So when I was growing up,
I played a lot of computer games, I played a lot o strategy games,
and I thought that I was really good at those games.
But I was annoyed that being good at those games didn't make me cool,
it didn't make girls like me, whereas being good at a physical sport
like football, girls would like me for that.
Well in the Western countries that I grew up in, England and America,
eSports never kind of rose to the same level of a sport.
Here in Korea, they game.
Luckily, for those of us who are past our competitive gaming prime,
there are plenty of other gigs available in the eSports industry.
Equally as famous is the players themselves,
are the professional commentators known as shoutcasters.
Their energetic, play by play analysis is one of the biggest draws for fans.
Snuck around the side, teleported into the base.
And then he's on the nexus and I'm like, oh, oh this is happening.
Oh, oh okay, this is happening.
He's a completely different type of player.
He's on a completely different level.
We've got the consistent players, and we've got the clutch players.
Is consistently a clutch player.
That's going to be some big damage, oh my God,
they actually pull off the kill as well.
You can see the crowd is even stunned on that one.
To find out what it takes to become a shoutcaster, I went for
a lesson at NIceGame TV.
One of the forerunning online eSport stations in Seoul.
Let's go see your studio.
This is our webcam.
Oh, wow. So we're live right now.
Oh, hi.
The amount of people watching this right now is just insane.
The, the screen is just scrolling through 100s and 100s of messages,
people are saying gay, bye.
Hey, hi, I love you.
No, not gay, what the fuck?
Hey, Gay TV.
Nice Gay TV.
Hi. Yeah.
I can see you all saying hi.
And look forward to our documentary about eSports where you're all featured and
all of you are very mature comments on my sexuality.
We're gonna do a live stream of a League of Legends game and
I don't really know much about the game but.
Hopefully I'll be able to learn as we go.
So what's going on here?
I agree.
Oh, he almost killed him.
Right?
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah, GG, good game.
GG They initiated with an aid to initiate,
I mean, I had no question that they were going to win from the beginning.
They really deserve this.
They put 110% in and it's great to see them win.
Yeah.
He's an expert.
In addition to broadcasting, NiceGame TV also train up and coming talent.
They introduced us to two young gamers,
who had just been scouted by a professional team.
How many hours do you put in per day, or, or per week?
Do you have a plan if it doesn't work out in gaming?
So you've just left the NiceGame TV studios,
where we met some of the world's future eSports stars.
They have this almost robotic dedication to the game, where they're playing 14 or
15 hours.
I can only imagine what effect that must have on a young person's mind and life.
Internet addiction is said to effect 2 million South Koreans, and
half of its entire teenage population.
In 2011, the Korean Congress passed a law known as the Cinderella Act,
putting Internet addiction in the same category as drugs and alcohol, and
preventing children under the age of 16 from playing online games after midnight.
By making them use their national identity numbers, children's online accounts
now automatically shut down when the clock strikes 12.
This Cinderella Act created an uproar in the gaming community.
He found political representation in a gaming congressman named Byung Jun Hun.
Spearheading the campaign, the congressman dressed up in League of Legends cosplay,
in solidarity with the gamers.
As head of the Korean e-Sports Association, he was also cleverly enticing
the votes of Korea's rapidly expanding gamer demographic.
But despite the gamers' retaliation,
a quarter of those diagnosed with internet addiction will end up being
hospitalized in a government sponsored internet rehab center.
I'm in the waiting room, I'm here to meet a guy called Dr. Lee Jae-Won.
We've heard that he has some pretty unorthodox methods of treating people with
computer game addiction.
We've heard something about brain scans with electrodes,
virtual reality therapy, and some kind of magnetic brain pulse.
I don't know anything about neuropsychiatry and
I certainly don't know anything about brain pulse therapy.
So, I'm especially curious to find out how those methods can help cure some one who
plays too many computer games.
What are the types of people who suffer from internet addiction?
How much of this is a result of specifically online gaming?
Sitting here has made me realize that,
if I actually was a gaming addict,
how terrifying this would be if my parents had forced me to be here,
and a doctor was putting electrodes on my head.
Woah. In 2005, a young South Korean man dropped
dead after playing StarCraft for 50 hours straight.
And since then, the perceived dangers of gaming addiction
have been a considerable source of anxiety for Korea's older generations.
But generally, the most extreme symptoms of gaming addiction are sleep deprivation,
mood swings, and seizures.
Every time I hear that clicking noise in the next room,
I know that someone's getting their brain fried by magnetic shock therapy.
Okay, cool.
It felt like someone had struck my bones with a tuning fork.
But was I cured?
To find out I had to enter Dr. Lee's final stage of therapy, in which
patients are sat in a chair and told to watch footage of violent video games,
like the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange,
to see how much they can endure without getting the urge to game.
So this is the final stages of your treatment.
What do you consider a cured patient?
Would you consider
the professional
games to be at
risk of addiction,
or already
addicted?
Whatever you think about this particular brand
of brain zapping therapy, one thing is for sure,
this speed as which gaming was taking over Korea,
was making a lot of people genuinely worried.
In today's world of global comic cons, cosplay is everywhere.
But much like eSports, it's the Koreans who do it best.
Costume competitions are almost as competitive as the eSports
leagues themselves, and
teams who aim to win trophies, have to treat it as a full time career.
We went to the outskirts of Seoul to meet one of Korea's top eSports cosplay crews.
Team CSL.
We're in a kind of peaceful idyllic suburban town.
The kind of place you might want to retire to.
In one of these houses is a cosplay team.
There's knights, dragons, mythical creatures,
all hanging out, while the community has no idea, that unbeknownst to them.
Through there is a portal to a mythical world.
It is a bit Twin Peaks-y.
I feel like I'm visiting my nan's house.
Except my nan wouldn't have a battle axe outside.
Hi.
Hey guys, how are you?
Hi.
You guys make all your own costumes?
How can a human fit inside this?
But what about the practicality of this?
I mean you've never made a costume this big, what if it all just goes totally
wrong and you fall over in front of hundreds of people?
Most of our parents don't actually accept the hobby, because they're like,
it's a waste of time, and they think that costume play is for kids.
So they don't' understand what we get out of all this.
My house is dirty, you are making a mess and you are wearing a child's costume.
So I'm gonna try on a costume that they picked for me.
It's one of the League of Legends characters.
And apparently it involves spandex.
Okay, this might be really revealing, I'm warning you.
How do I look?
Okay, so is this my character?
What's his name?
Pulse Ezreal.
What? Pulse Ezreal.
Pulse Ezreal.
Cool.
Is he, like, a Zionist knight?
Okay, cool.
And what's this?
Is this my weapon?
Yes.
You can turn on the switch.
Does it do anything?
Yes. Nice!
This isn't as uncomfortable as I thought.
I can totally just wear this all day.
I might go out like this in the future.
Do I look like a cyberpunk Kurt Cobain right now?
Because that's what I feel like.
So has just invited us to take his golf cart
out to one of his favorite spots in town.
So I can look like this in an environment
that's most suitable for League of Legends.
There's only so
much you can learn about the cultures at home by watching people play computer
games for hours on end.
If you really wanna understand gaming, dress up like a giant robot, get into
the wilderness and then you'll know that computer games are fucking awesome.