EPTThis is torture.
This is torture, and I cannot find the heart any more to watch it.
Maybe I am losing interest, anyway, in the subject, in the game, in the passion. I was never much of a player - a casual only, with clumsy fingers and pretensions of knowledge. I won games quickly with macro friends knew nothing of as a concept, or lost games slowly because I had no sense, in a game, of the game. But I admired the men who could see past the 400x600 screen to the soul and sense of a game deeper than I could play. I have watched hundreds of games as they were played, and thousands more on videos hours, days, or months afterwards.
Dozens of players whose aliases I knew by hear - FisheYe, Legionnaire, iloveoov, Zileas, July, and more - and then dozens of others whose names I learned as well - Lim Yo Hwan, Greg Fields, Yum Bo Sung, Kim Taek Yong, Kim Min Chul, and others. There were stories, rising stars, fading suns, villains (some real), heroes, hopeless cases, kings of silver, legends, glory. There were mediocre drudges, some with moments of glory; there were core players with no grand peak, only a plateau.
There was an ephemerality to the whole set-up: it was serious business only in one small country, with perhaps a couple thousand people invested in it directly at its peak. Consider: twelve teams; perhaps fifteen stars, best of the best, who would play at least a game over the course of a season. Maybe a dozen, two dozen more, in each practice room, hoping for that chance at a miniature stardom and fifteen minutes of fame. Three television studios; I have nothing to do with the business, but if we are talking even near one hundred people each I would be surprised. One hundred total might be closer.
But for a thing so small, what an exquisite thing it was. Golden mouse. Golden badge. Legend of the Fall. Most Psi-Storm Ever. Ee-han timing. The absurd and wonderful conclusion to the last starleague. Expand if far, bunker rush if near.
And the monikers our heros earned. Emperor. Commander. The Almighty, the Revolutionist, the Terrorist, the Ultimate Weapon, the Tyrant. Alien, Pikachu, Mantoss, and more.
But it has been days since I watched a game live, and that almost by accident; I caught the last game of tiebreakers, a depressing one-sided Zerg versus Zerg mutalisk massacre. The lineup for the final rounds of the final OSL is - well, if I thought there was more to come it would be fascinating. Four stalwarts of the scene; a solid player enjoying his time in the sun; a joke finally making good; the required fluke Zerg entrant; and a Royal Road candidate. I'll watch it all, eventually, even with impending doom; but it won't, can't, top last season, and it is hard to see it as anything but a wake.
And Proleague? Once the highlight of the scene, now a disaster. I suppose I should be happy that Woongin is finally making good, and simply running away with the league, and Samsung is close behind. But the games I have seen have been poor, and I haven't watched that much.
And the new game?
Things move too fast, with too little results for too much hype. "Seasons" which last less than a month. Tournaments of thousands of games crammed into a weekend. The game itself is all sparkle and speed: fast mining, fast dying. "1a2a3a" was barely justified in the beginning and is a parody of itself now, but it had and has an element of truth: the game is all action, little time for reaction. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I like chess too much. But I have been unable to work up the enthusiasm to follow it as more than something to do to waste time.
Brood War was a hobby; not a serious one, but a thing for enjoyment. But if it had just gone - bang. It would be over; I would move on. This fiasco, this attempt to provide a "continuity", is... well, I don't know.
It is not how I would have done things. Too much hype. Too much hoopla. Too much shine, too many announcements of announcements of forthcoming trailers. Too much artificiality, too much -
Well, I remember long ago watching the Olympics as a kid, and my parents complaints. Too many interviews. Not enough actual broadcast of the competition. What was with this splitting the competitions? And so forth. Maybe I'm taking this all too seriously, but - it seems like something has gone missing.
