EPTMy Life of Starcraft
Everyone always has says a little disclaimer at the beginning of their OP’s and mine will have one too, but I think this one warrants it being written in. This OP is based off of a nerd (and I use the word nerd in the most respectful way possible since—and this may surprise some of you—I too am a nerd) named Sean “Day(9)” Plott’s youtube semi-autobiography of the same name. His Life of Starcraft is two hours of talking to a web cam where he almost starts crying about halfway through. Mine will be shorter and hopefully involve no tears.
I bought Starcraft: Brood War as a naïve 6th grader who had no idea he was about to change his life forever. I was in Wal-mart and was amused by the picture of an alien perched on a pile of human skulls displayed on the game’s back cover and it was only ten dollars which meant it was an acceptable withdrawl from the money that I normally had reserved for buying Digimon cards. I installed the game and played the single player for quite a while but I was always fascinated by that menu option for multiplayer. I had clicked on it once but it asked me my age and said I had to be thirteen years old to play against online opponents. This was before I understood how the internet works, so I waited diligently for several months to turn thirteen. And then it began!
Here we’ll take a quick break from my life of Starcraft so I can explain what the game actually is to all of you who are obviously missing out. Starcraft is not like other video games; it is not some shooter that’s all about fast reflexes and swearing at your teammates through your headset. Starcraft is more like chess; if you and your opponent could move your pieces at the same time and instead of there being only black pieces and white pieces there’s three different types and instead of the only difference between the pieces being their color they were actually very different. Like if black had three knights but only one bishop and white had two queens but no pawns and orange had a piece that could turn invisible, then Starcraft would be like chess. My point is that this game requires a lot of strategy and is not very forgiving to casual players.
The very first game I played against a real person was a slaughter. He dismantled me so thoroughly that there was no way I could possibly delude myself into thinking I could have won the game. Thirteen year old me was upset at losing but I was also intrigued by the cruel, machine-like efficiency this other player utilized to destroy me and I wondered if one day, I too could be the strategic mastermind I thought that player surely was. But of course, being a thirteen year old, I totally gave up immediately and stopped playing one versus ones and went back to the single player—where the good guys always won. But I never could get out of my head that image of the player who beat me. I still secretly yearned for the glory that could obviously be achieved with victory. I wanted to go head to head with a stranger in a battle of wits where each was trying everything possible to defeat the other, and I wanted to come out on top. But I was intimidated.
However as you probably guessed since I am reading this right now, I did eventually venture back into the world of multiplayer and I began to grind out some games. I lost probably ten times more often than I won but I was comforted by a hierarchy I had made for myself: all players that I could beat were obviously no match for my superior intellect, while all players that I lost to were nerds who all they did was play Starcraft. There’s no shame in losing at a video game to a nerd right?
And yet while brushing aside all the efforts of the tier of players better than me, I was desperately trying to reach their level. I scoured the internets for Starcraft strategy guides (most of which were too complicated for me to even grasp) and videos of the pros (most of which were commentated in Korean, which was not very helpful). And I did all of this while denying that I cared that much, which in retrospect was definitely holding me back. My dad saw me watching some pro Starcraft once and said “you’re watching people play a game?” and I was ashamed even though I’m sure right after he asked me that he sat down on the couch and did the exact same thing on ESPN.
The allure of Starcraft was too much to be prevented by mere embarrassment though, so I continued on, and little did I know, I was actually improving. My iTouch was filled with notes and tactics but I didn’t need to reference them nearly as often and I could actually decide my own strategies and execute them with mixed success. By now Starcraft 2 had come out and I worked my way up the rankings into around the top 15% of American players, but outside of the people I knew in person who played Starcraft, I still told no one about my little obsession because being “cool” was too important to me.
I think watching the pro Starcraft games have changed that view for me the most, though. Watching the games really made me question my views of society. How could someone dedicate his life (let’s not pretend we need to be gender neutral here) to playing a video game? Don’t they know how nerdy and un-cool that is? I started watching Sean Plott’s life of Starcraft again today (he’s the nerd from my disclaimer) and he started it with this line, but I think for my life of Starcraft, this line is a good way to end it: “There is nothing more cool than being proud of the things that you love”
