When NonY narrowly came second for the one of the brackets belonging to the 44th Courage Tournament, barely missing out on his chance to obtain his semi-professional liscence, I think it provided a good window on the extreme cut-throat nature of the competition at the time.
One of my favourite documentaries in the English language for the competitive Brood War scene, worth a watch even today
The Journey
As glorious as it was for NonY, getting to second place in his first ever Courage Tournament, it was SuperHero[sC], a terran player, who managed to begin his arduous journey to becoming a full fledged professional, after defeating NonY in a hard fought two-to-one in the finals of the Saturday bracket.
What lied ahead for these Courage Tournament winners that battled through some of the harshest competition available for amateur Brood War players?
SuperHero[sC] was one of the hundreds of Courage Tournament winners since the last KeSPA Draft took place.
86 of those Courage Tournament champions who believed that they had what it took to go professional, decided to participate in the KeSPA Draft in August 2009. SuperHero[sC] was one of the 86 semi-professionals.
These 86 semi-professionals had to go through another Draftee Tournament between themselves. The winner of that tournament was yCh[z-zOn], a zerg player who won the 38th Courage Tournament. He blazed through the competition with a record of 17-1, and was selected by STX SouL as their first ever pick.
SuperHero[sC] failed to join yCh[z-zOn] as one of the 25 semi-professional players (after a lackluster showing during the Draftee Tournament with an overall record of 6-15) who managed to get selected by one of the eleven professional teams after showing supreme promise during the Draftee Tournament, or having some unquantifiable merit to by-pass the system (Wooki being one of those examples) to be introduced into the professional gaming scene through team recommendation.
This is the full list of the 25 elite semi-professionals who went through incredible odds to literally claw their way into earning their professional gaming liscence.
This the list of professional gamers who actually managed get some screen time (regardless of whether they retired with a 0% win rate), either by making his debut in the ProLeague, or managing to go past the off-line qualifiers for the televised stages of the individual leagues. The rest basically retired without having done anything as professionals, rotting away in the B-team before quietly retiring in total obscurity without having played a single match on television.
Even the seemingly easy threshold of retiring after just one or two defeats on television was something that was only attained by seven players out of hundreds of Courage Tournament champions from that time-frame.
The most successful (not the same as the most talented) Brood War talent to come out of this pool of thousands of high level Brood War amateurs (of which NonY was one), was none other than Dear, who managed to have 9 ProLeague victories over the course of his short lived professional Brood War career, as well as qualifying for the round of 32 for the ABCMart MSL (the last ever MSL), about one and a half years into his professional career.
The lack of success had by the 2009 KeSPA Draftee generation could partly be explained by the introduction of the Starcraft 2 scene, with players such as n.Die_DDONG ditching his professional career early on to alter his career path, and going on to have success in the professional Starcraft 2 scene unless I am mistaken (going by his new alias of ByuN).
However, even the guys who stuck it out to the end saw far less success than some of the older generations of KeSPA draftees from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, who took less than one and a half years to make their impression on professional Brood War in one way or the other.
Did the professional scene end prematurely before these guys reached their full potential? Did other gaming titles steal away some of the gaming geniuses of that era? Was the talent influx for Brood War on the wane for quite some time regardless? Did the numerous turmoils (match-fixing scandals, lawsuits from Blizzard, and professional teams and broadcasting stations shutting down as a result) that took place from 2010 onwards negatively influence the growth spurt of these up-and-coming talents?
With the recent success CadenZie had as a streamer, I was reminded of the days when top level Brood War players outside of Korea such as IdrA, Ret, and NonY came to Korea to realize their dreams, and what odds they were up against on top of being a foreigner who had zero grasp of the Korean language and culture.
It was an uphill climb, to say the least. For those who came in relatively late to the professional Brood War scene circa 2009, it was a tremendous achievement to say the following:
"I was that bottom-tier professional who retired after losing all my matches on television. I have a 0% win rate for KeSPA officiated matches, but I did progress far enough to play in a couple of those matches."
Out of thousands of Courage Tournament participants from NonY's era, only seven went on to be able to boast the above statement.
