INTERACTIVE PARTICIPATION

It’s 1:30 a.m., but the laughter and machine-gun fire aren’t letting up at Gamerz Lounge, a computer arcade in a strip mall near Mt. San Antonio Community College in Walnut. It’s the time of night when art student Peter Cao often drops in for a few rounds of “Counter-Strike,” an online team combat game popular at centers in the San Gabriel Valley, Koreatown and the South Bay. For about $3 per hour of play, the centers offer their mostly Asian, young male clientele a cheap way to savor group warfare.

“At home, it’s just me and the computer. When I’m here, I get to see the actual kids I’m fighting against,” says Cao, 22, who goes by “private_Pete” when planting bombs and rescuing hostages in cyberspace. “You don’t want to lose face, especially when they can see you and joke and talk trash.”

The centers offer speedy Internet connections, heavy-bass speakers and huge monitors, an alluring package “that also keeps kids off the streets,” says Tim Cheng, co-owner of Gamerz Lounge, where it’s not uncommon to see zoned-out guys at sunrise. “You just play and play until your eyes are hurting,” says Danilo Roque, a regular at Cyber Lab in Torrance. “When the teams--we call ‘em clans--get together for a challenge, it’s twice as loud and intense.”

Cao and his eight-member clan, the Privates, know how frenzied it can get. They recently won the $400 cash prize in a 10-clan tournament against a crew that brought its own keyboards and optical mice. “We were pretty scared,” Cao admits. “But we beat them.”