SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

sirhcle · Thu, 20th-Sep-2012, 10:11 PM

Click here for the TL;DR link. You might enjoy my second submission more.

[About myself]

It's 2.10am.

I have just come home from a failed 14 hour lab experiment. Probably not the best time to get into a writing mood, but it's better than chain-losing on ladder and this will serve as good practise when my thesis is due mid-next year. It's difficult to find time to do the things you love, I wish I were a teenager again - able to lounge around to my hearts content.

"We have homework in high school you know?!" You might question me.

If you're currently in high school, then you don't really know the meaning of what it is to complete 'work' at 'home' or how to work efficiently. Don't worry, I was the same at that age. And don't you undergrad kids go laughing at them, I teach 2nd and 3rd year uni students, so I know how "smart" you lot are... I just wish I had all the time in the world. Immortality would be my super power of choice.

There are certain perks that come with ageing: independence, financial freedom and stuff like being able to play games for long hours without your father breathing down your neck. But all good things come with a price, it won't cost you an arm or a leg but you must pay the price of responsibility. Responsibilities aren't all about taking the trash out on a Tuesday night and remembering to feed the dog. You need to work to make money, eat right and exercise to improve your health, socialise to maintain friendships, broaden social networks, meet the love of your life and as if that's not enough - work towards a future of some sort if you are to be taken seriously at all in life. I don't want to make this sound daunting but you know you're no longer a kid when you start worrying about the future. That's when you become an adult, /childhood.

Don't get me wrong, I love the things I do.

I'm squeezed for time because it's a consequence of the decisions I've made in life and I take full responsibility for it. I study full-time (not an arts degree), that's 8 hours a day - 5 days a week. I work 15 hours part-time, supervising 16 year olds who make 'your' coffee. I teach 2nd year and 3rd year students biochemistry twice a week so hopefully one day they can find a job. I play badminton twice a week to keep strong and reserve Saturday and Sunday nights to touch base with friends. How much time does this leave for Starcraft 2? Well, when you fit in World of Warcraft, watching TV series and trolling online dating sites, that's not a lot of time left for good old SC2.

But hey! I try and get as best as I can. I play for VB, we're a pretty relaxed clan since we are named after a terrible beer that taste like urea. But even then, there's little respect from my clan leaders:

"You didn't play the clan match. L-2-schedule you j00t."
"You think the worker count on Hatcheries are good in HotS? Are you a retard? Can't you count or something?"
"Then again, no surprise there. You do come from playing games that rely on auto-queue."

The players are a lot nicer: "So when are you going to get to Masters?" They ask me.
"Well, I have a hypothesis: 'You can only be pro at one thing at a time.'"

Supposedly it takes 10000 hours to obtain mastery in a set of skills. That makes sense because an average full-time Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in any field takes about 4 years, 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, for 50 weeks in a year, for 4 years equates to about 8000 hours in total and I've done about 6000 hours of mine.

From my busy schedule, you might be able to get a rough idea as to how busy I truly am. What would I have to give in order to break my weekly routine and take a weekend off? Well, someone else will need to organise badminton, I will need to cancel that movie on saturday night and dinner on Sunday night, will need to look for someone who can cover my all-day Sunday shift. I'll need to get back in time to teach my 2nd year class at 9am Monday and have all the assignments marked before then! Difficult but not impossible.

This story (and you thought the story was coming to an end) is about my inner child ripping its way through my ribcage. It's that feeling that you only ever dream of, kind of like when you're 5 years old in a candy store and your future-self comes through a warpgate and buys you everything you could ever desire (unfortunately its gummy bears and marshmallows - Yay!).

[Getting There - Hours awake: 24]

The plan was simple. A quick smash-n-grab, hellions in mineral line and out before the shit hits the fan. We fly in on Saturday morning when WCS Australia Nationals start and fly out on Sunday night just after the finals. Clean and simple.