CadenZie is a good metaphor for what pro gaming can be viewed as: an entertainment industry, just like all other sports.
there's a certain purity we admire in our niche entertainment, that hardwork and skill and talent and rewarded fairly based on individual efforts, but there can only be so many people able to pass through the barriers of entry. it's no different than music or acting, or drafts in real sports.
like little pachinko balls desperately trying to reach jackpot.
It's articles like these that remind me just how competitive this game is, and to the extent that Koreans put in work. Was there any other game by that point (Pre 2010) that had the same level of commitment from top level players? I feel like the practice time put in by the top level Koreans in this game generally surpasses the amount of time that other professional players spend time on a physical sport, does anyone know if that is true?
On July 08 2018 15:12 Galtath wrote: It's articles like these that remind me just how competitive this game is, and to the extent that Koreans put in work. Was there any other game by that point (Pre 2010) that had the same level of commitment from top level players? I feel like the practice time put in by the top level Koreans in this game generally surpasses the amount of time that other professional players spend time on a physical sport, does anyone know if that is true?
Purely in terms of the level of commitment required from high level amateur players, like the barrier of entry merely to become a professional, I don't think any competitive gaming scene has reached such levels before and since.
It may have something to do with the nature of the game itself, but notice I didn't just list the players by their most well remembered aliases. I purposefully added the clan names when listing the players, to remind people of the vibrant clan system the Brood War scene had back in the days, and how integral it was to speeding up the process of creating new amateur talent.
Back in Brood War's peak years, when it was still massively popular by casual players, and was the most enjoyed television content (not just for gaming, but the entire spectrum of television shows) by young Korean males, it probably had the most established hierarchy system seen out of any gaming scene in history.
It simply was never the case that some random kid who got good at the game would immediately jump in to strut his stuff on the professional stage. Even Flash, one of the greatest prodigies the game ever saw, was beaten by ToSsGirL, a clan tester for the prestigious By clan, when Flash tried to join the clan. He failed numerous times in the Courage Tournament despite already having joined a team as an unregistered practice partner, and his win rate when he first joined a team as an unregistered practice partner was abysmal, although to be fair he did improve incredibly fast after training systematically in the gaming house with help from players such as HerO_V.
After the implementation of the drafting system, it usually took at least a full year (record held by the prodigy Flash, it usually took much longer) of hardcore grinding at the professional level to win a major championship, on top of years of training as an amateur clan member and unregistered practice partner. And I'm taking the most extreme outlier the scene has seen to showcase the necessary time-frame.
Although the turn-over rate of top tier players did slow down significantly due to the regressing number of the overall player pool towards the end of professional Brood War, it was also the extremely harsh and unforgiving nature of the competition that made sure that no half-arsed attempts at being a professional would end up successful.
This was a fantastic blog post. It really gives a sense of the incredible odds that anyone--even Koreans--were up against in trying to become a progamer back then.
StarCraft is one of those skills that goes very deep. On a surface level it's easy to think you can only get so good at it, that once you become fast enough you'll be close to everyone else. But the more you learn, the more you realise you don't know. The more you discover complicated little subtopics, the more your knowledge broadens to show you just how huge and complicated a set of skills StarCraft is. I always enter things having confidence and little victories, only to realise when I've gained a little skill just how strong the masters are.
On the one hand, sheer number of relatively qualified applicants doesn't phase me. Even in a game we want to see as a meritocracy like StarCraft is influenced by plain luck, plain happenstance, and politics. On the other hand, you get to a point where you've separated the chaff from the wheat so many times that no matter what, even if a few precious gems were lost in the process, what you're left with is some truly high grade sheaves of wheat. But the final step in that process is the results in televised games. Anyone can play in courage (?), then only courage winners can play in the draft tourney, then only selected professionals can hope to play in televised games, then only television winners can keep playing televised games. For those who lose just a few games on television before they retire, I think they lose steam, they don't like the prohouse life as much as they hoped, they had maybe gotten very good having fun with a strong clan, and found being coached and not having a personal life intolerable. As far as I know, B-teamers also basically had to just help A-teamer's hone their build by playing exactly as they were told to, which could be soul crushing and stunting to their development.
It makes me really curious how far away they were from being able to go, say, 30-40% winrate vs an a-teamer who normally posted something like 55% on TV.
