Went to the computer club in 2024. Why and who still needs them?

It was a great surprise for me when I discovered several years ago that in Russia as a whole (and my small town in particular) computer clubs began to revive. It would seem that all homes already have good internet and some kind of hardware on which you can play with friends.

But no, people still actively go to “cyber arenas” (This is what modern clubs look like now) on a regular basis and spend hours on end playing modern games there.

I got together with the development and also went to such a small arena in Bryansk, talked with employees of different institutions in different cities and am ready to tell how everything works there and what people go for in general.

Let’s just agree in advance that later in the text I will continue to use the phrase “computer club“I’m more used to it this way.

How does a modern computer club work?

Be careful, you might get a bit nostalgic.

It seemed to me, as a person who experienced “classic clubs,” that in principle nothing had changed: you go there, give the administrator money and tell them which computer and for how long you will play CS 1.6.

It turns out that my views are very outdated. The last time I went to a club was, it seems, in 2005, and I gave up when unlimited Internet appeared at home. And, as you know from past materials, I’m more into consoles.

Now everything has changed. Our country has almost completely adopted the PC Bang culture (literally “room with a PC”) from South Korea. At least this is partially custom work. Of course, you can, in the old fashioned way, come at a random idle time and break a free PC on the spot, but with an incredible probability, the last machine will not appear.

Much inclined to download the app (in the case of my club this is the LANGAME application), through it, select the desired club, book for the required time and pay for it.

In my case, an hour of play was worth it 120 rubles. Package for 5 hours – 480 rubles. You can pay directly through the application. Accordingly, at the entrance it is enough to tell the admin the number of the reserved PC, and that’s it – you sit down, log into your account from the application and play.

From the point of view of the game, everything works as follows: on the PC itself, as a rule, a “gentleman’s set” of F2P projects is installed, such as CS 2, DOTA 2, Fortnite and others like them. You can use your internal club account or personally to play.

For example, I played Fortnite through my EGS account, and my friends used local shared accounts. With paid games, everything is somewhat more complicated.

The first thing a visitor sees after he enters his club account information.

Something fashionable (for example, Helldivers 2 and Call of Duty Black Ops 6) are on shared accounts, and you can use them for games, but, of course, there will be no progress within the game. However, if such a game was purchased, for example, from you on Steam, you can play from your profile.

True, there is an unpleasant moment that we encountered. Not all games can be updated to the latest version. Yes, in clubs, as a rule, they have gigabit Internet, and the patch downloads very quickly, but the download time is included in the tariff you paid, so we have to extend the session for another hour to play enough.

Same with games that are not on the computer. If you want to come and play a conditional Path of Exile 2 from your account, then it is better to spend time taking into account the fact that you will have to wait until the game downloads.

There is a pleasant atmosphere inside, but without nostalgia

It’s better to talk about what the room behind me looks like in the photographs below (the filming will have to be coordinated with the administration, by the way), so let’s better see what we can play with.

In a club where two PC configurations were available to me.

🤓 Standard:

▪️ Video card NVidia GeForce GTX 3060 OC (12 GB)
▪️Intel Core i5-11400F processor
▪️Monitor AOC 27″ 27G2SPU/BK (165 Hz)
▪️ Monitor bracket ONKRON G80

🧐 ULTRA VIP:

▪️RTX 4070 SUPER video card
▪️Processor: Intel Core i5-13500
▪️ Monitor: ASUS TUF Gaming 27″, resolution 2k, IPS (260 Hz)
▪️ Monitor bracket ONKRON G80

The VIP area was closed to the public, but it was located very remotely from the main hall in a separate room with strict noise insulation. There is also a small lounge area with a PS5 and monitor. At the time of our visit, a guy and a girl were playing Red Dead Redemption 2, nothing interesting.

At the reception desk you can buy something non-alcoholic, energy drinks, for example, and in the case of my club, sandwiches from our local street food company.

Overall, it’s a pleasure to be in the club. When I lived (and it was on the evening of Tuesday, December 17th), there were a lot of people, and mostly the guys were very emotional in CS2, adding terms unknown to me every second, but headphones with good noise reduction allow you to play so that you can only hear your game and your interlocutors in the voice chat. United Kingdom “FINE FOR CHARACTING 15 MINUTES” I never heard it, fortunately. Otherwise my time would have been cut in half.

💰 The rates at the club are as follows::

▪️ Standard – 1 hour 120 rub., 3 hours 320 rub., 5 hours 480 rub.
▪️VIP zone – 1 hour 180 rub., 3 hours 440 rub., 5 hours 680 rub.
▪️PS5 – 1 hour 250 rub., 3 hours 600 rub., 5 hours 850 rub.

You can also get packages in the morning, evening at 5 and 10 o’clock if you want to rank top 1 in PUBG or Fortnite powerfully and without interruption. And at this moment we move on to a very subjective analysis of the modern and content of modern clubs. In this regard, I was also helped by information from Ildar, a man who worked as a club administrator for a long time.

Administrator’s Notes. What modern clubs are there for?

Who needs computer clubs and why in 2024? We will now try to give an answer to this question, based primarily on individual observations.

📍 Primary school children. Yes, in computer clubs people come to play Garry’s Mod and drive a car in GTA V. According to my respondent, they are the calmest and most careful in relation to equipped visitors.

📍 Teenagers and students. As a rule, go for more powerful hardware and better monitors in order to shoot CS 2 at maximum settings while maintaining FPS.

📍 eSportsmen. You have to do it loudly, emotionally and, as a rule, exclusively in DOTA 2, Valorant and CS 2. I personally had the honor of sitting next to the guys who played Fortnite ranked mode. The skill there, of course, is high.

📍 Lovers of new products. You don’t necessarily have to go to a computer club to play multiplayer. Sometimes there are people who just don’t want to update their hardware for a new game; they really want to play. According to my respondent, workers usually complete their game within a short time and disappear.

📍 Foreigners. Again, based on my respondent’s information, these are usually tourists or exchange students. Out of politeness, the respondent cited: I saw guys from France, China, India, Pakistan and Brazil. The latter were very fond of the unique fanaticism of the game Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (fighting game based on the cult anime, of course, the options are available, you’ve seen it at least once in your life).

📍 “Couples”. I observed it personally. In my case, in a romantic operation to the cries of “Rush, boys!“A guy and a girl were playing Red Dead Redemption 2. According to my respondent’s experience, I usually play portable co-op or Overwatch 2. Girls come separately too, but mostly to play an hour or two of Genshin Impact on powerful hardware.

Distracting from such an abstract section, we can draw conclusions that are popular in modern computer clubs. Everything is obvious: first of all, you need to go to modern online games, and under no circumstances play with the latest products in the industry.

This is what my respondent’s workplace looked like. At the club where I was, the administrator sat not in a separate room, but behind the counter.

Console filling(and here I am based on what I saw myself and what the admin of the club where I was told me) Currently, the current Mortal Kombat and Tekken, sports simulators, and, in the very minority, single-player projects are consolidated in memory.

Is it worth going to a computer club now?

Definitely… yes, worth it. For what? In my case, for the sake of the forgotten feeling of fun from playing with friends nearby. I spent about 3 hours in the club, and the entire time I wasn’t taking notes for the article, we were playing Fortnite.

Yes, we could play at home, but the emotions when your brother in arms sits next to you, and you pull your teeth together in the last minute of prepaid time by winning the match – emotions are difficult to put into words.

The culture of computer clubs is alive and well all over the world, despite the fact that hardware and the Internet are now more objectively accessible than before. But not a single shared server on Discord can replace your teammates who are sitting half a meter away from you.

I am voicing this thought to you. Have a good day!