James Galvin

I just read a good post on IrishEyes about the dangers of banking in Internet Cafes. With the recent influx of immigrants, netcafes are more popular than ever, and are springing up all over the place, largely in Cork. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if our immigrant community does more of their banking online than in a bank - for example, last month AIB announced that over 1 in 6 online-banking transactions were to banks in Poland. I would expect that a large proportion of these took place in internet cafes. IrishEyes mentions that keystroke-logging software is a big risk in the Irish net cafes now. Despite having seen first-hand some of the dodgy dealings that can go on in an internet cafe - spammers, disgruntled employees with webmail, and kids installing back orifice, for example - this comes as a surprise to me.

Lar Veale, in the comments suggests that there be a code of practice established which cafes must sign up to. This is a very interesting prospect. I know that Nethouse used to (maybe they still do) automatically re-image each PC over the network every morning at 5am or something. Some cafes have very high quality security systems, with each station fully visible to a camera. Some other cafes give no administrative rights to the user, who can use nothing but their web browser and MSN. The unfortunate reality is that there are many internet cafes opened by people who know very little about computers and nothing about security, and they are endangering their customers. I remember one cafe which opened in the greater Cork area that had no antivirus installed, no firewall, and never ran Windows Update, and never reimaged their PCs.

With all the publicity that the ATM fraud got a few months ago, its about time somebody spoke up about the dangers of internet banking in the net cafes. Educating the masses will only get you so far, there should be a standard introduced, a League of Secure Internet Cafes, with a sticker on the window with a golden lock indicating that they follow the basic security procedures recommended by <insert relevant party here>. It won’t stop Krzysztof from using the Windows 98 PCs down the back of O’Dwyer’s Fishing Tackle & Internet Cafe, but at least its a step in the right direction. I know its frustrating when you can’t save your Quake config on the computer for future use because it will be wiped out at 5am, or when you can’t use IRC because its not in the start menu, but this is a small price to pay for knowing that your passwords probably aren’t getting stolen.

I was in Wired to the World MacCurtain Street yesterday - the biggest netcafe & callcenter in Ireland, they claim. I sat down at the first computer, and started looking for the mouse… with no success. Slightly confused, I asked the guy next to me and he showed me how to power it on. It was about 10 seconds afterwards that I realised this was an xbox360. I shamefully sidled away, conscious of the audible hiss of my rapidly deflating ego.

It could happen to anyone, it is natural to choose the first available terminal, who would have guessed that this whole row is dedicated to xboxes? A middle-aged Polish man just entered the cafe, asking the staff if he could use this “chip” (brandishing a USB stick). I smugly observed his approach, as he hovered hesitantly above the xbox at terminal 1. With a swagger, I rose to shepard him towards a PC… but too late - he knowingly moved on himself. I was once again a chewed-up squeaky toy, in a the primitive darkness of a dog’s kennel.

I thought it was a bit strange that they would have the very first row dedicated to the xboxes… usually they hide the noisy (sometimes smelly) gamers down the back. Despite all the advancements in the availability of broadband, it seems the gaming cafes are thriving. I have never been one to frequent these establishments regularly, but I have taken the opportunity to sample most of them. Last year I was doing some contract work in the city, with three other lads who were fond of Counter Strike. Our work took us to different parts of the city, and we would sometimes spend our lunchbreak in the nearest net cafe. This is when my eyes were opened to the world of cafegamers.

I had no idea that there was an entire community, composed primarily of northside teenagers, who spent their lives inside the different cafes in Cork, moving up the rankings in the local CS ladder. There are entire clans wholely contained in this local scene. I bumped into a guy I went to school with who was playing World of Warcraft. He was level 46, with 11 days played. Thats 11 x 24 hours spent in Area51 in the space of just a few months. I tried to work out what 264 hours would cost at the standard rate, but I was too distracted by the revelation that this room was packed full of gamers on a Thursday at 1pm, and was open and active 24 hours a day.

Cork has set the standard in recent years, with the comfort of the Web Work House, the dedicated back-rooms that Wired to the World offer in three different locations, the luxurious Zeon, and most of all - the 24/7 gaming venue with Alienware machines: Area51. In comparison, Dublin has surprisingly lacked these resources, as most of their cafes would be geared towards the millions of webmailers… particularly since the demise of Does Not Compute and Nethouse which, despite being run by gamers, did not see the market as being sufficiently active to warrant the costly hardware upgrades and licence fees. Until recently, there has been nothing to cater for the market that Area51 and others in Cork depend on.

TCAL mentions a newly opened Dublin gaming cafe with 40 xboxes. This coincides with the launch of Bartizan Gaming World a couple of weeks ago in Midleton, Co. Cork, which really takes the concept of a gaming cafe to a new level. No longer satisfied with a crowded back-room with some WWII paintings on the wall, Bartizan has a luxurious VIP members-only area with biometric fingerprint access. In Russia, most gamers attend a club like this, where they compete against other gamers on LAN, rather than playing online from home as we do in Western Europe.

Here are some of the benefits of VIP membership:

• Full access 24/7.
• Full access to new games. The games you want – you want it, we order it.
• Bring a guest.
• Host your own LAN parties.
• Pre-book private rooms for you and your guests.
• Free entry to movie and games club.
• Entry to leagues and competitions.
• Opportunity to join Bartizan Clanz.
• Join members forum on line.
• Members only parking.

At a cost of €125 per year for adults, €75 for 13-16 year olds, and only €45 for children, this is valuable service. Why fork out €54 on a new game, dialup costs or hardware upgrades when you could just head down to Bartizan at any time of night and relax in the comfort of the VIP zone. In theory anyway - there is always the danger that a gang of screaming kids takes up residence. Either way, this is certainly an major development in the Irish gaming scene, both LAN and internet (as Bartizan intend to mirror their community online). With similar new venues set to open in other parts of the country, it could be interesting to see how this new trend develops.