Similarly, it makes me wonder about players who had a bad matchup, like Light vs Protoss, would their bad matchup be nearly invincible to these newly acquired b-teamers?
I would have loved to see televised clan league tournaments on top of Kespa tournaments. I think that would have been a great way to prepare and motivate top tier unlicensed players. The era of streaming online tournaments is so successful right now, I wish the success of it would have been realized sooner.
On July 13 2018 08:32 Chef wrote: StarCraft is one of those skills that goes very deep. On a surface level it's easy to think you can only get so good at it, that once you become fast enough you'll be close to everyone else. But the more you learn, the more you realise you don't know. The more you discover complicated little subtopics, the more your knowledge broadens to show you just how huge and complicated a set of skills StarCraft is. I always enter things having confidence and little victories, only to realise when I've gained a little skill just how strong the masters are.
On the one hand, sheer number of relatively qualified applicants doesn't phase me. Even in a game we want to see as a meritocracy like StarCraft is influenced by plain luck, plain happenstance, and politics. On the other hand, you get to a point where you've separated the chaff from the wheat so many times that no matter what, even if a few precious gems were lost in the process, what you're left with is some truly high grade sheaves of wheat. But the final step in that process is the results in televised games. Anyone can play in courage (?), then only courage winners can play in the draft tourney, then only selected professionals can hope to play in televised games, then only television winners can keep playing televised games. For those who lose just a few games on television before they retire, I think they lose steam, they don't like the prohouse life as much as they hoped, they had maybe gotten very good having fun with a strong clan, and found being coached and not having a personal life intolerable. As far as I know, B-teamers also basically had to just help A-teamer's hone their build by playing exactly as they were told to, which could be soul crushing and stunting to their development.
It makes me really curious how far away they were from being able to go, say, 30-40% winrate vs an a-teamer who normally posted something like 55% on TV.
Similarly, it makes me wonder about players who had a bad matchup, like Light vs Protoss, would their bad matchup be nearly invincible to these newly acquired b-teamers?
Well, players who ended their professional careers as B teamers rarely make it as streamers to tell their side of the tale.
However we can hear both sides of the coin for what it was like for SK Telecom T1 towards the end of professional Brood War, with coinciding anecdotes about the dynamic between A teamers and B teamers being told on stream. I am not sure whether it was the same for MBC Game HERO or for any other team, but here's what these guys had to say about it:
Larva: The only way to get promoted into the A team was to have an above 30% win rate versus the A teamers (the likes of Bisu, FanTaSy, BeSt, Hyuk, and s2) during practice sessions. However that was impossible.
BeSt: There was this one B teamer who joined our practice sessions after having a win rate in excess of 90% against the B teamers, he ended up having a sub-5% win rate against us.
On July 13 2018 08:46 BisuDagger wrote: I would have loved to see televised clan league tournaments on top of Kespa tournaments. I think that would have been a great way to prepare and motivate top tier unlicensed players. The era of streaming online tournaments is so successful right now, I wish the success of it would have been realized sooner.
Some people loved Babara Clan Leagues way back in the days when ran parallel to the professional scene. I personally wasn't into the streaming scene back then, but I think the AfreecaTV Brood War streaming scene became established partly due to the vibrant clan activities and passionate internet streamers.
Of course, the streaming industry was in its infancy back then, but it paved way for dudes like Terror[fOu] to become what they are today. We are all enjoying the fruits of those pioneers, and I think it is somewhat miraculous that Brood War still has a major foothold on the Korean streaming industry even today, all things considered.
On July 13 2018 08:32 Chef wrote: StarCraft is one of those skills that goes very deep. On a surface level it's easy to think you can only get so good at it, that once you become fast enough you'll be close to everyone else. But the more you learn, the more you realise you don't know. The more you discover complicated little subtopics, the more your knowledge broadens to show you just how huge and complicated a set of skills StarCraft is. I always enter things having confidence and little victories, only to realise when I've gained a little skill just how strong the masters are.
