

North Korea’s First Computer Game: Pyongyang Racer - danielhitome
http://www.techinasia.com/north-korea-computer-game-pyongyang-racer/

======
redact207
Heroic officers of the army, members of the Worker-peasant red guards,
compatriots, comrades and friends. Today we have achieved great victory of
technical excellence in honor of our Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation
of the appearance that a leader should have, who has returned to Heaven from
where he first descended.

We have proved to the world our superior technical and scientific
achievements, for which we are now envied. The technology that powers
Pyongyang Racer is the same divine and glorious codebase that sent Unha-3 into
the heavens that was gifted upon us by the Highest incarnation of the
revolutionary comradely love.

The sun flag of the great Comrade Kim Il Sung and Comrade Kim Jong Il will
forever flutter in the van of our revolutionary ranks that display only
victory and honor and will always encourage and drive us toward a new victory.

Move forward toward the final victory, Pyongyang Racer.

~~~
dguaraglia
I know this is _not_ supposed to be the kind of comment HN encourages, but...
whatever, you had me at "technical excellence" and it only got better from
there :)

~~~
salemh
_not supposed to be the kind of comment HN encourages_

Yet, its what we may perceive as the best representation of what the populace
is having to deal with / parrot. Like most ironies, sadness and hilarity
ensue.

------
kitcar
This article is incorrect - this is not North Korea's first video game, they
have been producing video games for quite a while, there are a number of
companies which even outsource production there. From an article in 2010
([http://www.pcworld.com/article/198555/the_worlds_most_unusua...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/198555/the_worlds_most_unusual_outsourcing_destination.html))
:

The outsourcer with the highest profile is probably Nosotek. The company,
established in 2007, is also one of the few Western IT ventures in Pyongyang,
the North Korean capital.

Nosotek's main work revolves around development of Flash games and games for
mobile phones. It's had some success and claims that one iPhone title made the
Apple Store Germany's top 10 for at least a week, though it wouldn't say which
one.

Several Nosotek-developed games are distributed by Germany's Exozet Games,
including one block-based game called "Bobby's Blocks."

------
xanfred
Nope. North Koreans made "The Big Lebowski Bowling" back in 2007:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-06/kim-jong-il-
bowls-f...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-06/kim-jong-il-bowls-for-
murdoch-dollars-with-video-games-made-in-north-korea.html)

------
RaphiePS
Last summer I had the pleasure of visiting North Korea (with Koryo Tours). I
think it's worth noting that the company is not North Korean -- it's based in
Beijing and run by British expats.

~~~
jvrossb
So it's all the more puzzling it's this bad then?

~~~
EliRivers
No no no, Koryo Tours is a tour company run by Brits. They're just a tour
company. They don't do programming. The programmers are with NovoTek in North
Korea. Koryo Tours paid NovoTek to make the game.

------
pbateman
The only thing stopping this from being really funny is how awful the life of
the average North Korean is.

~~~
taligent
Actually the average life of North Korea is not that different from those in
rural China, Phillipines, Thailand and arguably some parts of the US.

~~~
CamperBob2
We desperately need a Poe's Law or a Godwin's law to describe this common
scenario. _In any sufficiently-long comment thread, the probability of someone
falsely equating the USA and $DICTATORSHIP, or invoking moral relativism to
achieve the same end, approaches 1._

~~~
nickolai
To be fair,

 _In any sufficiently-long comment thread, the probability of someone making
$STATEMENT, approaches 1._

~~~
CamperBob2
Ah, yes, Borges' Law.

------
xentronium
Obligatory Artemiy Lebedev's photo report on NK (unfortunately, comments in
Russian only):

<http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/>

<http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/>

<http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/>

<http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-4/>

------
dfc
What does it say about a tech news website when the writer cannot be bothered
to google "open source screen capture" before posting a story.

~~~
obstacle1
Nothing, since the writer is a freelancer and doesn't represent said website.

~~~
dfc
So they went ahead and posted his story?

~~~
pretoriusB
Yes, if the story is hot, no news site would care about capture quality
anyway.

And it's not like it's some high class news outlet anyway. Complaining about
some random web news site?

~~~
dfc
Are you the guy that complains about "try hards" in games?

------
swalsh
I wonder if the people who developed the game inside NK had the opportunity to
play games made from the outside?

~~~
sebastianavina
I wonder if they even had access to unblocked internet.

