Starcraft Weekend

The weekend of the Brown Club gathering was also the weekend of the eStars Seoul exhibition, a huge convention featuring tournaments for Starcraft, Counterstrike, and other popular games. I learned that the Friday of the exhibition, Blizzard would be allowing visitors to try out the much anticipated Starcraft 2, so after work, I made my way to the convention center as quickly as possible to see if the sequel to one of the best games ever created was worth all the anticipation.

It wasn't.

The preview version only allowed Multiplayer play, and albeit everything was in Korean, but it was still enough to make me realize that Starcraft 2 was basically the same game as the original Starcraft, just with souped-up graphics. Some of the old units and structures have been removed, with new units and structures to take their place. In an effort to avoid advancing too deeply into nerd territory, I'll end my review there. If you want to know more, just ask me.

Sunday was the championship game for the Starcraft tournament, and I knew I had to be there. I remember hearing in high school that some guy in Korea had died from playing Starcraft too long. A quick flipping through of Korean TV channels reveals two stations devoted to airing past tournaments of Starcraft, CS, Tekken, etc. In fact, there's a whole division of sports in Korea known only as "e-sports," meaning that video games are basically placed on equal footing as real-life, physical sports like baseball and soccer. I remember standing outside of a so-called "e-sports stadium" where a Tetris tournament was ending and finding a whole gaggle of girls eagerly waiting for the Tetris players to come out. Come out they eventually did, dressed in matching uniforms and trying their best to look cool. The girls applauded the players and swarmed around them, offering drinks and other goodies so that the gamers could refresh themselves after a long, grueling tournament.

Suffice it to say, I was completely disgusted. And secretly a bit jealous.

It seemed completely preposterous to me that these gamers were being treated like professional athletes just because they could move things around on a computer screen really well. Granted, the amount of prestige afforded to athletes can be on the excessive side at times, but at least those athletes possess some sort of God-given physical gift that sets them apart from the rest. Professional gamers not only garner popularity and acclaim, they can also make hundreds of thousands a year. I couldn't help but think something wasn't right about that.

Then I played a round of Starcraft with Jihoon, who claimed he "wasn't that good," got completely owned, and started to rethink my position. As I consider myself a "not bad" Starcraft player, I was pretty shocked to be beaten so easily, and when I considered that the pro gamers were playing the best of the best, I felt a little more appreciation for them.

That Sunday was the championship of the e-Stars Seoul tournament, so I thought I'd see how the best of the best played.

I still find it funny how much spectacle was involved. Two garrulous announcers provided constant commentary throughout the match, and although I had no clue what they were saying, the emphases in their voices were enough to kick the excitement level up a notch.

Before the match began, each player "warmed up" in his private booth, clicking his left mouse button as rapidly as possible (I kid you not) while maintaining an intense gaze at the computer screen. The favored player even displayed a professional glamour shot overlaid with the words "Maestro of Zerg."

As this game would provide footage for the 24-hour Starcraft channel, a few cameras stationed around the room were capturing footage for the broadcasts. These cameras kept returning to the token white guys, who ate it all up while going crazy for the camera.

On the other hand, when the cameras turned to the Koreans, most of them demurely covered their faces.

Finally, after towers of smoke were shot into the air and equally tall flares ignited on stage, it was time for the battle to begin.

The championship consisted of three games, and no game lasted longer than twenty minutes. It wasn't until the main screen began to show what was actually happening on each player's monitor that I realized how good these guys were. Whereas when I play Starcraft, I usually have a little downtime when nothing's happening, or wait to see if my army will beat my opponents, the professionals were clicking nonstop at a rate that had to be about twice per second. Their deft maneuvering out of tricky situations and into strategic positions was almost as thrilling to me as watching a superhuman athlete perform some extraordinary feat. I also realized that these players modified their strategies for each round, using different combinations of units in anticipation of the units his opponent would use. This approach didn't differ much from using different plays in other, legitimate sports. And with this discovery came the realization that these players probably studied their opponents' past games- after all there were channels devoted to airing old tournaments- which was not all that different from players in sports studying opposing teams' strategies.

The icing on the cake, however, was the audience. Whenever one player was about to launch a surprise attack on the other, or the tide suddenly shifted from one to the other, the entire crowd would gasp. And once that attack was in motion, the audience would cheer as loudly as spectators at a pro sporting game. It was a totally different experience watching a Starcraft match with an awed, engaged audience than watching it on TV. The fact that most of the people in the audience were in middle school or high school didn't make an ounce of difference.

Ultimately, the self-dubbed "Maestro of Zerg" won the tournament. I was a little disappointed, as I had been rooting for his opponent to win. Nevertheless, as I left the convention center I realized that perhaps the glorification of Starcraft wasn't such a crazy idea after all.