On the one hand, sheer number of relatively qualified applicants doesn't phase me. Even in a game we want to see as a meritocracy like StarCraft is influenced by plain luck, plain happenstance, and politics. On the other hand, you get to a point where you've separated the chaff from the wheat so many times that no matter what, even if a few precious gems were lost in the process, what you're left with is some truly high grade sheaves of wheat. But the final step in that process is the results in televised games. Anyone can play in courage (?), then only courage winners can play in the draft tourney, then only selected professionals can hope to play in televised games, then only television winners can keep playing televised games. For those who lose just a few games on television before they retire, I think they lose steam, they don't like the prohouse life as much as they hoped, they had maybe gotten very good having fun with a strong clan, and found being coached and not having a personal life intolerable. As far as I know, B-teamers also basically had to just help A-teamer's hone their build by playing exactly as they were told to, which could be soul crushing and stunting to their development.
It makes me really curious how far away they were from being able to go, say, 30-40% winrate vs an a-teamer who normally posted something like 55% on TV.
Similarly, it makes me wonder about players who had a bad matchup, like Light vs Protoss, would their bad matchup be nearly invincible to these newly acquired b-teamers?
Well, players who ended their professional careers as B teamers rarely make it as streamers to tell their side of the tale.
However we can hear both sides of the coin for what it was like for SK Telecom T1 towards the end of professional Brood War, with coinciding anecdotes about the dynamic between A teamers and B teamers being told on stream. I am not sure whether it was the same for MBC Game HERO or for any other team, but here's what these guys had to say about it:
Larva: The only way to get promoted into the A team was to have an above 30% win rate versus the A teamers (the likes of Bisu, FanTaSy, BeSt, Hyuk, and s2) during practice sessions. However that was impossible.
BeSt: There was this one B teamer who joined our practice sessions after having a win rate in excess of 90% against the B teamers, he ended up having a sub-5% win rate against us.
SKT1 had such a deep lineup, you had to feel sorry for anyone hopeful on the b-team. Maybe if you really wanted to be on TV, it was better to get picked up by one of the weakest teams. Big fish in a small pond idea. I wonder if any team was better known for bringing up b-teamers. SKT I would guess were better known for buying strong players from other teams. Or known for buying Bisu I guess lol and hanging onto superstars.
On July 13 2018 08:32 Chef wrote: StarCraft is one of those skills that goes very deep. On a surface level it's easy to think you can only get so good at it, that once you become fast enough you'll be close to everyone else. But the more you learn, the more you realise you don't know. The more you discover complicated little subtopics, the more your knowledge broadens to show you just how huge and complicated a set of skills StarCraft is. I always enter things having confidence and little victories, only to realise when I've gained a little skill just how strong the masters are.
On the one hand, sheer number of relatively qualified applicants doesn't phase me. Even in a game we want to see as a meritocracy like StarCraft is influenced by plain luck, plain happenstance, and politics. On the other hand, you get to a point where you've separated the chaff from the wheat so many times that no matter what, even if a few precious gems were lost in the process, what you're left with is some truly high grade sheaves of wheat. But the final step in that process is the results in televised games. Anyone can play in courage (?), then only courage winners can play in the draft tourney, then only selected professionals can hope to play in televised games, then only television winners can keep playing televised games. For those who lose just a few games on television before they retire, I think they lose steam, they don't like the prohouse life as much as they hoped, they had maybe gotten very good having fun with a strong clan, and found being coached and not having a personal life intolerable. As far as I know, B-teamers also basically had to just help A-teamer's hone their build by playing exactly as they were told to, which could be soul crushing and stunting to their development.
It makes me really curious how far away they were from being able to go, say, 30-40% winrate vs an a-teamer who normally posted something like 55% on TV.
Similarly, it makes me wonder about players who had a bad matchup, like Light vs Protoss, would their bad matchup be nearly invincible to these newly acquired b-teamers?
Well, players who ended their professional careers as B teamers rarely make it as streamers to tell their side of the tale.
However we can hear both sides of the coin for what it was like for SK Telecom T1 towards the end of professional Brood War, with coinciding anecdotes about the dynamic between A teamers and B teamers being told on stream. I am not sure whether it was the same for MBC Game HERO or for any other team, but here's what these guys had to say about it:
Larva: The only way to get promoted into the A team was to have an above 30% win rate versus the A teamers (the likes of Bisu, FanTaSy, BeSt, Hyuk, and s2) during practice sessions. However that was impossible.
