Starcraft II @ Blizzcon 2011- THIS Is E-Sports

E-Sports to me used to be something I thought I loved. I was wrong. I actually just liked it.
I liked watching Starcraft games either live on streamed video or through VOD. I liked watching other people play the game I love professionally, and I especially loved listening to the casters analyze and make the game entertaining with their commentary.
I liked staying up late to catch live Starcraft. I liked seeing the various players, each with their own story lines of progress, the results they would produce, and the euphoria expressed on their faces when I watched them triumph greatly. I liked knowing that I was part of a community of people who did the same, who loved watching the same games, and loved this wonderful marvelous thing called Starcraft E-Sports. I thought I loved all these things.

Goodness, was I wrong.

I discovered that I only liked these things because in all the years I had been watching commentated Starcraft games, live streamed or VODs, I had never actually been at an E-Sports venue and watched any of these games “IRL” live and in my face. At Blizzcon 2011, as an avid follower of the GSL, I finally did so. And by doing so I came to realize that it was only now that I can truly say that I love E-Sports, not just like it or appreciate it.

I know, I know, this is a pretty dramatic introduction to what is basically my first live E-Sports experience but to those who don't know or don't understand what E-Sports is I would say this:
At Blizzcon 2011, stemming from what you may think of as a mere video game, I beheld something you could not have imagined.
And I bore witness to it TWICE that weekend.

I saw a technical marvel, the culmination of a lot of people's hard work. It must have taken hours of sweat, dedication, and constant readjustment of the lights, the camera positioning, the sound quality, the computers and setting up the stage just to make this one night and one weekend perfect. And the brilliance of that hard work showed as it all came together. No doubt the crew breathed a sigh of relief when Lee Hyun Joo walked out on stage and began talking, and nothing bad happened. The long efforts of the cast and crew paid off.

I saw belonging. Hundreds of people crowded the RTS stage that night, clamoring for seats. When the seats were all but taken people not only sat down in the aisles, they filled them up! People even crowded behind the seats just to get a glimpse of the GSL final live. The same can be said for the Blizzard Invitational finals. I saw people from all over the United States and the world gathered in one spot and sitting down together to watch something they all had in common: a love for Starcraft. I flew in from Hawaii and talked with people from afar as Sweden and London. The Englishman related to us his own story of the Blizzcon Starcraft tournament the year before, where a Blizzard employee flipped him the bird for asking if a seat was taken. The Swede was a big fan of NaNiWa because they were from the same country, and wanted to meet him at Blizzcon.

The day I learned NaNiwa was a lefty! He plays so fast!

A guy from Washington sat next to my group of friends during Day 2's Blizzcon matches, and told us how he was the next person in line to get MMA's autograph when the stage manager told him that MMA needed to go and the frustration he felt. This same guy helped watch our seats for us in return for watching his when he needed a smoke break. Everyone seemed to be in the spirit of helping each other, so long as you had the courage to ask. I could strike up a conversation with any of my fellow attendees sitting next to me easily (besides the friends I came with) because all I had to do was talk about Starcraft.

What a Handsome Nerd

You wanna to hear a small world story?
As I said before, I'm from Hawaii and met up with a longtime friend from Hawaii (let's call him "Jerry") who let me stay at his place in California for the weekend. I was also supposed to meet at Blizzcon another friend of mine ("Susie"), also originally from Hawaii. Jerry and his roommate ("Roger"), by the way, are part of the USC E-Sports club...the same club Sean "Day[9]" Plott was a part of prior to his graduation! Jerry and Roger are friends with our driver ("Seth"), a really chill and nice guy all around. When I got there and met up with Susie and her boyfriend, we talked about going to watch the GSL finals together with our respective group of people we came with. I got Jerry, Roger, and Seth together that night and reserved more seats for Susie and her group. Well, it turns out that Susie's boyfriend and the other friends she came with were WoW guild mates of Seth. Mindblowing ensued when they eventually found me at the RTS stage.
The point of this gossipy story tangent is that we were all there to watch the incredible Starcraft matches between IMMvp and SlayerS_MMA, and all of us had a degree of separation between each of us. We all also had at least three degrees of separation from Day[9] because of the E-Sports club Jerry and Roger belonged to, and thus a fourth degree from Tasteless and Artosis. This is what I'm talking about when I say "belonging." We were all connected to each other in some way. I'm sure many more people out there who went to Blizzcon have similar stories. We are a living, breathing community because of our inter-connectivity; the sense of belonging we have from loving what we love, and thus knowing who we know.

