EPTAs of now, I've written 2 and will write maybe 2 or 3 more about the trip. Since I didn't really know what to write about, I just put everything in there in hopes people would find it useful/interesting. I'll add more links to articles as they are finished.
Article one - Korean Intro
Article two - GSL 3 Qualifiers
Edit: OK, didn't know about the promotion thing, so going to copy the first article here and link the rest above.
+ Show Spoiler +
Introduction
Hello everyone, my name is David Gimble Barrett and I’ve spent the last 3 weeks or so living in South Korea (with another 4 or so to go until I return). I herald from the south east of Scotland and have been a gamer since before I could read. I used to be a just a regular gaming type who’d just sit about playing a long list of games, never really seeing my hobby as anything serious. But one day when playing dota with some friends, one of the players on the other team flipped out which caused me to have a discussion with a guy on my team about more competitive play. He linked me to an article written by a man named David Sirlin called “Playing to Win” and ever since I’ve been interested in playing competitively.
I’ve also been a fan of Blizzard games since I saw someone playing Warcraft when I was a wee lad and despite never really getting into Starcraft until late 2008 (intel avertec classic season 2), I played Starcraft 2 from the start of beta before deciding I wanted to take it more seriously. So here I am, in Korea doing a mixture of watching GSL, playing on the korean ladder and attempting to not freeze/starve.
So why Korea?
I hear people ask and it’s one of the questions I get asked the most. There’s a little more back story here, but I’ll try to keep it brief. I haven’t had paid work in a long time and education never really appealed to me. So after having done about 4 and a half years charity work in a small town in Scotland, I decided I needed to do something with my life and since I’m a half-decent Starcraft 2 player (although by no means pro), I wanted to see how far I could go if I really pushed myself. Playing at home I could never really focus and the quality of players I’d face would be so mixed, I’d never really learn much while playing. I’ll get to the differences in level of play later.
Travelling to Korea
So I decide I want to go to Korea and at first it was just to come for the GSL season 2 finals and the season 3 qualifiers, before going around the world and doing some kind of documentary about esports (something I’m still interested in doing at some point). But the plane ticket cost for such a trip is more than what Korea alone would have cost, so on my brother’s suggestion, I decide to just go to Korea for about 2 months and get some serious practice in, while also supporting the foreigners at the GSL.
The journey to Korea was pretty harsh, my flight got changed at the last minute due to a cancellation, so it ended up being even longer than I’d first thought. Also when going through Tokyo airport, they took my £30 bottle of whisky which sucked (I was planning on giving it to Tastosis for Christmas). When I got there though, it was pretty simple going. The people at Incheon Airport speak good English and I managed to make it to my hostel ok.
Life in Korea – The Beggining
The first couple of days I was here I would have considered hellish – I didn’t speak the language, wasn’t too keen on the food (not a spice fan), I hadn’t really travelled abroad alone before so being alone in a foreign country with no-one to turn to was pretty horrific. I didn’t eat a proper meal for 2 or 3 days, was completely homesick and was getting really depressed (although I’m Scottish so I’m used to the latter).
On day 3 (after spending 5-6 hours of day 2 trying), I managed to track down Daniel Lee’s (aka Superdanielman’s) PC bang “Sante PC” and had some good conversation with him. He also gave me a vitamin drink (which I needed) and it was nice to talk to someone who spoke English while also being into Starcraft. He said he’d let me play for free if I was serious about going pro and while I wasn’t to sure if I’d ever reach that level, I took him up on the offer (although his lackeys still charge me at the moment, I’ll need to ask him about that).
GSL Season 2 Finals
Now my memory is a little fuzzy about the order of events that happened next, but I think I went to the GSL season 2 finals that night, which was one of the better nights I’ve had out here. I got to the event a bit early and was sitting around in the queue for about 15 minutes before I asked who I thought was Torch (as I’d seen him walk past a couple of times) if there was a separate queue for foreigners. He told me how to get into the place quickly as a foreigner, so I managed to skip the big Korean queue and get in.
