EPT
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I spent a year of my college career in Japan. Japan was incredible overall, but there were many days when I was plain-old homesick. On those days, I had a couple of ways to rediscover the comfort of home-ness. One was through my English-speaking friends in the program. Another was watching JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, which I watched, in the fetal position on my futon, about 15 times in the last 3 months of my stay. And one was watching H-to-the-Usky Husky’s and HDStarcraft’s Starcraft 2 beta videos.
Starcraft 2 being the eagerly awaited sequel of Starcraft: Brood War, a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) PC game published in 1998. The game was well-reviewed on its own, but over the years it gained notoriety for being the national sport of Korea. The game was played on dedicated television channels, and live events drew crowds as large, if not larger, than the Super Bowl. Its most famous players, like Boxer, YelloW, Reach, Savior, Bisu, Jaedong, and Flash, were Korean superstars. They even gained some international fame, as did foreign (read: non-Korean) stars like IdrA and NonY. But as a kid I knew none of that: I just messed around with the entrancing single-player and addictive multiplayer, unaware that elsewhere in the world someone was yelling about it on TV. I stopped playing after a while, becoming more interested in other gaming genres and platforms. But the memories of playing through the Brood War campaigns were still pleasing enough to get me unreasonably excited for the upcoming title in the franchise.
Watching the Starcraft 2 YouTube videos got me completely addicted the game in a way that was atypical, even for me. Looking back, I believe the cultural isolation I experienced in Japan resulted in me seeking the contentment that I normally found within gaming. Sure, I had a PSP and a DS with which to play, but those are travel consoles, meant to be enjoyed while away from home. I lacked a couch to sink into with a controller in my hands, or a PC keyboard upon which to rest my fingers. In lieu of those home-y game comforts, I immersed myself in this new world of Starcraft, learning about skilled RTS players and listening to captivating commentary. I was enthralled. Soon, I could recognize builds and strategies, players and teams, casters and coaches. I constantly visited TeamLiquid.net, the largest foreign Starcraft forums online. There, I found a community of people who, like me, were devoted not only the Starcraft franchise, but to competitive gaming in general. To the world of eSports.
And that world is huge.
Whatever genre of gaming you enjoy, if there’s a multiplayer component, there’s sure to be an eSports scene. Competitive first-person shooters have been around for years, like Quake, Doom, Call of Duty, Halo, and CounterStrike. Fighting game tournaments started in arcades during the mid-90′s with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2, but now occupy convention centers for events like EVO, where competitors play Marvel vs. Capcom, King of Fighters, and Soul Calibur. Real-time strategy games are some of the most popular eSports titles, starting with Starcraft: Brood War, and followed by Warcraft 3 and, now, Starcraft 2. The newest genre on the eSports scene is the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), including the famous Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients (or DotA), and it’s successors, Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends, and DotA2. With such width and breadth to the world of eSports, there is one thing I have found for certain: there is a video out there of some professional player doing something impressive in a tournament that will make you say “Holy shit… that was awesome.”
When that moment hits you, that’s your first step to becoming an eSports fan. First, you see a video of one of the many eSports professionals doing something in a game that impresses the crap out of you. I imagine this is exactly why people get obsessed with actual sports: they see a baseball, football, or basketball player do something awe-inspiring and then they’re hooked. Something about the sheer physical impressiveness just grabs you and you want more. And, much like the kid who witnesses that moment and then goes and buys a baseball glove, an eSports enthusiast can buy the game and have the same kind of competitive fun, albeit on a much lower skill level (but hey, who doesn’t start in little league). When you learn more and more of the rules, you gain an even greater appreciation of the skills of the pros, so you want to watch more and more. You seek out people with whom you can discuss current strategies and plays. These discussions can last forever, for with such a large amount of players of the game (professional or otherwise), as well as the constant changes necessary to keep games balanced or create additional strategic depth, there’s always a new way to win. You find players and teams that you really enjoy and you become a fan. You watch competitions and tournaments. You cheer for your favorite players and sigh dejectedly when they lose. Before you know it, you’re invested in these standings and leagues and builds to the point that you barely even play anymore (Don’t worry; I’m sure the little leaguer has also put his glove down at this point and just watches baseball now).
Beyond the games of eSports is an industry and a community that makes being a fan even better. The shoutcasting that I first heard from HD and Husky invested me in every moment of the game. When I began listening to other tournaments, I found that the voices of Tasteless and Artosis, Apollo, djWheat and TotalBiscuit could keep me entertained even when the action slowed to a crawl. Possibly the most famous name in the Starcraft scene is caster and player Day[9], whose antics have made him a favorite of SC players and whose business in the eSports space has gotten him noticed beyond the gaming industry. You can tell that the casters love the game and their enthusiasm makes you love it even more as well.
eSports also has a technological and business infrastructure that is growing with it. The streaming sites Twitch.tv and own3d.tv are dedicated to live streaming video games, which pro-players use to showcase their skills and earn a steady income. Tournaments also utilize these streaming sites to show their competitions all over the world, gaining hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers. Hardware creators like Razer and Steelseries sponsor eSports teams and players, as well as create gear “specifically designed for professional play.” Even the game developers have started to invest millions and millions of dollars to sponsor the eSports landscape, promoting this new form of popular entertainment (and yes, themselves and their product). With so much growth around the scene, eSports were even the topic of a panel at the MIT Sloan Analytics Conference, where the future of eSports was discussed in an extra-game-industry context.
And on top of it all is the community, the fans who make eSports the phenomenon that it is. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain why I love this group of people, even in the context of the passion we share. The TeamLiquid forums, in spite of existing on the internet and possessing a certain level of fuckwad-ery, generally has a united, supportive, and more-or-less decent population. But the genuine greatness of eSports fans is only truly evident during live gaming events. At the bigger events, thousands and thousands show up to cheer for the enormous talent displayed during the matches of their favorite titles, to revel in the spirit of gaming competition that illuminates the potential perfection within the games they all play. My first live event was 2011′s Major League Gaming Championship Finals in Providence, I was overjoyed that I could finally gasp and shout and slump along with people who understood the games I love. Some of them were even genuinely good people with whom I throughly enjoyed talking. To this day, it has been one of my favorite weekends of all time, and I can’t wait to attend another live event as soon as possible.
Certainly the eSports world has its own problems. Being a hobby that occurs almost entirely online, there are a large assortment of giant assholes, many of which barely hesitate for seconds before whipping out comments that would make the KKK wince awkwardly. The professional scene also has its share of famous pricks, who, love ‘em or hate ‘em, are unapologetic in their douchebag nature towards… well, pretty much whomever they feel like. More problematic is the topic of female gamers in eSports, for while being female in a largely male demographic has its own intrinsic difficulties, there are people in competitive gaming that seem to think that misogyny and sexism are a part of their “community culture.” However, on the whole, eSports fans tend to be more like the ones I’ve met than the ones who make it into the news, as shown by our outrage when it counts and clarity when it is most relevant.
In Providence, on the last day of the competition, I ran into Mike “Husky” Lamont, the shoutcaster whose videos I watched so often in Japan, and got to take a picture with him. Afterwards, I told him that he was what got me into SC2 and eSports in general, and that he was a big help when I was feeling my most homesick and out-of-place. He expressed, as he has many times to his fans, how glad he was to share his love of eSports with anyone who’d listen.
And I know what he means. I want to do the same thing.
