This is what true gaming journalism looks like, not sitting in an office 95 percent of the time typing press releases and talking to PR people. Journalism is going out into the world and connecting with people and telling everyone about those connections, and you have done that splendidly.
I'm Cuban (from a different city) and this is all true. I used to play WoW with homemade antenas and usb-wifi. It was really a great thing, because since the community on the servers is so small, you can actually get to meet them in person and have a lot of fun. So it had the benefits of gaming without all the social struggles it can bring. We also had a social-network called "the social" with no more than 100 active users, where, once again, you felt more safe and warm than when you use facebook.
I was born in Cuba and I've been going pretty regularly. Last time I went was 3 months ago after a 5 year hiatus. I was so impressed by the networks my cousins and their friends had setup in our small town , Just so they could play Call of Duty and DOTA. Thanks for making this.
Damn, is there any way to help or donate to SNET? I've got a Diploma in Network Admin, and 14 years in IT, I'd love to help these guys. Thats a beautiful thing they're doing.
As a Cuban that came to America years ago I am happy to see how Cuban s are very smart and work around real word issues thank you for spotlighting my Beautiful country And the amazing people that live there
"Downloading one game here, 1 GB..." *Dramatic hand gesture* "... Long time." As someone who grew up with shitty dial up from the mid '90s, I completely felt his pain.
It reminds me so much on the days in East Germany before the wall fell. I remember the village priest traveling to West Germany buying two satellite receiver and antennas with the money collected from a small neighborhood. The electricians in the neighborhood built the main station and the signal distributors, the welders built the tower and the rest helped digging trenches for the cables. We connected about 150 houses with West German TV. For those who don't know, yes that was perfectly legal in East Germany after around 1988. Great collective work, people helped each other because they had to. The wall fell, capitalism arrived and by about 1992 many of the neighbors got into fights and arguments. Some neighbors did well after the wall fell, some did ok, some had a hard time. Jealousy took over and the spirit of helping each other died quickly. If you needed something you could just go and buy it, rather than asking a friend or neighbor.
This is truly incredible. It really shows how us in the US so easily take our access to something as ubiquitous as the internet for granted. Power to our Cuban gaming brethren!
only 27ms from node to client? wow ok, I thought it would be slower.. that is faster than our connections 20 years ago..and this is everything "self-made" ! I'm impressed :)
This video really shows the importance of LAN capable games and being able to host your own servers. Not everyone in this world is privileged to be connected 24/7 to someones 'cloud'. I hope game developers will someday come back to the good old times of LAN games!
Man, playing with your neighborhood friends on a local network where new games are shared by one device to many devices in copies is just a beautiful nostalgia. There is no better gaming experience than playing with your homies.
Yeah, you know, there's always differences between what the letter of the law says and what local law enforcement have the will or motivation to enforce. Sometimes, and this appears to be the case in Cuba, law as written is not quite compatible with the local infrastructure and economy, so blind spots form to accommodate. Growing pains of new tech entering an old system.
This is pretty incredible. As a non-gamer web developer, I can see these networks being used for things closer to the "craigslist" clone, for markets, community decisions, meetings, etc.
We have it good in the US ... I don't want to hear shit the next time you cant get a signal in some space or your own house. These guys are innovative, and could have been making money but they are working together to grow. Cheers guys this made my day.
Jesus in 30 AC : "Drink this wine, for this is my blood, and eat this bread, for this is my body" Jesus in the 21st century : "Come to my place, for this is my WiFi tower, and join this game, for this is my LAN party"
This was awesome. Before they had widespread local networks like this, there used to be "publishers" of a weekly or monthly USB HDD that would be passed around the town (duplicated along the way), loaded with all sorts of good stuff from the outside world. Movies, TV shows, games, news, books - all kinds of media! The principle behind the internet can truly find its way into any society.
This is amazing. I'd really love to learn more about the technical side of this. These Cubans are building stuff I always dreamed about. Decentralised mesh networks over metropolitan areas. In theory, impossible to control or shutdown so long as you can keep physically building more nodes.
Man, this actually made my eyes water up. People could do really beautiful things when we come together. We seriously need to know who the admins are cause I'm down to send them some networking stuff.
This is community spirit. All those issue you see around the world can be solved a lot if a community get together and help each other achieve a goal (grow food, farms, security, buildings, sports, just about anything). Unfortunately we live in world where social media keeps us close digitally as long as we stay away from each other physically.
I really like when you cover the gaming cultures of different countries. It is a really unique and refreshing content from the usual 'let's play' and 'review videos' that inundates RU-vid. I can tell the hard work you put into your videos, as they are really high quality and looked like they could easily be part of a televised show.
It's a shame they are in a position to have to do that but it should be a huge source of Cuban pride that they have become so self sufficient. Whether connecting to each other on computers or building a vehicle out of an old run down washing machine they'll find a way. Imagine what they could accomplish without all the restrictions. But then again limitations breed creativity.