The stadium was pretty huge, they really put a lot of effort into the set up and despite not being completely full, there was a lot of people there, including maybe 100(?) foreigners. They lumped a lot of us up together in the front rows, although I later found out that some people were sitting at the back near Tastosis so they could hear them/hang out. But anyway, I sat near the front, to the right on the fire and watched the korean preshow stuff which was pretty funny (commentators getting drunk and playing a game of charades with SC2 unit impressions). I also overheard the guy behind me say he was going to get some food, so I immediately latched onto him and went to get some potato chips. He was a pretty cool guy and we chatted for a bit before going back to our seats.
I won’t bother explaining the show/games, it’s something that is best explained by watching and I can’t do it justice in words.
In between some of the games, I spotted Incontrol and Idra sitting up at the back and went up to say hi and tell Incontrol that I liked the ‘state of the game’ podcast he’s in. He said thanks and asked if I was going to the season 3 qualifiers, I said yes and we wished each other good luck. I quickly ran back to my seat before the next game started.
After the show, I managed to escape the front of the stage before the Koreans zerg rushed it and went up to where a bunch of the well known foreigners were. Here I met Carefoot, Torch, Gin and Tasteless for the first time. I talked to Torch and Carefoot first since I’d mentioned to Torch on twitter I’d found Sante PC and he gave me his email address asking if I could give him instructions on finding it (which I did later). After talking for a bit, Tasteless came up and said hello and we talked for a minute or 2. Now since this was the man who pretty much got me into the pro SC1 scene, I was pretty damn starstruck. Me and a couple of my friends used to watch the gom intel classic games on the weekend, so I was pretty into it (although nothing compared to the average TL user at the time). Also, the thing I remember most from meeting Tasteless for the first time is that he likes to play with Artosis’ nipples, which I found pretty funny.
After that I hung around with them a bit more in hopes that they might go get food (3 days and no actual meals at this point), but Tasteless said it was someone’s birthday party so me, Carefoot (who had no place to stay at this point) and Gin were left alone at this point. I was tired and hungry so I went back to my hostel, looking forward to the next day.
The Day I Liked Seoul
So the next day I had to move to the hotel that gom had booked for me, which aside from some problems find it (the address system in Seoul doesn’t work properly), I managed to get to. I was also meeting someone from my home town that afternoon who was the son of my mum’s friend (who she happened to bump into a week before I left after having not seen her in years). I went to Itaewon at the arranged time and after he spotted the wrapping of the Christmas present I’d been asked to mule to him sticking out of the top of my bag, he came up and said hi. He then fed me korean BBQ and I was so happy. It was also nice to be able to talk to someone without having to worry about dialect (I normally tone down my accent and limit my choices of words so that people can understand me). We talked about Korea and he explained a bunch of things to me and answered a lot of my questions. He also help set me up with a phone (which was cheap) and left me feeling that Seoul might not be so bad.
Training and Interviews
Afterwards I went to Sante PC to meet Torch and get in some last minute training before the qualifiers the next day. We both got interviewed by Daniel Lee, who then lent me his account to play on so I could get some practice. I hadn’t played much before coming out to Korea and those couple of hours were the only practice I’d managed to get while out here before the qualifiers. I placed silver and did ok considering how rusty I was. Koreans also play very differently to Europeans, so that kind of threw me off. They’re also more solid at the lower leagues, which was somewhat surprising. I went back to my hotel figuring sleep was more important than an hour or twos practice and got up nice and early the next day.
So I head to Sindorim early the next day and get there at about 9am, not realising the mall didn’t open until about 10am. I sat around eating short bread and crisps until they opened, then headed to the 7th floor with the other massive surge of Koreans. After reaching there I took a couple of pictures before a Canadian called Louis approached me and asked if I could do an interview for him for some university project he was doing (he’s told me more about this since, but I can barely remember people’s names). I was down with the idea and we stood around talking for about 10 minutes.
After this he went off to either go play or get more interviews, so I went over to where Artosis was interviewing and got pulled into doing an in-prompt interview. I want to take a brief moment to sigh here, after just coming out of a 10 minute interview, I was too tired to say much. I also let my guard down and Artosis almost got me saying I was the best in Scotland, which didn’t go down well with a couple of people back home. Luckily the Starcraft community are fairly level headed, so I’ll just have to get really good over the next month and have a tourney to at least prove I can play as well as the other good Scots.