Sean makes me look like I'm 12, even though we're about the same age. Bad lighting too T_T

I also saw works of art. You see, Starcraft is something one needs to work at. As Mama Plott was quoted by Day[9] in Daily #100, we're not just "playing Mario Kart for a weekend for fun." Starcraft is a very technical game with a lot of variant factors in it to practice. One needs to dedicate long hours of time invested in analyzing your play, making changes, and sheer repetitive practice in order to be one of the best at this game. Professional Starcraft players are professionals because they are paid to excel at something that takes a lot of technical skill and training to operate. Professional Starcraft is a sport. Anyone who says otherwise does not, as Chris “HuK” Loranger said in State of the Game #53, appreciate the long hours the players put into the game to produce the desired results. However, I put forth the argument that Professional Starcraft players are not competitive athletes, but competitive artists. The masses being unappreciative of the long hours put forth to practice and be good at something is common also toward professional musicians, painters, sculptors, actors and all other types of performing arts. Similarly, we like particular professional musical artists and performers because we like their style, their way of playing instruments or singing, their way of creating art. In the same vein, we like to watch certain players play because we like their particular style, their own way of playing the game, and thus their particular way of making the units move on screen while maintaining their economy-- they way they perform their Starcraft art form. We, at Blizzcon 2011, did not watch people playing Starcraft. We watched a player named IMMvp play a player named SlayerS_MMA. We watched NaNiWa play DIMAGA, GamaniaSen play IMMvp, and watched Mvp play NesTea. We saw them make art with our playthings.
Some of you may or may not have felt the same, but I was thinking to myself when I sat down to watch the GSL Final the first night, and kept thinking to myself every time I sat at the RTS stage to watch the matches “Sure, the game demonstrations and hands-on time with Blizzard's new toys were cool, but THIS is what I was here for.” THIS is what I had spent the money on to fly out all the way from Hawaii for. THAT was my reason for being there, and why my passion burst into ignition.

What I'm here for, baby.

And I saw passion. The kind of cheering heard at that stage when Tastosis came out for the first time that night was deafening and unmatched by any other I heard at Blizzcon. Raw emotions coming to the surface of these people, this community, as plays were being made. People roared with excitement when MMA caught Mvp's Tanks un-sieged with Marauders. They cheered when Mvp sniped off MMA's Medivacs full of Marines with Vikings. Even when the player they weren't cheering for made a good play, people clapped loudly and proudly. And when the winner of each game was announced in a loud "GG" by shoutcasters...words cannot explain how the crowds reacted. They simply went nuts.
When the champions of both tournaments were declared, the crowds began chanting their names! They were heroes in the community of Starcraft and they were being celebrated by its legions. The friends I was with who weren't even into Starcraft or E-Sports became enthralled by it, and began clapping and cheering at key moments in the games as well. They were simply sucked in by all the raw emotion, the passion, and the feeling that is E-Sports.

I must say, Starcraft has the best fans in the world. When players and/or casters allowed themselves to sign autographs at Blizzcon, you could tell that the fans who got them were the happiest people in the world. They could barely contain their excitement. When I went to get Sen's autograph, the person before me let out a little whoop after he received it. He was simply that happy to get Sen's autograph. Being fluent in Mandarin Chinese, I approached Sen using his Chinese name and asked him to sign my wall calendar in Chinese; he was mildly surprised, given what I look like. He asked how I knew Chinese, and I told him that my mother is also from Taiwan and that I learned it from when I was young. The same reaction came from DIMAGA when I greeted him in Russian (except I am nowhere near fluent in Russian) and asked for his autograph. That's when I was reminded that the players and casters who are so famous in the Starcraft scene that we ask them for autographs and pictures, are just human beings like us. They have bad days or are really too busy to sign autographs even if they wanted to. It was from this logic that prevented me from getting Tastosis' respective autographs; I respected the fact that they were always rushing around to do their work and trying to help make the E-Sports experience at Blizzcon the best anyone has ever seen, so I left them alone.
I take that back. I actually ran into them back stage on my way to the bathroom, and this was the extent of our conversation:

Me: "...Tastosis! WOOO!"
Tasteless: "...Hey how's it going, man?"
Artosis: "Sup."