BeSt: There was this one B teamer who joined our practice sessions after having a win rate in excess of 90% against the B teamers, he ended up having a sub-5% win rate against us.
SKT1 had such a deep lineup, you had to feel sorry for anyone hopeful on the b-team. Maybe if you really wanted to be on TV, it was better to get picked up by one of the weakest teams. Big fish in a small pond idea. I wonder if any team was better known for bringing up b-teamers. SKT I would guess were better known for buying strong players from other teams. Or known for buying Bisu I guess lol and hanging onto superstars.
Strictly confined to those who were drafted into the professional scene (which means this conversation excludes old school players such as Stork), let's define the bare minimum requirement for a bona-fide A-teamer by the following criterion:
1) Two or more occasions of making it past the preliminary stages of individual leagues 2) At least 10 or more career ProLeague victories
This would rule out bottom of the barrel professionals such as Britney, who once said he had a record of 2 wins and 58 defeats within a particularly bad practice session. Such professionals don't really count as A-teamers, even if they had brief stints as A-teamers for their respective teams, in my opinion.
This is a ranking of how many players various teams managed to develope their draftees into A-team material players (as defined above):
1) CJ Entus (10): Much, Kwanro, 815, DArKeLf, EffOrt, sKyHigh, Movie, SnOw, Hydra, and Bb.yong 1) MBC Game HERO (10): Saint, Sea, Bisu, Thezerg, Light, HyuN, Jaehoon, RuBy, Tyson, and By.Sun
2) eSTRO (9): PianO, Ryan, UpMagiC, maGma, Really, Hyvaa, Action, Classic, and Grape 2) HITE Sparkyz (9): Luxury, Shine[Name], Justin, cHalRengE, go.go, Leta, ZerG, TypE-B, and Horang2 2) Hwaseung Oz (9): Jaedong, BackHo, HiyA, fOrGG, Lomo, GGaeMo, Killer, Perfectman, and sOs
6) WeMade Fox (8): FireFist, Mind, HerO_V_, Pure, KeKe, Baby, RorO, and Shine 6) STX SouL (8): Calm, Kal, Sheis, Shuttle, herO, Modesty, BoGus, and Last 6) Samsung Khan (8): oDin, FrOzen, firebathero, JangBi, JuNi, Great, BravE, and Reality
10) KT Rolster (5): Flash, Tempest, LuCifer, Violet, and Stats 10) SK Telecom T1 (5): Hyuk, BeSt, s2, FanTaSy, and soO
Both KT Rolster and SK Telecom T1 were shit tier in terms of developing home grown talent, since they could just buy their way into success. I could have missed some names out (especially the ones who were recommended instead of being drafted), but I'm pretty sure I've got the vast majority of the names in.
I always said coach Cho (the former manager of CJ Entus) was the best ever at finding and cultivating home grown talent. Even before the start of the drafting system, he was responsible for the discovering and cultivating major talents such as XellOs, GoRush, Nal_rA, and sAviOr.
That's funny. I had originally wrote SKT and KT, and taken back KT cause I just couldn't recall. Glad I got it exactly right lol. I had in my mind eStro as a team you might want to be a b teamer on.
There is probably a balance between being on the worst team where you might have the highest chance of seeing at least one television game, and being on a slightly stronger team where you might have better players to practice with / feel better about yourself for being part of a team that isn't dead last. Though honestly just the team culture and the coaches would be the absolutely most important. As you said, coach Cho could have made a big difference. Any coach can systemically burn out b-teamers or encourage them through their level of competence and ideas of what is best for the team / sponsor. Or just purely through their methodology of selecting b-teamers (whoever is actually responsible for that on each team). Although it is funny that SKT1 super player-coach iloveoov did not have any strong influence on quantity of home grown talent. Probably responsible for a lot of Fantasy deep individual league runs though.
On July 15 2018 02:28 Chef wrote: That's funny. I had originally wrote SKT and KT, and taken back KT cause I just couldn't recall. Glad I got it exactly right lol. I had in my mind eStro as a team you might want to be a b teamer on.
