Cuba: Where underground arcades, secret networks and piracy are a way of life
March 15, 2017A look at how Cubans play, make, critique and find video games
Like its music, like its art, Cuba is a complex, colorful mash-up of dichotomous ideas, cultures, and emotions.
Nothing better describes the island nation than the image of a doctor dressed as a revolutionary, a crumbling wall amidst towering, colorful homes and, most recently, hundreds huddled in darkened WiFi parks, their faces alight in the glow of cell phones.
Now, despite trade embargoes, despite nearly non-existent internet and government controlled media and censorship, Cuba surprises once more in its ability to overcome the seemingly insurmountable by embracing all aspects of video games.
Secret gaming networks entwine utility lines, broadcast from rooftops and piggy-back phone cables over highways. Speakeasy arcades can be found in many Havana neighborhoods, locked away behind closed doors. Blocked by two governments, U.S. video games — normally priced in the U.S. at more than a Cuban makes in a month — are as inexpensive as they are ubiquitous in Cuba’s thriving black market. And the people who play these games are just as passionate about making them, writing about them, competing in them. This is a new generation of Cubans; raised on illicit video gaming, born to love everything those games offer from the ability to create interactive, moving art, to gaming’s deep social roots and frenetic sense of play.
Over one week in March, I visited Havana, spending my days meeting with professors, game makers, journalists and players to try and capture a sense of what it is to be a Cuban in the age of gaming.
Continue to Polygon to read the 12-article package on Cuban in the age of gaming, which first ran on March 15, 2017.
