Games are hot news all over the world - at least you might get that sense from the mix of Malaysian, Russian, Thai, Peruvian, Korean and Turkish journalists in the press room at the World Cyber Games. For our use, free international phone lines, ethernet drops, power outlets, Coca-cola, coffee. A private hive amidst the gaming cubicles from which to broadcast to the world up to the minute news of national standing from these swelling cybersports contests. But not too many reporters from the United States have been able to drop by.

Or a place to make free long distance phone calls to girlfriends in Istanbul, retreat to play some CrimsonLand (a popular free download 2D shooter that seems to be down). There are a plethora of planned activities for us - "Foreign Media Dinner Hosted by Daejeon City" cancelled since Jane and I were the only people signed up. Tours offered at a Samsung facility a two hours drive away were similarly un-attended I expect.

Still there are focused folks at work - a Russian youth was busy working on updates for cyberfight.org and couldn't be bugged much to chat with me. And the guy I suspected of talking to his lover on the phone turns out to be the managing editor of the Turkish edition of Level Magazine, a videogame publication syndicated by a German company, appearing in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

These are our video-game-journalist peers, from around the world! Of a list of 191 journalists covering the event, we found three of them to be from the United States - equal to the number of journalists present from Khazakistan and Indonesia. Taiwan leads with twenty journalists, nine from Russia, eight from Germany and Japan. The UK, Poland, China and the Netherlands sent more reporters than the United States, it appears. Maybe it was too far from the USA for those journalists to travel. Hopefully, professional video games won't become like Soccer/Football - of interest only to niche markets like everyone else besides the United States of America.