Hello everyone, my name is David Gimble Barrett and I’ve spent the last 3 weeks or so living in South Korea (with another 4 or so to go until I return). I herald from the south east of Scotland and have been a gamer since before I could read. I used to be a just a regular gaming type who’d just sit about playing a long list of games, never really seeing my hobby as anything serious. But one day when playing dota with some friends, one of the players on the other team flipped out which caused me to have a discussion with a guy on my team about more competitive play. He linked me to an article written by a man named David Sirlin called “Playing to Win” and ever since I’ve been interested in playing competitively.
I’ve also been a fan of Blizzard games since I saw someone playing Warcraft when I was a wee lad and despite never really getting into Starcraft until late 2008 (intel avertec classic season 2), I played Starcraft 2 from the start of beta before deciding I wanted to take it more seriously. So here I am, in Korea doing a mixture of watching GSL, playing on the korean ladder and attempting to not freeze/starve.
So why Korea?
I hear people ask and it’s one of the questions I get asked the most. There’s a little more back story here, but I’ll try to keep it brief. I haven’t had paid work in a long time and education never really appealed to me. So after having done about 4 and a half years charity work in a small town in Scotland, I decided I needed to do something with my life and since I’m a half-decent Starcraft 2 player (although by no means pro), I wanted to see how far I could go if I really pushed myself. Playing at home I could never really focus and the quality of players I’d face would be so mixed, I’d never really learn much while playing. I’ll get to the differences in level of play later.
Travelling to Korea
So I decide I want to go to Korea and at first it was just to come for the GSL season 2 finals and the season 3 qualifiers, before going around the world and doing some kind of documentary about esports (something I’m still interested in doing at some point). But the plane ticket cost for such a trip is more than what Korea alone would have cost, so on my brother’s suggestion, I decide to just go to Korea for about 2 months and get some serious practice in, while also supporting the foreigners at the GSL.
The journey to Korea was pretty harsh, my flight got changed at the last minute due to a cancellation, so it ended up being even longer than I’d first thought. Also when going through Tokyo airport, they took my £30 bottle of whisky which sucked (I was planning on giving it to Tastosis for Christmas). When I got there though, it was pretty simple going. The people at Incheon Airport speak good English and I managed to make it to my hostel ok.
Life in Korea – The Beggining
The first couple of days I was here I would have considered hellish – I didn’t speak the language, wasn’t too keen on the food (not a spice fan), I hadn’t really travelled abroad alone before so being alone in a foreign country with no-one to turn to was pretty horrific. I didn’t eat a proper meal for 2 or 3 days, was completely homesick and was getting really depressed (although I’m Scottish so I’m used to the latter).
On day 3 (after spending 5-6 hours of day 2 trying), I managed to track down Daniel Lee’s (aka Superdanielman’s) PC bang “Sante PC” and had some good conversation with him. He also gave me a vitamin drink (which I needed) and it was nice to talk to someone who spoke English while also being into Starcraft. He said he’d let me play for free if I was serious about going pro and while I wasn’t to sure if I’d ever reach that level, I took him up on the offer (although his lackeys still charge me at the moment, I’ll need to ask him about that).
GSL Season 2 Finals
Now my memory is a little fuzzy about the order of events that happened next, but I think I went to the GSL season 2 finals that night, which was one of the better nights I’ve had out here. I got to the event a bit early and was sitting around in the queue for about 15 minutes before I asked who I thought was Torch (as I’d seen him walk past a couple of times) if there was a separate queue for foreigners. He told me how to get into the place quickly as a foreigner, so I managed to skip the big Korean queue and get in.
