Snow in Kilimanjaro.
A few old and broken consoles, a small black room with mottled and yellowed walls, and a group of children clutching the handles and staring at the screen intently, it sounds like the game console rental house we visited in our childhood.
But in fact, this familiar picture that seems to have traveled through time is actually only a distance from us in space. It happened in a game console rental house in Tanzania, Africa.
The game environment here started relatively late, and people had limited access to games, but just like in China ten or twenty years ago, a group of children walked into a game console rental shop that might not be formal, and gained a lot in the cramped and dark environment. Colorful host game enlightenment.
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ngatunga from Tanzania is the owner of this hosting rental shop.
A PS3 that has been in service for many years, and a small TV of an unknown brand are all his possessions in his small shop. It is said to be a small shop, but the machine is actually placed in his home facing the street. The children and young people who come and go at the door are the main consumers who come to his shop.
Since there is only one set of equipment, usually two people are playing in the store, and more people are standing behind and chatting onlookers. The reason there are two people is because in this dark room, the game with an overwhelming “work rate” is a football game. There are many reasons for this phenomenon.
Most importantly, it’s cheap. In ngatunga’s store, there are two charging modes. One is to charge according to the time, and the hourly price is about 3 yuan; the other is to charge according to the number of football games, which is about 70 cents per game. If two people play a game, they can share the cost equally and only need to pay 7 cents together. Sometimes a game of “loser pays” is agreed upon, and one party can still rely on technology for nothing.
Just like the rules we used to play “King of Fighters”
The hourly charge of 3 yuan sounds very low, but in the local area, a meal of rice with meat and vegetables costs almost 5 yuan, which may not be the standard that these children can eat every meal. Relying on the operation of the rental shop, ngatunga can earn about 810 RMB per month. Although he does not earn much, it is enough for him to support himself and live a decent life in Tanzania, where the per capita GDP is US$1,090.
If someone accidentally breaks his machine, he will not go to the customer to pay for it. The reason is simple, because no one deserves the money 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 actually don’t have much choice. The owner’s collection is very limited, there are only three in total, one is Live, one is FIFA, and the other is “Need for Speed”. These small customers who are closer to football culture will naturally prefer the latter than the gorgeous sports cars they have never seen.
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
In addition to these few games, ngatunga himself has played many other games, so it’s not that he hasn’t considered getting a few other game discs to expand the “business scope” of his small store. But after simple research and careful consideration, he gave up the idea. Not only does buying and renting discs mean higher costs, because more time needs to be invested, which means higher prices. The interest of guests in “task-based games” is naturally mediocre.
But even if it’s just football games, this African gaming rental can still attract a lot of kids. The business did not bring him much income, but it was enough for him to support himself.
Since he has been on the Reddit forum for many years, after opening the shop for a while, he thought of sharing the fact that he opened a PS3 rental shop, but he didn’t expect to soon usher in heated discussions among netizens.
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But in the beginning, what netizens immediately thought of was not the game.
When mentioning Tanzania and Africa, these netizens who are mainly European and American users first think of those “African stereotypes”. As soon as they opened their mouths, they began to tease nonsense, whether they could look up and see unicorns as soon as they went out, and then seriously discussed “one hundred ways to make unicorn meat”.
Rare birds and animals are indeed the first thing that many people think of when they talk about Africa. If they only set foot in Tanzania as tourists, their stereotypes might still hold true. Whether it is the Serengeti prairie, which witnesses the great migration of African animals every year, or Mount Kilimanjaro, known as the highest peak on the equator, it is in line with people’s imagination of a fantasy and exotic land.
But for ngatunga, these are not his life.
Dar es Salaam, where he and his shop is located, is the largest city in Tanzania. As a port adjacent to the Indian Ocean, it is not only the former capital of Tanzania, but also the current economic center. Although people’s lives are relatively poor, they have long been far away from the slash-and-burn farming of African tribes in movies, and they also have entertainment and video games.
Aerial view of the city of Dar es Salaam
In recent years, the African game industry has become less “mysterious” than it was a long time ago. Through the media, we can learn that they have their own CS:GO team, a game development team that is trying to tap local culture, and the mobile game market data is increasing every year. More and more reports focusing on this show the potential of games in this land. But how players get in touch with games, which games are the most popular, and how they usually play games are still far away for us.