I had lab-work on the Friday followed by night shift at the cafe. And as tired as I was feeling at 2am rollling around in my bed, I couldn't get myself to sleep. My mind was overflowing with excitement and I felt as giddy as when they announced the development of starcraft 2 in Korea during 2007 - half hoping it were Diablo 3 (almost laughable now that I think of it). I got out of bed after 2 hours of sleepless tossing and turning, and proceeded with perhaps some of the 'helpful' tossing. I packed an extra strong coffee in a thermal flask and left the house at 5am in a quiet suburb in Melbourne destined for the Australian Technology Park in Sydney having not slept the night at all.

The train was to arrive at 5.20am and my friend, J, would meet me in the 3rd carriage from the back. Although highly pedantic is he is we were friends in high school obsessing over Harry Potter and then SC:BW/SC2 during university. J is heavily affiliated with SC2SEA, I'm not sure what he does for them - helps write code for website development? Something like that. I believe I have a total of 1 post (soon to be 2 or 3) but I can still kick J's Gold Terran ass, and that's all that matters.

It was an exhausting train/skybus/plane/taxi trip which lasted about 4 hours in total and at this point I was purely fueled by caffeine. My mind was split and darted around with unfocused thoughts like stimmed-marines and my body dragged behind "feelin' mighty sluggish". I slumped down onto the chairs, and saw that banners enveloped me. Banners of players covered the rails of the balconies above us and stretched on back for as far as I could see. Most of the players had the standard *arms crossed* "Oh yeah, I'm awesome" look. Tgun's banner said: "There's something over yonder." Swirling lights and Blizzard logo's danced across the room displaying fleeting images of words or pictures. In my sleep deprived state, I closed my eyes. It was too much for me to take in. The atmosphere was overwhelming.

[The People]

There were a few things I quickly noticed:

1. There are more gamer girls in Sydney and they are hotter than their ugly counterparts in Melbourne.
2. The guys are more geekier and uglier than most Melbournians I have seen.
3. The coffee was surprisingly good at the site (made by English-accented-hipster-barista)

The room was full of buzz, everyone talking about strategies, player stats, predicted outcomes of matches. A part of me wanted to yell out: "GEEKS", but I felt right at home. If anything, the energy was cumulative and if possible we were a unified archon ball of geeks.

When you regularly watch the players on stream you have a conceptualised image of them emblazoned into your mind. It's a real shock when you finally see them in real life, walking around in the flesh and I wasn't really ready for it.

"Why isn't PiG playing naked?"
"Thank God tgun is still wearing his hoodie."
"Moonglade still doesn't look like Prince of Persia to me..."
"What?! iaguz is 21?"
"I didn't know Mafia was that short!"
"Good God, Artosis is so tall."
"How come Tasteless has such a strong widow's peak and Day9 doesn't?"

"What? Mafia was Magic: The Gathering Champion, Professional Poker player and top of Korean Grandmaster Ladder?" Very Impressive, Tastosis described him as the perfect nerd. But did he do these things all at once? No. My hypothesis still stands true: you can only be pro at one thing at a time. Thank you Mafia, n = 1. Excellent.

"Who's that?" I would ask J.
"He's <such and such>."
"Oh I see, I don't know him."

"Who's that then?"
"What? That's Dot."
"Oh, she looks so much older in person."

"Wow, how did you meet PiG?"
"There was dinner after Respawn LAN."

"You know I've met that Mayo guy 4 times at different places and have shook hands with him at least 3 times. It's great because he has no idea who I am."

Most of the time, people from SC2SEA would just sit down and talk to J as he browsed the site's chat on his ipad and I just sat there drinking cups of coffee, dancing between consciousness and that warm white ball of drowsiness that hits you on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes they'd look over at me and wonder who I were. Just a nobody enjoying myself.

