Baka: Which group games more? Upper or lower class?

HoA Chan: I'd say everyone games. In the upper class console gaming is more prevalent (typical filthy rich kids playing their XBOX360's all day) while PC games are popular with the lower class simply because there are a lot of very cheap LAN centers here. It's common to find a LAN center in almost every street corner which goes for as low as 10 pesos which is around 20 cents USD an hour.


Baka: Well… tell me this, what's the major competitive video game there?

HoA Chan: Back then, CS used to be king most definitely; right now I would say DOTA.
MMORPG's are all the rage here as well. (Ragnarok Online, RAN Online, etc.)


Baka: So why the downfall?

HoA Chan: Oh no, we actually have a very interesting story…


Baka: Go ahead... share it with the GotFrag readers.

HoA Chan: Back then the Philippines used to be very competitive. In 2001, there were CPL qualifiers here but in the end, the sponsors ended up stealing the prize money and the winners never ended up getting to Dallas. I think it really hurt the scene, to be honest. I felt that we were on level with everyone else in the world and the Philippines could have just as easily won the CPL Finals as much as anyone else. The competitive scene back then was pure LAN and was extremely active. Teams from all over would drive down to other parts of the Philippines just to play money games. (By this I mean, betting on clan matches)


Baka: So you're saying that the level of CS play in Philippines can be compared to renowned teams like NiP, SK, fnatic, Complexity etc?

HoA Chan: Back in 2001, when there wasn’t much emphasis given to tactics and they were very simple, I would say the Philippines had a very good chance to win that inaugural CPL winter if they only had the chance to go.


Baka: So the Filipino gamers were natural aimers like the Chinese/Koreans?

HoA Chan: Yeah, natural aimers. I can vouch for this since during that period. I was playing around a bit in both the US and the Philippines since I was vacationing in the States quite often then. The raw skill here in the Philippines is insane, or at least it used to be. Anyways, the problem with the Philippines is as funny as it may sound, we never did quite grow up in terms of CS. Everyone just wanted to bet on their favorite map, de_dust and other random retarded maps like cs_mansion. No one was really ever exposed to proper competitive play, at least not until 2003, the year when WCG was first held here. There were a ton of tournaments here up 'til 1.5. Ultimately, the killer of the Philippine CS scene, I would say was the release of STEAM. As you know, the Philippines is very poor and when the distributor of Valve games over here threatened to raid every internet cafe that carried pirated copies of CS, so many cafes had to remove them from their game lineup. Furthermore, many people found Steam very hard to use and so, up to this day, I'd say around 80% of LAN cafes still use CS 1.3. People here just love their shooting and jumping so you will see a lot of people still playing CS competitively, but it's very backwards whereas they would play 4v4 de_dust money games on CS 1.3. Of course, that isn't to say that competitive gaming in the Philippines is totally dead; there are many active 1.6 teams here as well, but there just aren't many good teams around.