Game Over in Little Saigon?
Cyber cafe violence affects SoCal Vietnamese American community
By John Scott Lewinski
Special to AsianWeek
In many ways, the Orange County, Calif., community of Garden Grove is a shining example of the so-called “American Dream.” In the 1960s and 1970s, a large influx of Vietnamese and Korean immigrants left their war-torn countries, took land once dominated by fruit trees and worked to build a flourishing community in the shadow of Disneyland’s Matterhorn.
That’s why the Dec. 30, 2001, murder of a Vietnamese American youth shook all of Southern California. In what police reports described as gang-related violence, a 20-year-old male was killed with a screwdriver in the parking lot of Garden Grove’s PC Cafe. Just one month before the murder, three Asian Pacific American youths were beaten by eight high school students armed with baseball bats at the same cafe.
In the months to follow, five similar incidents at cyber cafes throughout Garden Grove prompted the local government to pass a moratorium on the establishment of any new cyber gaming facility. In addition, officials instituted curfew laws, restricting the hours that youths under the age of 18 can remain on the premises. Several other California communities have already installed similar regulations or are reportedly considering them.
The Modern Wild West Saloon?
A visit to any of the area’s cafes reveal these new rules posted clearly: no one under 18 allowed after 8 p.m. on school nights or 10 p.m. on weekends, and no weapons, cursing, yelling or racial slurs. They’re almost the kind of signs one would expect to see on the wall of a Wild West saloon.
For those uninitiated with the more than 20 modern cyber cafes of Little Saigon, do not envision a Chuck E. Cheese-style arcade with ear-numbing music and rows of coin-operated video game consoles. And forget the quiet, snug coffeehouse where patrons can check their e-mail over a foamy latte. These hi-tech hangouts are hip, elite entertainment centers offering Internet access (usually payable by the hour), an array of software ranging from desktop publishing to video games and an array of beverages and snacks ranging from the exotic to the pedestrian.
While visitors can read the daily news from across the world or work on their resume through their rented PC, networked multi-player computer games keep the kids coming back. Since the cafe’s computers are linked to the Internet and each other through the fastest possible connections, they provide the best way to play violent combat simulators and “shooters” (first-person perspective games in which players chase each other through cyber worlds, gun in hand) against friends.
Gamers can sit across the cafe from one another and fight to the death in the same 3D game simulation. They can also send instant threats and taunts to each other through chat features.
All indications point to the cyber cafes perfectly blending several potential factors for violence. First of all, Garden Grove experiences its share of ethnic and gang-related conflict as the Korean and Vietnamese immigrant communities often find themselves at odds. In addition to the ethnic tensions between some of the youths, the games they play fuel potential fires. As video games become more realistic, the level of violence in many titles grow more severe. It’s common to find games allowing players to riddle their opponents with full clips of machine gun ammunition or blow human targets to bloody bits with grenades.
The ever-increasing violence in such titles drove many game-centered businesses to take action. Major retailers like Wal-Mart and K-Mart restrict the sale of “rated ‘M’ for ‘Mature’ ” games to anyone under the age of 17. GameWorks, the popular arcade, bar and restaurant chain owned by Universal Studios, Sega Enterprises and DreamWorks SKG, now uses V-Card technology to restrict access to mature-rated games by patrons under 16. The city of Indianapolis outright banned any games featuring decapitations, dismemberment or other extremely violent imagery in 2000.
Now that networking technology allows already violent games to add a level of real-time competition between players, the potential for surging adrenaline, heated tempers and very real confrontation grows exponentially.
‘There’s Nothing Wrong with the Cafes’
According to Detective Peter Vi of the Garden Grove Police Department, “In the cases of the original cafe violence, you had a low hourly rate, places that were open late hours and people playing really violent games. The level of noise is high, and people are playing as teams against each other. This can lead to violence.”
Vi added that such violence is not unique to cyber cafes. “Any place that attracts kids can also attract violence. It could have been anywhere — a pool hall, skating rink. Gang members go from place to place, and when they stumble onto each other, things happen.”
Minh Mae, a 23-year-old Vietnamese American, works at one Garden Grove cyber cafe. She asked that the establishment not be identified because the violence at other cafe’s gave all such establishments “a bad rap.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the cafes,” she said. “Like it always is, it was just a few bad kids ruining things for everybody else.
“I think it’s good that there are places like this for kids to go. They can be social and have fun. There are no drugs. And, since the police and the community did what they had to do, to deal with the gangs, [the cafes] are safe now. If you think about it, there [are] a lot of other places where kids could go where they end up in a lot of trouble.”
Mae added that her cafe and others in the area work closely with the police to enforce the curfew laws and to watch out for troublemakers. The cyber joints often keep employees or private security guards actively patrolling the rows of computer consoles.
Are there signs that the new laws and increased awareness of violent games have helped to solve the cyber cafe gang problem?
According to Sam, a clerk at the Net 2 Net Cafe who didn’t want to be identified, the increased attention focused on the gaming parlors has quieted the youth violence.
As he prepared for a busy Friday night, he said it has been “quiet” since the curfews: “There hasn’t been any fighting or trouble with gangs. After the police got involved and we put in the new rules, everything’s been fine.”
Sam said Net 2 Net now enjoys more of a “regular” customer base of familiar visitors. He described the nightly gaming gatherings as more of a “family” of returning customers.
Detective Vi added, “The new policies and efforts have been very successful in stopping the [cyber cafe] incidents. We’ve been able to transform them back into safe places for anyone.
“Our [police] department oversees the security at the cyber cafes,” Vi added, “but we let the individual businesses make their own security arrangements. The lack of security led to the original problem as the gang members found it was a place they could go and not be watched. That’s all changed now.”
So, signs point to Little Saigon overcoming its unlikely blend of hi-tech entertainment and old-fashioned gang violence.
“It’s kind of a weird compliment [to the community],” Mae said laughing. “Instead of gang members cruising or hanging out in drug houses, they went where there’s computers to use pretend violence against each other.”
It might be that kind of fuzzy 21st-century logic that makes the police department and City Hall squirm, but it’s hard to argue with it.
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