Please allow me to interrupt a slow news day with tales of piracy from the True Caribbean, as locals call it. I was recently in Scarborough, Tobago with some friends and noticed this haunting sign plastered on a sign post. It reads "Three PlayStation 2 games for $120". It sounds about right in US dollars but this is Trini currency, which exchanges at roughly 1/6 of American dollars. If you do the math ($120 divided $6 then divided by 3 games) those PS2 games would run you about $6.50 US a pop. I don't think Sony is being generous to developing countries!
Sure enough, small strip malls largely carry burned games and there's little or no sign of Wii, 360, and PS3 systems. Are the locals aware that newer games are available, and do they care? One prominent shop keeper near the airport barely understood my question. "Games aren't that popular here -- maybe in 5-7 years."
Back in Port of Spain, Trinidad the scene is a little different. One source who wished to remain anonymous said "A few people have those newer things, but nobody buys games retail here (chomps on Doubles, beans frothing everywhere) mwhahuhgm ummm uy kiiidfs yum uhmm slurp (*enthusiastic fingerlicks*) most games come from South America that's a few miles off the coast and the young people mostly trade old games anyway". As we drove around I couldn't find a game shop anywhere. KFC, however, was at every other corner!
While I'm sure that the ministry doesn't condone it, they probably have bigger fish to fry. I suppose if we all had the choice of Halo's or parading in the streets drunk with energetic half-naked women for three months in the year even hardcore dorks might game a little less.
I had little chance in hell that these people would read Destructoid so for the rest of my trip I shut my mouth and ate my shark bake, soaking in the mountains and rum.
Contest:
3:40 PM on 12.18.2007
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I'm in.
Yes there is alot of murder, and piracy, and KFC's!
You can get PS2 games for less than US$1, and 360, and Wii games for about US$7.
Of course you need to flash your 360 and chip your Wii or PS2.
Games are actually quiete popular here, but 3rd world countries don´t characterize themselves for being wealthy, and US$60 for a game is money that sometimes is earned after 2 weeks of working on a regular job.
Some day i am gonna work on a long ass post on my blog about piracy here in Perú.
how many people have you murdered in the name of your drug cartel niero? HOW MANY?
@ Bahamut - I've killed at least 3 people, mostly through my cooking.
I'm fucking freezing as I write this in jolly old England. Caribbean business trips my arse! Lucky git
Lol.
"As we drove around I couldn't find a game shop anywhere. KFC, however, was at every other corner!" Those un/lucky bastards.
You couldn't buy anything LEGIT there. It was all huge ass flea markets with pirated crap everywhere. You haven't lived until you watch an American comedy with a dry Ukrainian dub of the English language doing the translation.
I'm from barbados which is a few miles away. And we don't have it like that here, our dollar is 2 to 1 with the US, first thing and games cost about $150. Next thing there are 360s everywhere and the most found system is the PS2. I personally know 13 people with PS3s and sadly only one Wii owner. I only get 5MB down in bandwidth which is good enough and if you don't have cable you have Direct tv. All I'm saying is all of the Caribbean isn't "third world" as you guys put it. That's all I'm saying.
I think you can buy a pearl-coated PS3 necklace on Paradise Island, actually. It weighs about 90 pounds but its PIMP
Never really talked to him about ridiculous game prices though, only other thing he ever talked about was this Garou emulator that you could play online.
[img]http://driph.com/random/viet_ps2.jpg[/img
Inside they had a board with box art across the front of it. Choose the titles and for a small fee they'd make you some copies.
Tons of internet cafes in the cities as well, almost one on every corner (with access costing 3-5000 dong/hr, about 25 cents).
Here's a ps2 game burning shop I ran across while in Vietnam this summer:
Inside they had a board with box art across the front of it. Choose the titles and for a small fee they'd make you some copies.
Tons of internet cafes in the cities as well, almost one on every corner (with access costing 3-5000 dong/hr, about 25 cents).
plus the ps2 has a ton of games. The most popular is a soccer game.