[The Tournament]

This is what everyone had come to see. And if you've never been to a live e-sports event, I'm not sure how to describe it to you. It's obviously different from when you're sitting at home in front of your monitor with a bag of Doritos and a glass of coke. It's different to the hype of being at a home screening or even being at a Barcraft drinking your liver out. It was the first time I was at a live e-sports event and I'll try to capture the moment as accurate as possible.

When there is a group of people watching something immersive such as in a cinema, they all experience similar afferent nervous signals. They all experience the same sights, sounds, smells and feelings such that everyone within the room has synchronised brain activity; for a moment everyone reacts and responds identically.

When you're watching those high-level quick-paced ZvZ matches between PiG and mOOnGLaDe or tgun and mafia and you gasp breathlessly from a money fungal or a perfect baneling detonation, the entire hall gasps with you. When you cheer, everyone behind you has your back. There's a clash of "BOO'S" and "FIGHTING!" and demands for Blizzard to nerf imbalanced units. Your hands going numb from clapping and your loud expressions of encouragement begin to shake the floor and you believe that the players in their booths have heard you and will play better from the moral support you're giving them.

In a barcraft, people applaud great skill and micromanagement from a screen. In a live e-sports event, we applaud to encourage players we support so they do well in the tournament. This pseudo-emotional connection resonates through every heart-breaking loss or crushing victory and you can feel that painful prick at the back of your throat or that hearty cheer from within when your favourite player takes the game. Your emotions are enhanced and you truly feel that you belong in a larger crowd, embracing and loving a hobby you may be too embarassed to admit within another clique that you love a game, it's community and it's players with such passion.

I'm not sure if that's a helpful recount, but that's the experience I took away from the event

On the end of the Saturday which finished just before midnight, we got pizza which took 40 minutes to cook somewhere in Redfern and I crawled into bed after 40 hours of staying awake.

[The Aftermath]

The overall experience was amazing.

Except for when the security guards wouldn't let me take my kebab into the screening hall.

"Wait, did you just let those 4 guys in with Subway?"
"They were food for the players."
"Right, because it takes 4 guys to buy subway? And they only came back with 4 foot long subs and 4 drinks for 20 players and had to use the non-staff entrance?"
"Err... Yes."

I missed the mOOnGLaDe vs YoonYJ game because of this. Still pissed off about it. I wanted to go all Idra BM on him, but it wasn't worth it. I had sacrificed my weekend to fly up to Sydney to enjoy a deserving timeout and I wasn't going to let and argument with a brain-dead security guard ruin it for me. It was a good change of pace from my adult life and an escape from the endless responsibilities you're expected to juggle. Life just keeps on throwing them at you.

In hindsight, with all the time in the world as a kid I would be able to sit in front of my computer and play till the cows come home. But I would never be able to have the skills of organising flights and accomodations, the funds to finance the trip, nor the independence of going wherever I wanted for the weekend. Being so time constrained allows me to ration where I want to spend my time. I know which of my friends are most important to me because I don't have time to deal with retards. I know what I love doing, because I will end up doing it despite the mountain of work which won't write themselves up.

Ageing isn't so bad as long as you're proud of what you love and aren't afraid to admit your passions. It's about who you are and only you have to put up with yourself 24/7 (refer to attached image).

Life is about balance. We strive to seek balance for work, health and play. And it seemed that what I really needed was more 'PLAY' in my life. A weekend well spent, and I'd do it again.

Quick Comments

crAzerk:

just give him the key already! +1

**inFeZa** · Thu, 20th-Sep-2012, 11:04 PM

Awesome!

Btw those people who just sit on facebook and call starcraft players virgins etc, are gay.

**nirvAnA** · Fri, 21st-Sep-2012, 1:33 AM

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing!

sirhcle · Fri, 21st-Sep-2012, 9:38 PM

Wow, thanks for the comments infeza (pro observer guy) and nirvana (website owner/pro P guy)!
I was thinking people would be more inclined to read/reply to my lemon poem than my essay.