[albertopv]

I would be surprised if online games use TCP. Anyway, physics is still there and light speed is fast, but that much. In 10ms it travels about 3000km, NZ to US west coast is about 11000km, so less than 60ms is impossible. Cables are probably much longer, c speed is lower in a medium, add network devices latency and 200ms from NZ to USA is not that bad.

[Hikikomori]

Speed of light in fiber is about 200 000km/s. Most of the latency is because of distance, modern routers have a forwarding latency of tens of microseconds, some switches can start sending out a packet before fully receiving it.

[reshlo]

The total length of the relevant sections of the Southern Cross Cable is 12,135km, as it goes via Hawaii.

The main reason I made my original comment was to point out that the real numbers are more than double what the other commenter called “devastating” latency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Cross_Cable