Gamer Cocktail Bars Exist

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa.

Needless to say, the general state of internet cafes is a bit dodgy. Sure, you can find a few decent ones around, but by and large you'll get stuck with the dingy greasy hole in the wall whose only menu consists of the output of the nearest malfunctioning coffee machine. I know this as an Irrefutable Fact, because I have been to like, at LEAST three internet cafes in my time, and I'm apparently bad at statistics.

But here, at the Mana Bar in Brisbane (soon Melbourne also!) we have an actual, functioning hub of gamer culture. This is absolutely fascinating. It's almost like a casino, but with games I would actually pay money to play.

That is, it's like a casino, but good.

This is somewhere where I can imagine gamers would actually go to, y'know, hang out on a Saturday night. They might play a few rounds with their friends here and there, but the focus is on the socialising. It's almost as if they got a normal nightclub and replaced the d-floor with the video games (or so I assume, my sole experience with this enterprise being the website and Facebook page).

But wait, my friends, it only gets better.

As it turns out, the Mana Bar is also owned by none other than Yahtzee (et al.), of Zero Punctuation fame, and has plans to spread all over Australia AND THEN THE WORLD. It's as if someone took a good hard look at Australia's inventory and equipment, and made a smart flipping decision for once.

The sheer number of levels on which I support this movement astounds me, which you can probably tell by my jumping around from point to point like a hyperactive flea, who is also blind.

But the level on which I'm most supportive of this is the social (and, yes, 'casual') aspect it brings to gaming. I have lots to say about this, but frankly, that would involve a much more thorough discussion of the material, and therefore, more forethought than I actually put into these posts.

Feel free to let me know what you think of this, though. Does gaming need a physical community? Is this the end for the indie net cafe? If so, is that necessarily a bad thing? Shoot me some thoughts on this. I really do think that games, as a medium, are only just starting to pick up the recognition they deserve, and I think in the years to come we're going to see a lot of gaming paradigms come into play in relation to more traditional media and pastimes. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Other interesting things I learnt today:

• Arbitrarily defined units are often the most relevant to real life (as opposed to real world) applications (compare degrees Celsius with Kelvin, for example)
• The scene in The Lady and the Tramp wherein Lady was given to the lady in a hatbox as a present was based off a real actual event in Walt Disney's life
• Allie Brosh is writing a book and I couldn't be more excited about this