The stadium was pretty huge, they really put a lot of effort into the set up and despite not being completely full, there was a lot of people there, including maybe 100(?) foreigners. They lumped a lot of us up together in the front rows, although I later found out that some people were sitting at the back near Tastosis so they could hear them/hang out. But anyway, I sat near the front, to the right on the fire and watched the korean preshow stuff which was pretty funny (commentators getting drunk and playing a game of charades with SC2 unit impressions). I also overheard the guy behind me say he was going to get some food, so I immediately latched onto him and went to get some potato chips. He was a pretty cool guy and we chatted for a bit before going back to our seats.
I won’t bother explaining the show/games, it’s something that is best explained by watching and I can’t do it justice in words.
In between some of the games, I spotted Incontrol and Idra sitting up at the back and went up to say hi and tell Incontrol that I liked the ‘state of the game’ podcast he’s in. He said thanks and asked if I was going to the season 3 qualifiers, I said yes and we wished each other good luck. I quickly ran back to my seat before the next game started.
After the show, I managed to escape the front of the stage before the Koreans zerg rushed it and went up to where a bunch of the well known foreigners were. Here I met Carefoot, Torch, Gin and Tasteless for the first time. I talked to Torch and Carefoot first since I’d mentioned to Torch on twitter I’d found Sante PC and he gave me his email address asking if I could give him instructions on finding it (which I did later). After talking for a bit, Tasteless came up and said hello and we talked for a minute or 2. Now since this was the man who pretty much got me into the pro SC1 scene, I was pretty damn starstruck. Me and a couple of my friends used to watch the gom intel classic games on the weekend, so I was pretty into it (although nothing compared to the average TL user at the time). Also, the thing I remember most from meeting Tasteless for the first time is that he likes to play with Artosis’ nipples, which I found pretty funny.
After that I hung around with them a bit more in hopes that they might go get food (3 days and no actual meals at this point), but Tasteless said it was someone’s birthday party so me, Carefoot (who had no place to stay at this point) and Gin were left alone at this point. I was tired and hungry so I went back to my hostel, looking forward to the next day.
The Day I Liked Seoul
So the next day I had to move to the hotel that gom had booked for me, which aside from some problems find it (the address system in Seoul doesn’t work properly), I managed to get to. I was also meeting someone from my home town that afternoon who was the son of my mum’s friend (who she happened to bump into a week before I left after having not seen her in years). I went to Itaewon at the arranged time and after he spotted the wrapping of the Christmas present I’d been asked to mule to him sticking out of the top of my bag, he came up and said hi. He then fed me korean BBQ and I was so happy. It was also nice to be able to talk to someone without having to worry about dialect (I normally tone down my accent and limit my choices of words so that people can understand me). We talked about Korea and he explained a bunch of things to me and answered a lot of my questions. He also help set me up with a phone (which was cheap) and left me feeling that Seoul might not be so bad.
Training and Interviews
Afterwards I went to Sante PC to meet Torch and get in some last minute training before the qualifiers the next day. We both got interviewed by Daniel Lee, who then lent me his account to play on so I could get some practice. I hadn’t played much before coming out to Korea and those couple of hours were the only practice I’d managed to get while out here before the qualifiers. I placed silver and did ok considering how rusty I was. Koreans also play very differently to Europeans, so that kind of threw me off. They’re also more solid at the lower leagues, which was somewhat surprising. I went back to my hotel figuring sleep was more important than an hour or twos practice and got up nice and early the next day.
So I head to Sindorim early the next day and get there at about 9am, not realising the mall didn’t open until about 10am. I sat around eating short bread and crisps until they opened, then headed to the 7th floor with the other massive surge of Koreans. After reaching there I took a couple of pictures before a Canadian called Louis approached me and asked if I could do an interview for him for some university project he was doing (he’s told me more about this since, but I can barely remember people’s names). I was down with the idea and we stood around talking for about 10 minutes.
After this he went off to either go play or get more interviews, so I went over to where Artosis was interviewing and got pulled into doing an in-prompt interview. I want to take a brief moment to sigh here, after just coming out of a 10 minute interview, I was too tired to say much. I also let my guard down and Artosis almost got me saying I was the best in Scotland, which didn’t go down well with a couple of people back home. Luckily the Starcraft community are fairly level headed, so I’ll just have to get really good over the next month and have a tourney to at least prove I can play as well as the other good Scots.
