Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The snow of Kilimanjaro.

A few old mainframes wrapped in pulp, small black houses with mottled yellowing walls, and a group of children clutching their handles and staring intently at the screen, sound like the game console rental houses we went to in our childhood.

But in fact, this familiar picture, which seems to be trudging through time, is only spatially away from us. It took place in a video game rental house in Tanzania, Africa.

The game environment here started relatively late, and people had limited access to games, but as in China a decade or two ago, a group of children walked into perhaps informal game rental stores and reaped colorful mainframe game enlightenment in a cramped and dark environment.

1 ngatunga from Tanzania is the owner of this mainframe rental store.

A PS3, which has been in service for many years, and a small TV with an unknown brand are all the belongings of his shop. It is said that it is a small shop, but in fact, the machine is placed in his home facing the street, and the children and young people coming and going at the door are the main people who come to spend in his store.

Because there is only one set of equipment, usually the scene in the store is played by two people, and more people stand at the back and watch. The reason for being two people is that in this dark room, the game with overwhelming "work rate" is a football game. There are many reasons for this phenomenon.

The most important of these is because it is cheap. In ngatunga's store, there are two charging modes, one is normally charged according to time, the price is about 3 yuan per hour, and the other is based on the number of football games, which is almost 70 cents per game. If two people play a game, they can split the expenses and pay a total of 70 cents. Sometimes agreed on the "losers pay" game, but also one side can rely on technology to play for nothing.

The charge of 3 yuan per hour sounds very low, just like our previous rule of "boxing king", but in the local area, a set meal of meat and vegetarian rice costs only 5 yuan, which may not be the specification that these children can eat at every meal. Relying on the operation of the rental store, ngatunga can earn about 810 yuan a month, which is not much, but it is enough for him to support himself and live a good life in Tanzania, where the per capita GDP is 1090 US dollars.

If someone accidentally breaks his machine, he won't go to the customer for compensation. The reason is simple, because no one can afford to pay for a machine, and most of the people who come to him to play games are children.

Another reason is that the players who come here don't have much choice. The shopkeeper's collection is very limited, a total of three, a live, a FIFA, and a "Need for Speed". These small customers who are closer to the football culture will naturally prefer the latter to the gorgeous sports cars they have never seen before.

According to him, the live football in the store is PES 2020. But it should be a slip of the tongue. The picture shows PES 2010. Besides these games, ngatunga himself has also played a lot of other games, so it's not that he hasn't thought about getting a few other game CDs to expand the "business scope" of his own store. But after simple research and careful consideration, he gave up the idea. Not only does buying and renting discs mean higher costs, because it takes more time, which means higher prices, but guests' interest in "task-based games" is naturally mediocre.

But even with football games, this African game rental house can still attract a lot of children. The business doesn't bring him much income, but it's enough for him to support himself.

As a result of hanging out in the Reddit forum all the year round, after opening a shop for a period of time, he thought of sharing his own PS3 rental store, but soon ushered in a heated discussion among netizens.

But at the beginning, what netizens immediately thought of was not the game.

Mention Tanzania and Africa, these netizens who are mainly European and American users, the first thing that comes to mind is those "African stereotypes." As soon as they opened their mouth, they began to ridicule whether they could look up and see unicorns as soon as they went out, and then solemnly discussed "a hundred methods of unicorn meat."

Rare birds and animals are indeed the first thing that comes to mind when many people talk about Africa. If they set foot in Tanzania only as travelers, their stereotypes may really fit the bill. Whether it is the Serengeti prairie, which can witness the great migration of animals in Africa every year, or Mount Kilimanjaro, which is known as the highest peak in the equator, it is very much in line with people's imagination of a fantastic land.

But for ngatunga, this is not his life.

He and his shop, Dar es Salaam, are the largest city in Tanzania. As a port close to the Indian Ocean, it is not only the former capital of Tanzania, but also the current economic center. Although people lead a relatively tight life, they have long been far away from the slash-and-burn cultivation of African tribes in the film, including entertainment and video games.

A bird's-eye view of the city of Dar es Salaam in recent years, the African gaming industry is no longer as "mysterious" as it was more recently. We can learn from the media that they have their own CS:GO teams, game development teams that are trying to tap local culture, and mobile game market data that are rising year after year. More and more reports focusing on this show the potential of games in this land. But how players get access to games, which games are the most popular, and how they usually play games is still a long way off for us.