~~~
quant18
My wild guess is: they might not have had any internet connection at all. But
it really depends whether the Koryo Tours guys thought the extra cost would be
worth it. I don't have any updated pricelist from Nosotek (the North
Korean/Dutch joint venture outsourcing firm which wrote Pyongyang Racer), but
back in 2010 they charged an extra €40 to €60 per day surcharge to clients if
they wanted their team of two outsourced Pyongyang programmers to have direct
internet access; otherwise the team would work "in a cleanroom environment and
can not connect to the internet" and all email contact would be with the
Nosotek managers only. <http://www.nkeconwatch.com/nk-uploads/nosotek-
pricelist.pdf>

To put this in perspective, that charge is almost the same as the charge for
one of the programmers themselves. My guess is, Nosotek most likely have to
pay for a third guy from the government to watch the browsing habits of the
first two, and that third guy has to belong to both the set of political
reliables and the set of internet-savvy people --- two sets which are already
small in North Korea and whose intersection is even smaller. Not to mention
the cost of the extra computer and internet connection itself

More links about Nosotek:

<http://www.nkeconwatch.com/category/organizaitons/nosotek/>

<http://www.northkoreatech.org/tag/nosotek/>

<http://nosotek.com/>

~~~
asmithmd1
Very interesting contract. Did you use them for a project?

4\. Communication

Communication between the engineers and the customer will only take place by
email or Nosotek's bug tracking server. Phone calls are not possible. Chatting
is only possible with members of Online Programming teams.

Emails exchange will only take place once pay day, answers to questions will
be giving on the following day, sometimes two days later. The customer accepts
that it might happen that email communication is interrupted for one or two
days for technical or administrative reasons.

In case the customer sends political propaganda or agitation, Nosotek has the
right to cancel the project without returning the prepaid fees.

------
jpatokal
Oops -- looks like the bourgeous running dogs of HN have just DOS'd the North
Korean video game industry. Here's hoping Kim Jong Un doesn't consider this a
declaration of war and transform the Web into a sea of fire...

------
jlgreco
From the name, I was really hoping this would be a re-branded Tux Racer.

------
malkia
Wonder whether the game has somesecret subliminal message in the executable?
Something like the Trolls game for PC
<http://www.mobygames.com/game/trolls/trivia>

------
jayfuerstenberg
The instructions read "don't hit other cars or vans!" but I think I counted
around only 6 of them in the entire city.

Is it because it's on DEMO MODE?

~~~
dualogy
No, it just adds a lot of realism. I'm not being snarky, NK roads are mostly
devoid of cars most of the time from what I've seen (on the Internet, didn't
have the privilegue to visit yet).

~~~
davorb
I've read on a blog belonging to a Russian foreign exchange student that's
currently living in the country, that they're actually having traffic problems
in Pyongyang this year.

------
Fantastix
How to get backdoor into North Korea...

Convince the game designers to be on your team.

hmm...

------
lawlypop
For those of you who want to skip the site and check out the video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3nueQI-
dNe4)

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rootedbox
if it was from NK then why does the game use english?

~~~
pbateman
Because it's a promotional tool made by the travel agency Koryo. As a
foreigner you can travel through North Korea and see a truly strange country.

It's probably going to do the job quite well just because it will pique the
curiosity of a few and they might end up going.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
As an American, you can only visit during the Mass games unless they've
changed that. I've been thinking about a weekend trip one of these days (but
probably October given that's the only time I can go).

~~~
taligent
They've changed it. You can go at certain periods during the year often
coinciding with key events.

And you can only go as part of a set tour which is usually over a week. So no
weekend tours and certainly not by yourself.

~~~
rplacd
IIRC, the last person to individually book a tour to North Korea decided to
shirk his appointment with the state ministry in charge of chaperones _and_
took advantage of the fact that a Trans-Siberian railway crossing was listed
as a valid port of entry on the standard tourist visa... it's not often you
get to play with (if only mentally now) the technicalities of international
transit. It makes you grin like hell.

------
hayksaakian
seems like the site (of the game) is down from my end

------
frozenport
North Korea's goverment will report the website outage as a CIA plot carried
by an elite group of hackers called "Hacker_News".

------
ender89
Complete with realistic Pyongyang traffic!

------
telepoiss
I hope they'll release an iOS version soon.

------
jagermo
i think the site is down. Did anyone have a chance to mirror it?

------
JediZX
Now the NK citizens will be arrested if they don't play this game day and
night...

~~~
illuminate
On ~what~?

~~~
EliRivers
On my last tour I was assured by our (frankly gorgeous) guide that EVERY
family has a PC. Or at least that's the plan.

We drew our own conclusions :)

------
kennywinker
For some reason I was expecting it to be written in Python.

~~~
ouchtrech
You kidding or what, c'mon ? Python is too good for them. They still be in
70's, python was made in 90's.....