Great content. Hopefully these guys don't get in any trouble. I bicycle toured for a couple weeks in Cuba back in January and it was a wonderful country, the people were fantastic.
We (I'm Cuban, I live in the east of the country) also have a lot of communitu based services: such and RSS Feeds, Indexers, microblogging, social networks, FTPS, collaborative apps stores, and we had our own, let's say, Netflix, mostly for free or for about 2 USD a month.
These guys really deserve a lot of respect, making the best of a bad situation. Doing what they can for a better tomorow. This makes you really appreciate freedom of speech!
This is really impressive, the lengths to which these people go, just to be able to connect with each other and enjoy their passion for gaming is really something else. Shows just how resourceful and united gamers can be, even in the most restrictive environments.
It's a beautiful thing they are putting together for gamers. Cuban peoples' technical mastery over what limited resources they can scrounge together is always amazing.
they gain the knowledge of computer networking because of computer games. that's how i thought myself about computer..because of games.. thanks dad for our first windows95 pc that you bought for us..it is the greatest gift that i have in my life. :)
Well that was interesting. Almost looks cyberpunky, buncha internet cables and radio towers poking out amidst palm trees and old Havana cars and streetlights, DIY weird hub/DSL/cable hybrid internet and networking
I'd say this is your most interesting video yet, Drew. So fascinating to see what the internet is in other countries, and what we take for granted. I look the resourcefulness of starting your own internet, and being a non profit, for games service with the local community around you.
This was a great documentary. Thanks for showing how people's enginuity and necessity for communication and technology has made it possible for the people of Havana to have access.
Awesome Video, awesome project. This remainds me of the late 90's... We had very often a 150 person LAN running, and it was fun as hell. These guys are living my past, and somehow i really felt like beeing again a teenager while watching this :D
I am Cuban, born in the US. Finally went to Cuba for the first time and documented the whole thing. It was SURREAL. Glad you liked the country of my people. If anyone wants to know more about visiting Cuba, feel free to ask me questions! (:
This may be a bit much to ask but is it possible to trace family lines back to Cuba or is it not possible? I only know my Grandma was from Cuba and my DNA test showed my family line came from Spain but that much I know.
Any foreigner can purchase a card, a national is NOT needed. You should ask for a temporary card, instead of a permanent one. Temporary cards (the one that you purchased in the video) are one-use cards, and are not restricted to Cuban nationals, indeed ETECSA recommends those for tourists. The permanent ones are the Nauta cards, which are tied to a common id i.e: someone@nauta.com.cu and are rechargeable, so you can use it for life. The ID thing was imposed by ETECSA to prevent people from purchasing cards for resale and depleting the cards available in the booth. What was happening before the ID-request is that guys like the one with the LA cap get there early, purchase ALL the cards available for sale, and then resale them twice its price right there in the front of the ETECSA booth.
Would be nice to know how they run the DHCP/DNS for 20,000 connections off what looks like some really old kit. You feel the sudden need to ship them a ton of ex-corporate networking gear which might be getting long in the tooth here but would be a 10fold upgrade on what they have going.
10:10 The legend of zelda breath of the wild on the PC. Is he running dolphin? edit: Zelda at 14:24 Nice to see our cuban brothers getting their game on. :)
This gaming network isnt just in Havana. Here in Holguín, we have one, smaller yes, but equally effective: easily 12-13 users maybe less maybe more. You're welcome to check it out. The only-and main difference- is that here some admin does charges to up to 5 CUC($5) to connect you to the HLG (our city network)
At 16:37, Roberto says "Te acuerdas cuando estaban vendiendo una pistola (...)" this translates to "do you remember when they were sealing a pistol? What a fucking nice video man, kinda wish i could go to Cuba and leave a pen drive with 500 gbs worth of games. like baldurs gate, mass effect 1 and such.
It is a private server running the Mists of Pandaria expansion (was live between 2012 and 2014). At 6:26 you can see them doing a battleground, an end-game PvP content, with level 90 characters. This was the level cap during the MoP expansion.
We (I'm Cuban, connected to one SNET on the east of the country) use to build our own private servers, if we can't download a decent private server from the Internet. We use TrinityCore Open Source MMO Framework, from GitHub. It's free and open source.
Roberto deserve the respect for his honesty and loyalty.. gaming cant be as bad as doing drugs, alcohol, and all other wrong things.. just Fun going on. .. really awesome..
Fantastic. The Cuban people are so ingenuitive, so amazing in so many ways..I see people on here asking how they can donate to this group. Can you please give them an answer?
I was in Cuba in Dec of 2017. I did not get on the internet. 1) it was way more money then I budgeted for and 2) it is really only available in Havannah. Once you get to the countryside there is almost nowhere to get access.
