operators such as Aztec (戰略高手), this is only one aspect of an industry which has not only weathered the economic hardships of the last few years, but has been truly exceptional in that demand for the best selling computer games has outstripped supply.

According to figures compiled by Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry (資策會), the value of this market segment reached NT$3.5 billion last year, a 16 to 18 percent increase on 1999. And prospects continue to look rosy, with analysts confidant of 20 percent growth this year to bring estimated revenue of the computer games industry to an estimated NT$4.2 billion.

Despite this strong performance, industry workers say that they are operating in a relatively hostile environment with little government support, a situation which has them hamstrung and has allowed competitors in China and South Korea to gain the lead in this highly lucrative market. Nevertheless, the spoils to be gained in on-line gaming has industry workers chafing at the bit to exploit computer gaming's enormous potential.

CS sweeps the nation

According to Antonio Lu (呂維振), senior editor of PC Gamer (電腦玩家) magazine and gamebase.com.tw, LAN connectivity will be an essential feature of all future computer games. This function -- which allows player-to-player interaction in head-to-head combat or teamplay -- removes the computer game from the relatively static man-against-machine gaming.

"Over the past few years, computer gaming [in Taiwan] was dominated by real-time strategy (RTS) games such as Starcraft, Red Alert 2, and the Age of Empire/Age of Kingdom series. Last year, these were largely superceded by LAN connected first person shooters such as Quake 3 and the Half Life-series games," Lu said. "First person shooters still dominate the scene, with games that allow team play such as CS being the most popular."

Games like CS, and the high-speed LAN connections that they require, have stimulated the growth of Internet coffee shops. According to Wu Shou-shin (吳守信), vice president of Unalis Corp, the number of Internet coffee shops in Taiwan is expected to exceed 3000 by year's end. He estimated that there are currently 2,200 in operation.

The popularity of first person shooters is generally attributed to advances in 3D graphics technology and the increasingly availability of the hardware to process the

fast-paced action sequences. The lack of sufficiently high-speed household Internet connections means that these games are best played over quicker local area networks (LAN), which are primarily available at Internet coffee shops. LAN games generate most of these shops' income.

Aztec is Taipei's biggest Internet cafe operator with over 40 branches in the greater Taipei area, according to Cho Chih-chung (卓志忠), an Aztec outlet manager. Cho said that the group is considering expanding into central and southern Taiwan to capitalize on the craze for CS. Unalis Corp, which distributes CS in Taiwan, said that income from licensing games to Internet coffee shops alone reached NT$100 million last year.