Oh well, there's always next year.

DIMAGA, Sen, and JP McDaniel

I respect the casters in the Starcraft scene the most. This is by no means brown-nosing (okay, maybe a little) but rather, it comes from my own personal history from the Starcraft scene. In fact, it was a caster that got me interested in and started on following the E-Sports scene. The very first televised Starcraft match I ever watched was between Stork and relatively unknown Terran player in the Averatec "TG Sambo" Intel Classic Season 1, a Brood War league back in 2008 on GOMtv. What struck me was not the players, but the sexy voice in English explaining and analyzing the game as it was going on. And even better, he was funny! That was my introduction to Nick "Tasteless" Plott's Starcraft shoutcasting.

This man got me into Starcraft E-Sports.

Casting for long hours, unscripted is a hard job. It, as well, takes long hours of practice and preparation and experience to get good at it in addition to taking a lot of criticism. It is ultimately the caster that determines how the audience receives the games. If a game is mediocre, or even terrible and boring, it is up to the caster to make his or her commentary entertaining enough to keep people watching. If a game is outstanding, it is up to the caster to ensure that the wide range of familiarity with Starcraft in the audience does not miss out on how pivotal moments in the game are. As Tasteless got audibly better at it as the Averatec Intel Classic seasons went by, everyone's opinion about him rose high enough for him to become one of the absolute best in the industry. But when Starcraft II came around, others began to get their names known in the scene. Artosis and Day[9] were already pretty well established before Starcraft II, but their recognition certainly went up after their involvement in Starcraft II. Others like FXOWolf, Doa, and JP McDaniel came onto the scene as new Starcraft casters, and you know what? They do really good work. I personally went up to JP at Blizzcon, shook his hand, and told him "Keep doing what you're doing. You are doing a really great job." I feel the casters need this kind of encouragement because unlike the players, who are stars and have teammates to cheer them up, the casters don't have anyone to let them know that they're doing okay, save each other. Though they have legions of fans themselves, they take a large amount of criticism from many different sources, have to sift through which ones to take seriously, internalize it, then go back out there and speak in public. I don't need to tell this community how terrifying it can be to speak in public not only to a live audience but to thousands more on the internet who can easily shoot you up from behind a keyboard. They really do a wonderful job with their voices to bring this game to life.

As Tastosis said at the GSL Finals, Blizzcon 2011 was their largest live audience they had ever casted in front of. It was a truly amazing, life changing experience, and a great moment in E-Sports history that will be talked about for months to come. There certainly will be a lot to talk about: the technical miracles, the community's belonging, the art forms that were shown off by the players, and the passions of the fans. People from all over the world came together, sat down together to watch an amazing spectacle unfold because of their love for Starcraft. As John the translator said at the end of GSL, this is something that neither politics nor money can do. Politics and money can't make people love E-Sports, love Starcraft, share great moments filled with emotion and powerful energy. That had to come from us, the Great Starcraft Community.
Now that I'm back home, when people ask me why I love E-Sports, why am I so passionate about a video game called Starcraft, I can tell them I was at Blizzcon 2011.
I watched the Blizzcon Invitational from the front row. I watched the GSL Finals.
And when such a huge event comes together because of the crew, the casters, the players, and when such a huge event is made possible because of us, the community, coming to watch, THIS is it.
THIS is E-Sports. I was there. And so were you.

And sorry guys, but I have the best autograph you could've gotten from Blizzcon 2011: Mr. Chae, Director of GSL, himself.

And he gets the month of December, for being the Santa Claus of GOMtv.

Starcraft II @ Blizzcon 2011- THIS Is E-Sports

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming