PESHAWAR, July 19: With the growing craze for information technology among the youth, the business of video games and video cassettes has suffered as many of their erstwhile clients now use computers, video game and cassette dealers told Dawn.

“The number of shops offering video games has been on the decline because of the increasing number of computers. Majority of the young people who  were accustomed to visiting our shops now glue to computer screens at their homes,” said Ajab Gul, who runs a video game centre in Cantonment area. According to him, the parents are also relieved as their offsprings stay at home.

“Only the poor people are coming here and the sons of the white  collar-people have stop-ped coming here because they have got personal computers,” said another dealer.

He said he used to earn Rs200 to Rs400 per day from his business which now pitched only Rs100 for him. The number of video game shops had decreased from 200 to 100 in the city, he said.

“I have bought a computer for Rs6,000 and I have installed a number of games. There is no fee for playing while at video shops I usually paid Rs10 to 20 every day,” said Mohammad Asim, a matriculation student. He said he used to stand at video shops for hours in severe heat while in his house he sits comfortably to play. It is also easier to and cheaper to install new games on the computers. People enjoy movies and songs on the computer monitors, which is much clearer than television screen.

    Most of these users are not computer literate but they can only play CDs.