SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Why I e-sports (lest we forget)

“I had a dream that was Starcraft, and now that dream is gone from me”

A touch melodramatic, no? But it’s a melodramatic time in the Starcraft community.

You see, apparently, Starcraft is dying. At least that’s what I’ve learned at TeamLiquid and Reddit this past month. This came as something as a surprise to me, since I’ve been involved in the Starcraft community for over a decade, and I cannot remember there being more tournaments, coverage, and opportunities to participate at any other point in RTS history.

At first I did what I normally do when someone says something stupid on the internet, ignore it, because life is WAY too ******* short. But at a certain point I grew a touch sad. People were so damned angry, and all I could keep thinking is, do any of you people remember why you fell in love with Starcraft in the first place?

Well, I do. So read on, and maybe some of you will remember (and share) why you’ve spent so many hours spamming away at those mechanical keyboards.

Once upon a time

I turned 27 over the weekend, and I have been around the Starcraft scene for longer than most. I bought Starcraft and later, Broodwar, when they first came out. My first exposure to e-sports (although we sure as shit didn’t call it that back then) came through a wonderful website called www.battlereports.com

There were no replays. No VODS. And there sure as shit were no live streams. There were screen grabs, Adobe Photoshop, 56k modems and walls of text. That was it. And yes, it was ******* awesome. To understand the kind of excitement a new Mark4 or Breeze report generated, well… you just had to be there.

They were frontier times, but they were fun; a kind of video game Neolithic period. Then one day I downloaded the latest Broodwar patch, and what was once a flat world became round.

Patch 1.08

For those of you who aren’t Broodwar veterans, you may not be aware that it wasn’t until the game’s 3rd year that it actually became possible to save and view replays. This was a game changer in a way that a generation that has grown up with live streams and constant coverage will never quite understand.

With Battlereports.com and other community websites like it the first generation of e-sports legends had been created. Maynard, [o]Mr.X, Tillerman, and of course, xDs~Grrrr… were all gods of the game, yet 99% of the population had never actually seen them play. We’d seen their ladder results, we’d read about their triumphs in the handful of major tournaments existed. But we’d never actually SEEN them play.

Great expectations

With great expectation comes great disappointment (see HotS Beta). When replays first came out, I, like everyone else, scoured community pages as the first replays of ‘pro’ gamers filtered out. The response was, quite simply, underwhelming. They didn’t seem that good. For anyone that has the misfortune to have read a twich.tv chat during a non-korean pro game this not an unfamiliar phenomenon (WHAT IS THIS GOLD LEAGEE? LOLOL DAT MICRO). The fact is, the game can look very simple from the outside. A particular disappointment was the legendary Grrrr…

At the time of 1.08’s release he was without question the Greatest Player of All Time (though The Emperor was already beginning to make waves). And yet for the first few months of 1.08’s existence the only replays that emerged of the great Canadian were of him getting roflstomped by Koreans. Once again, he just didn’t seem that special. Then came the World Cyber Games of 2001.

Nerd Chills

This was the first major, international tournament of the replay era. It included pretty much every great Starcraft player I had been reading about for years. Nazgul, Maynard, Elky, Boxer, Grrrr, Gundam, Legionnaire (!), Nirvana (!!), Madfrog, were all there. It was amazing.

A day into the tournament the first day’s group replays were released to the public. I downloaded every rep I could get my mits on and jumped onto b.net with a clan mate to watch away. First up, Grrrr vs Garek, a relatively unknown Dutch Protoss. It was a PvP on Legacy of Char. I had no idea what to expect, but my perception of what was possible in Starcraft was about to change.

Garek opened with a fast expand, Grrrr went straight for a Robotics bay, Reavers, and made the unusual move of upgrading Shuttle speed. Grrrr took shuttle and 2 reavers, and through precision micro and reaver ‘popping’ proceeded to completely dismantle his opponent. The disparity in skill was astounding. We’d never seen anything like it. It changed my perception of how the game had to be played. It was no longer rock > scissors > paper > rock. It turned out scissors could in fact beat rock if the scissors knew what they were doing.

My mind was blown, the covenant was sealed; I was an e-sports fan (though the word still didn’t exist yet).

The tournament only got better. Grrrr reaver popped and Carrier switched his way through the group stage and became worthy of the legend, until a Chinese Terran monster by the name of ID~2000 steam rolled him with an impenetrable tank push. ID`2000 met his match in Liquid`Nazgul, as the two goliaths of macro play traded army after army in the middle of the Lost Temple for 40 minutes until Nazgul emerged bloodied but victorious. Not long after, the seemingly impregnable Nazgul was sliced apart by the precision micro and daring tactics of the Terran Emperor, Boxer. And the amazing tournament concluded with the undefeated Boxer confronting the undefeated Frenchman, Elky. Prior to this game Hall of Valhalla was seen as a Protoss favoured map. No one thought that after Boxer had finished schooling Elky with Goliath/Dropship micro that dropped the collective jaws of the entire Broodwar Community.

Golden Age

The beauty of watching games like that was that they made you want to be a better gamer. I knew I would never be a progamer. I knew that video games were a ‘waste’ of time. But, **** it, I wanted to Reaver pop my way to victory ala xDs~Grrrr, and rofl stomp Terran pushes with wave after wave of Zealots just like Nazgul (yes I was a Protoss player!).

And I still do. Except now I want to fry probes with Hellions, and crush Zergs with so much Mech they cry imba.

And you know what else? I’m enjoying ‘e-sports’ (the word exists now) more than I ever did, even back when it was new. Why? Because I am gaming in a golden age.

I get to watch high quality games at any time of the day, be it a stream or a tournament. I can log onto a ladder system I would’ve killed for 10 years ago and find a great game within a minute. I have clan mates who I can talk shit with and discuss strategy with and any sane time of the day. I got to play on a motherfucking stage at ACL Melbourne in front of a crowd of real life human beings. And this weekend I’ll sit gripped at my computer monitor as 7 of my fellow countrymen invade Dallas.
I still get to enjoy these things. And I just cannot, for the ******* life of me, work out how the increased popularity of League of Legends changes any of that.