It may also be for this reason that ngatunga quickly gained a lot of attention after sending out a simple picture of the guest playing the game. In the eyes of netizens, the last generation mainframe, which should have been put in the attic to eat ash, and even eliminated the old mainframe of the last decade, can also become the source of happiness for these children.

What ngatunga did not expect is that old mainframe rental houses like this are not uncommon in Africa. More netizens from third World countries have also shared the trail of game rental houses around them as if they had found a friend.

3 netizens from Chechnya recalled that his first experience of the game also took place in such a rental store. When he was a child, someone would rent an PS1 for 100 rubles a night, which was a lot of money for him as a child, but it still couldn't stop him from walking into the games: "those damn nights are priceless. Today I have a computer worth 1500 euros, but the taste of the game is different."

Kenyan friends, also from Africa, talked to ngatunga about their rental store in Swahili. Think that this is a good job, a mainframe can support itself, encourage him to continue to do.

He was also advised to buy another PS4 to increase his income. Some people listened to other people's stories and remembered that their relatives in Colombia had run a similar business. Renting PS2 was very popular in South America from 2006 to 2012 in the PS3 era-or rather, after PS2 was eliminated. People cannot afford to buy new consoles that have just appeared on the market, and not many people can use laid-off old consoles, so such mainframe rentals have become the only way for children to get access to console games.

In Peru, in western South America, there may be more people who can afford an PC or mainframe. However, according to netizens there, there were still many such stores opened nearby when he was a child. Meeting friends to play games in the store is also an important activity for them. Hold games and face opponents. They will enjoy the feeling that their friends are around when they play games.

Netizens, who grew up in Honduras, mentioned that when he was a child, he had a neighbor with N64 who would be open to nearby children for a fee. He often takes his brother to play the "Nintendo Star Battle Series". If he doesn't have enough money, he only plays for half an hour, and sometimes he watches it for a few hours. Sometimes, there are more than a dozen children waiting in line to play.

The starting point of a well-known series last July, when he returned to Honduras during the holiday, he saw that the store was still open there, so he didn't forget to ask his brother if he wanted to rent another old mainframe to play like they did when they were kids.

At this point, not only netizens from third World countries, but also more people recall the days when they were able to play games with a group of peers in mainframe rental houses.

Some people think of the time when he and his friends fought in the dark "Dragon Ball Z: the first martial arts club in the world 3"; some netizens recalled the "long night" when he and his friends shared machines to play games in shifts to save money; and a friend recalled that when he was 7 years old, his father brought back the Atari and Intellivision demo ROM board from the store, which became the story of the most popular children nearby that summer.

Seeing ngatunga and his small shop, most netizens can find the shadow of their childhood here, and the discussion is basically enjoyable. However, apart from praise or encouragement, there are also some skeptical remarks.

4 the main voice in the negative view is to question the purpose of the ngatunga post.

It is suspected that he has the element of winning sympathy, and it is speculated that his original intention is to get donations from netizens. People with a strong sense of vigilance will remind others to tell whether the owner will really spend the money on the upgrade of the game house in the end. Even people with excessive "compassion" will scold him for being too market-oriented after learning that the game house will charge the child.

As for the purpose of posting, ngatunga never denies his intention to rely on it to promote. In the face of netizens' intention to donate after posting, he will patiently explain how high the cost of mailing will be-because a second-hand PS3 and PS4 may cost only a few dozen dollars, but the postage from North America to Tanzania costs thousands.

But even so, many netizens were willing to pay their own postage and sent him the old machine that had been eliminated at home with a lot of games.

After a month of waiting and upgrading of the very "North American" game lineup, ngatunga's store has added several PS3 and a PS4, as well as a new TV with netizens' donations. The problem that needs to be solved most urgently here has changed from a lack of consoles and games to a lack of televisions. Every other week, he will also post a "report" to netizens, so that they can see their enthusiastic results.

But football is probably the most popular "love machine" is still on the road, when the new posts are not very hot, he will still post pictures to show the love of netizens, continue to enthusiastic netizens "let these children surprise!" It's my wish.

Then found that COD can also play on the forum, ngatunga once asked American netizens why he didn't see many North American tourists in Tanzania, but European tourists came in large numbers. The other party told him that it may be because the climate and scenery here are nothing special, and the distance is too expensive, they prefer to go sunbathing and skiing.

He was very satisfied with the answer and said that he would like to travel in the future and also want to see the snow. But he seems to forget that in his equatorial homeland, Tanzania, there is a Mount Kilimanjaro, where there is snow on the top of the mountain-just like there are games.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: sleep with algae

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