There is probably a balance between being on the worst team where you might have the highest chance of seeing at least one television game, and being on a slightly stronger team where you might have better players to practice with / feel better about yourself for being part of a team that isn't dead last. Though honestly just the team culture and the coaches would be the absolutely most important. As you said, coach Cho could have made a big difference. Any coach can systemically burn out b-teamers or encourage them through their level of competence and ideas of what is best for the team / sponsor. Or just purely through their methodology of selecting b-teamers (whoever is actually responsible for that on each team). Although it is funny that SKT1 super player-coach iloveoov did not have any strong influence on quantity of home grown talent. Probably responsible for a lot of Fantasy deep individual league runs though.
While I have nothing but the utmost respect for iloveoov, I believe people sometimes ignore FanTaSy's noteworthy potential and enormous drive to succeed just to push the narrative of iloveoov doing everything for the dude.
Back when both were amateur players, it was FanTaSy, not Flash, that the clan members of By. vouched for as their most trustworthy ace player. He was one of the best performers in the Draftee Tournament he participated in, as well as being the top performer of Minor League (ProLeague for B-teamers) that started in late 2007. It took him less than two years after being drafted as a professional to reach his first ever OGN StarLeague finals.
FanTaSy was a hot prospect in terms of being a prodigious talent, by almost any metric available, although the astonishing rate at which Flash developed as a top tier player made FanTaSy's quite rapid progress as a player fairly slow in comparison.
The dude was, in my opinion (although it is a very poorly informed opinion), the hardest working player towards the end of professional Brood War after Jaedong stopped practicing like a madman. There are anecdotes of FanTaSy losing a thirty minute practice match versus Flash, then going over every single minute details of that match over one hundred times, trying to breakdown every possible habbit and potential weakness of Flash.
By the time FanTaSy managed to defeat Flash comprehensively in 2012, I believe Flash said that he felt as if FanTaSy already knew every move he was going to take in advance. The dude was obsessed with overcoming Flash, and while iloveoov played a significant role in his developement as a player, I think FanTaSy was the type to succeed in almost any team available.
Fantasy's last OSL run was pretty incredible. From the beginning of that tournament, he was one of the few players who still seemed like he was fully devoted to BW while the SC2 shenanigans were going on. Jangbi's victory was pretty unexpected, especially after the 3:0 sweep vs Flash in two very long games and one sort of lucky game. Apart from being very fearsome, Fantasy also had a distinctive style that made him good player to pull viewers in. I'm not someone who says his success was all oov's doing, but it never hurts to have someone giving good advice.
a bit too late to the party, but asides from ByuN; Ryung, Rex.IU (MarineKing) and KT.MGW)Fenix (Squirtle) from that list can be considered successful progamers in sc2.
other less successful yet notable sc2 pros from that list include Neo.G_zerO (Puzzle) and Lucky
Just had a notable career in the early days of korean league under the id 'violet', playing for IM and xenics storm. as a former team mate of violet on KT, there's no doubt his choice of ID in lol was dedicated to his deceased friend.
On August 07 2018 19:36 GTR wrote: a bit too late to the party, but asides from ByuN; Ryung, Rex.IU (MarineKing) and KT.MGW)Fenix (Squirtle) from that list can be considered successful progamers in sc2.
other less successful yet notable sc2 pros from that list include Neo.G_zerO (Puzzle) and Lucky
Just had a notable career in the early days of korean league under the id 'violet', playing for IM and xenics storm. as a former team mate of violet on KT, there's no doubt his choice of ID in lol was dedicated to his deceased friend.
I wonder if initial Brood War promise as an amateur/semi-professional correlates with future Starcraft 2 success. Does the ranking of the Starcraft 2 professionals listed by their Draftee Tournament results (KeSPA usually ranked players by their win rates) portray their overall success as gamers in any way?
Although to be fair, I'm not sure whether Draftee Tournament success (the details of which I could find for 2009 and 2010) correlates properly with even future Brood War success. Rain (drafted in early 2009) had a sub-50% win rate for his Draftee Tournament, and was ranked 50th, just a couple of spots away from the drafting cut-off point of 56th (players ranked 57th and below were denied access to the drafting process), yet he went on to win KeSPA Rookie of the Year award in 2011.
WCS