It may also be for this reason that ngatunga quickly gained a lot of attention after it posted a picture of a simple recording of guests playing games. In the eyes of netizens, the last-generation hosts that should have been put in the attic to eat ashes, and even the old hosts that have been eliminated for the past ten years, can also become the source of happiness for these children.
And what ngatunga didn’t expect was that old host rental houses like this are actually not uncommon in Africa. More netizens from third world countries also shared the traces of game rental houses around them as if they had found a fellow fan.
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A netizen from Chechnya recalled that his first experience of the game also happened in such a rental shop. When he was a kid, someone would rent out a PS1 for 100 rubles a night, which was a lot of money for him as a kid, but it still didn’t stop him from getting into those games: “Those damn nights were priceless Yes. Today I have a computer worth 1,500 euros, but the taste of games is different.”
A Kenyan friend who is also from Africa chatted with ngatunga about their rental shop in Swahili. I think this is a good job, a host can support myself, and encourage him to continue to do it.
Also gave him an idea to buy another PS4 to increase his income
Someone heard someone else’s story and remembered that his relatives in Colombia had done a similar business. In the PS3 era—more specifically, after the PS2 was eliminated, the service of renting PS2 was very popular in South America from 2006 to 2012. People can’t afford the new consoles that just went on the market, and not many people can use the old consoles that have been laid off. Such console rental houses have become the only channel for children to get in touch with console games.
In Peru in western South America, there may be more people who can afford PCs or consoles. But according to the memories of the netizens there, there were still many such shops nearby when he was a child. Meeting with friends to play games in the store is also an important event for them. Hold competitions and face-to-face opponents. They will enjoy the feeling of friends being around when playing games.
A netizen who grew up in Honduras mentioned that he had a neighbor who owned an N64 when he was a child, and he would open it to their nearby children for a fee. He often takes his younger brother to play “Super Smash Bros.” If he doesn’t have enough money, he only plays for half an hour, and sometimes he will watch it for several hours. Sometimes, there will be more than a dozen children waiting in line to play.
The beginning of a well-known series
Last July, when he returned to Honduras during his vacation, he saw that this kind of store was still open there, so he didn’t forget to ask his brother if he wanted to rent another old console and play like they did when they were young.
Talking here, not only netizens from third world countries, but more people also recalled the days when they could play games with a group of peers in the host rental house.
Some people think of the time when they and their friends fought “Dragon Ball Z: The World’s No. 1 Budokai 3” in the dark; At the age of 7, my father brought back the obsolete Atari and Intellivision demo machine ROM boards from the store, which became the most popular children’s story around that summer.
Seeing ngatunga and his small shop, most netizens can find shadows of their childhood here, and the discussions are basically enjoyable. However, in addition to praise or encouragement, some questioning remarks are also indispensable.
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The most important voice in the negative view is to question the purpose of ngatunga’s post.
I suspect that he has something to gain sympathy, and guess that his original intention of doing so is to obtain donations from netizens. People with strong vigilance will remind others to distinguish clearly whether the poster will really use the money for the upgrade of the game house in the end. There are even people with too much “sympathy”, and after learning that the game house will charge children, they will call him too philistine.
For the purpose of posting, ngatunga never denies its intention to rely on it for publicity. Faced with the donation intentions of netizens after posting, he will first patiently explain how high the cost of mailing will be—because a second-hand PS3 or PS4 may only cost tens of dollars, but the postage from North America to Tanzania will cost more thousand.
But even so, many netizens were willing to pay the postage themselves, and sent him the old machine that was eliminated at home, along with a basket of game disks.
Very “North American” game lineup
After a month of waiting and upgrading, ngatunga’s small shop bought a few more PS3s and a PS4, as well as a new TV purchased with donations from netizens. The most urgent problem to be solved here has changed from the lack of consoles and lack of games to the lack of TVs. Every other week, he will also post “reports” to netizens, so that they can see the results of his enthusiasm.
But football is still the most popular
It may be that some “love machines” are still on the way. When the subsequent new posts are no longer popular, he will still post pictures to show the love of netizens, and continue to “surprise these children!” desire.
Then I found that COD can also play in split screen
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 might be because the climate and scenery here are nothing special, and the journey is too far and expensive, so they prefer to go sunbathing and skiing.
He was very satisfied with this answer, and said that when he travels in the future, he also wants to see the snow. But he seems to have forgotten that in Tanzania, his motherland located on the equator, there is Mount Kilimanjaro, where there is also snow on the top of the mountain – as if there are games.
This article is transferred from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/10358
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