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TIME MAGAZINE, JUNE 4, 2001, VOL.157 NO.22
Where Does Fantasy End?
Why all of South Korea is obsessed with an online game where ordinary folks can be arms dealers, murderers ... and elves
By MICHELLE LEVANDER Seoul
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Stuart Isett for TIME.
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Korean gamers spend most of the day and night playing Lineage or
hanging out in a PC cafe waiting for the chance to play. The teenagers come
together through their obsession with the online game.
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Five rough-looking men stepped out of a black sedan and burst into the Seoul PC café where Paek Jung Yul hangs out with Strong People Blood Pledge, his clan of online gamers. "Is the wizard here?" demanded one of the toughs, asking for the player who killed his character in an online game called Lineage. The "wizard" was there, alright, and he was feeling bold. He boasted that he had offed the gangman's virtual character just for the fun of it. Bad idea. The roughnecks dragged the 21-year-old into the urinal and pummeled him until he was covered with real-world bruises.
Paek describes the incident—now part of his clan's lore—with jaded nonchalance. Actual violence has become so commonplace among computer-game players that concerned authorities even have a term for it that borrows from the game: "off-line PK" (player killings). Paek, who relishes online killings as a refreshing change from his decorous real-life manner, allows that physical retribution is merited if players engage in particularly craven online behavior, such as theft or scams involving the game's coveted virtual weapons. Online revenge is O.K. too: "Usually, I kill the ones I hate," he says. Those are fighting words, coming from a shy, skinny 16-year-old who regularly tops his high-school class. But this is the other Paek speaking, the ruthless (and female—go figure) elf who is master of Lineage, a medieval fantasy game that has swept Korean society into a gaming frenzy. "In reality, I have few ways to express myself or show off," Paek says. "But in the game, if I put in a little effort, many people will know who I am."
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In South Korea, a deeply conformist society where children must speak to elders with a special deferential grammar, this bloodthirsty game has caught on with a vengeance. In Lineage, gamers playing princes, wizards and elves fight one another to the death in mini-armies or clans, headed by guild masters, to gain control of the castles that dot the virtual world. The victors can then levy feudal taxes upon virtual villages under their control and dun gamers a percentage of each online weapons sale. All this can be fairly lucrative, especially since there's a thriving black market that exchanges the virtual items for cold, hard cash. But what makes the game so addictive is its complex feudal environment, which hooks players after they invest days or weeks building up the strength of their online characters. Based on its success in garnering online subscribers in Korea alone, Lineage is the most popular single interactive online game in the world right now, ahead of Sony's Everquest, Electronic Arts' Ultima Online or even Microsoft's Asheron's Call, according to Samsung Securities.
Why does Lineage have such a hold in Korea? "This is a small country," explains Joonmo Kwon, an educational psychologist. "If everyone you know plays Lineage, you have to play it." Besides, says Kwon, the game's emphasis on winning and working in groups speaks to the Korean spirit. And then there's the universal explanation for escapism: "In the real world, in Korea, you have to repress your drives and hidden desires. In the game they come out."
In this wired nation, there are PC cafés on virtually every street, outfitted with the high-speed Internet connections that make interactive games crackle. Open 24 hours, and charging just $1 an hour to play, these game rooms are well stocked with cheese-whiz sausages, potato wafers and instant noodles. Many games are played here, but Lineage is the most addictive, authorities say. Two million people, out of a population of 46 million, have active Lineage accounts. And when day turns to evening, close to 100,000 Koreans can be found glued to computer terminals around the country, playing the game simultaneously. School kids in Seoul routinely doze through classes after playing all night. Parents either don't know or can't stop them. Shy young boys take on alter egos as aggressive killers online. A doctor plays ruthlessly while a neighborhood bully has a chance to show compassion. Girl characters, meanwhile, have sometimes been known to offer sexual favors to experienced male gamers in exchange for virtual weapons. But, as one Lineage clan's guild master notes, who's to say the girl characters are really girls?
The game has also caught on with the loan-sharking gangsters active in the Korean entertainment industry. Some have seized control of Lineage castles, gamers say. They do a brisk side business trading in virtual weapons and levying taxes in the game. In between off-line heists, they boast among themselves about their online exploits. "They guard people for money in the game," says the sweet-faced girlfriend of one gangster, as she leans back into a red plush couch at a Seoul bar. "It's just like reality."
At times, it seems like the whole nation is caught up in the confusion. Sandwiched between news of the latest political scandals, Korea's broadsheets revel in details of Lineage controversies. One March article in the Dong-A Ilbo reports on an online protest—when "more than 1,000 players gathered within the Lineage world"—after unscrupulous gamers took advantage of a computer glitch to make bootleg copies of the game's prized virtual weapons. Korea's intellectuals and literary hopefuls have also gotten caught up in the craze. Gamer Lee Seung Woo, a draftsman by day whose real-life hope is to find a girlfriend, has written a still unpublished novel about male friendship set in the game. Then there's literary critic Park Sang Woo, whose book on Korea's game players draws on the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault. "For the gamer, the game world is much more attractive than reality," he writes, based partly on his own experience. "Reality is only a space in which he makes a small amount of necessary money for continuing the game."
Even Lineage developer NCsoft has gotten caught up in the virtual world of its own making. Systems administrators, often gamers themselves, have been fired for throwing online events in favor of one gaming clan or another. The company recently issued an online apology to its customers for one such incident and promised it would investigate any allegations of employee corruption. Kim Taek Jin, NCsoft's president, says gamers have attempted to buy off his staffers with gifts of up to $1,000 to manipulate the game. Korean newspapers report that some gangsters recently turned up at the company demanding personal information on online rivals to extract off-line retribution.
Not surprisingly, NCsoft's Seoul headquarters is fortified with double steel doors and fingerprint scanners for the server room. "In Korea," Kim says dryly about Lineage's diehard fans, "hate is a kind of love." To protect the game software, Kim has set up security procedures that might be more familiar to a bank. Meanwhile, vigilantes with names like the Honorable Resolution Clan take it upon themselves to monitor their own members as well as the behavior of unsavory rivals. Online killings are often accompanied by abusive curses and threats sent in instant messages. Sometimes, entire clans—numbering in the dozens—storm down to NCsoft headquarters to demand redress when another has wronged them. Others take a more legalistic approach, meticulously documenting grievances by taking "screen saves" of incriminating moments in online battles.
Others prefer to settle their own scores, such as Paek's Strong People Blood Pledge clan. A number of the 16-year-old's gang sport the close-cropped haircuts and tight suits that gangsters here wear as a kind of uniform, he says. When members meet, they usually like to carry out online player killings together. Paek doesn't seem worried about the clan's reputed gangster ties. "It's O.K. when we get to know each other," he says. "If they are enemies, it's really scary."
Authorities say three types of crime are common in the game: hacking into others' accounts to steal weapons, stealing users' online identification and fraud connected to the sale of virtual arms. Kim Gi Bum, an inspector in one of the police's new cybercrime units—founded after authorities were deluged with complaints from Lineage gamers—tells of a 14-year-old runaway who recently defrauded gamers out of about $10,000 by promising to sell them virtual weapons but not delivering the goods after he was paid. The boy, who often slept in the PC café where he played Lineage, pulled off 128 fraudulent deals over a year before he was captured.
For the non-player, the mixing of reality and fantasy boggles the mind. But serious game players live their lives toggling between the two worlds. "The game doesn't affect reality," says a red-eyed addict after spending two nights playing virtually nonstop. "Reality affects the game."
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