Space for the invaders

Internet cafés are the new arcades, and your best friend is the new enemy

by MICHAEL CITROME

Set in a second-floor walkup on the seediest strip of Ste-Catherine, Coin Net is one of the hottest spots for network gaming in the city. Despite the squeegee punks gathered at the corner of Berri and the Jessica Rabbit-inspired cartoon stripper on the Pussycorps sign a couple of doors down, the place maintains what one customer calls "a civilized air," and does so 24 hours a day.

It's a scene that looks drawn out of a cyberpunk novel. Rows of computers, with headphone-wearing guys (nearly always guys) glued to the screens. The place is run by the Lees, a straight-laced, churchgoing Korean family who live in the back of the store. For a café, the refreshments are limited - chips, soda and cigarettes. As for the customers, a few are chatting or Web-surfing. But the rest? They're there for the games.

It works like this. Playing games like Counter-Strike, which casts you as an elite anti-terrorism commando pitted against other elite anti-terrorism commandos (terrorists being eerily absent from the game) or Warcraft III, which puts you in command of armies of men, elves, dwarves, orcs and all kind of nasty skull-chewing skeletons, playing these games is, well, a lot of fun. Especially if you play them on the Internet against devious human opponents.

But it's even more fun if you play against someone who's sitting right next to you, so you can tell him what a wiggidy weiner he is for missing a clear sniper shot on you.

And it's even more fun to get a bunch of friends together and team up. But the best, of course, is to team up with your friends and then turn on each other at the last minute, so that you alone emerge victorious from the flaming village of thatched-roof cottages.

But that's tough to do at home, unless you conveniently have 10 or so computers lying around. So you need to go somewhere. Hence the popularity of places like Coin Net, which offer the use of a computer for a few dollars an hour. You get to feed your computer gaming addiction, plus hang out with your crew.

Play to win

That's what brings 19-year-old Mustapha Achour, Moose to his friends, to Coin Net. On a weekend evening he was playing Warcraft III with his friend in a tag-team match against the computer.

"It's usually chill people here doing their own things," says Achour, reassuring his buddy that his troops would soon arrive to slay some orcs. "Obviously a bar could be better because there's no tits and ass around here. But it's a good place to relax and forget about troubles. There's no bad kinds of people here to give you trouble."

But the atmosphere gets competitive. "There is a lot of rivalry, it's an "esprit sportif," he says. "If someone doesn't play that well, that's okay, but there are definitely rivalries. If someone's losing, they'll pick up a cell phone and try to get their friends to come in so they can win."

Coin Net, open 24 hours a day, is at 273 Ste-Catherine E., near Berri metro. For a list of other local Internet cafés, go to http://english.montrealplus.ca/roundup/8276