Piracy is common here, I blame that developers and console makers dont give a crap anyway. Here they want to sell me a 360 for 800 usd, an old one, and charge me 80 dollars for a game. I dont earn cash in dollars, so its actually more expensive.
Thanks for listening,
-mgmt
Iam an administrator of one of TRINIDAD'S gaming communities called G.A.T.T (Gamers Association of trinidad and tobago), website, gatt.carigamers.com. Gatt is a member of the larger carigamers association which includes many Caribbean nations.
One of our members came across this article while surfing and shared it with us. Aside from the issue of piracy that you brought up, we were pretty much disgusted by the narrow minded ignorance/ border line racism that was being spread about Trinidad. The KFC comments and the very skewered view of what our local gaming scene is like, hurt us, and we would really like to give yall a better view of what our country is like. So please visist www.gatt.carigamers.com as well as www.trinigamers.com to learn more about us before continuing to spread such a bad word about us ^_^.
I'm not much of a console guy, more dedicated PC - last console I owned was a NES >_<. Some games I have are not original, but when I come across a game that I know I really want, I save and get the game original, at the expense of an arm, a leg and maybe my spleen. In addition, I'm not the only one who's willing to do so here...
This "analysis" as to the gaming environment in T&T is like going into the middle of the Bronx and analysing "the presence of high quality penthouses available in the USA". It's narrow-minded and gives an unfairly skewed perspective, so I hope that people take this article with a pinch of salt.
As for the discriminatory references here, I'm not going to touch that, else this post will end up being about 4 times its current length, so I'll leave it there for now.
As Crixxtachi said above, take a look at the websites listed there, we're not quite as backwards as the author makes us out to be.
SPK.
First of all, you said nobody buys games retail here, right?
ECK! Sorry, Charlie. While many people buy pirated games down here, my entire collection is 100% original, from the Wii (yes, I do own one. Surprised?) and PS2 titles straight down to my PS1 and DS collection. There are no copies to be found there. Also, if we take what you said literally, then places like Shelltech Electronics, The Game Zone, Gamez Plus, Toymart and countless others I won't go into right now would go clean out of business, as retail video games make up 50% or more of their business. And, to date, they are all doing quite well.
Secondly....you asked a random guy eating doubles about games? Why didn't you ask the tooth fairy about the Dewey Decimal System, while you're at it? Oh, and while we're at it.....what 'prominent' shop keeper at the airport did you speak to to get this educated and well-researched response that 'games aren't popular here'? Does he/she/it have a name? What's her field of business? Point is, you asked two people who probably don't know jack S**T about video games in Trinidad and Tobago, and decided to pen an article based on that.
By the way, you couldn't find a game store?
What did you do, drive around BLINDFOLDED, or something?
There are gaming stores in Trincity Mall, Movie Towne, Consort Mall, Mid Centre Mall, The Game Zone in Curepe, World Plus in Chaguanas and Tunapuna and countless others I won't list here that I could find DRUNK. You probably took a dive in some canal somewhere and decided, "Good enuff, lol" and came back to pen this CRAP.
By the way, I am so glad to know that you can simply gauge the worth of a country based on how many KFC's we've got. True, there's one on every corner, but it's only because it's extremely popular down here. Do you see us busting your chops because there are probably that many Wal-Marts and Burger King restaurants all over the place? No. So take your 'They lieks fryed chikaan, lol' talk and shove it.
And thirdly, from that last paragraph, you probably thought that we were so 'primitive' that we won't read your inane little article about us and comment on it. Well, guess what. We're here, and some of us don't take kindly to being referred to in that sense.
So, Knee Row. Hear what. How about you actually give a damn and do some proper research on countries like ours, and we consider your article a notch above somebody puking in a airsick bag? Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised if you did just that on the way back, scanned it when you went back home, and posted it up here.
In other words, YOU FAIL.
Thank you, and good night!
:(
the doubles the random guy was eating at the side of the road
had PEAS in it, not BEANS!
wow, he cant even tell the difference between peas and beans
top notch investigative skillz there mengz
If what you said is true, then go preach to the people on the street because I'm only calling it like I see it.