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These are the five traits that have in my opinion, a positive correlation with success within the field of competitive Brood War.
1. Conscientiousness
2. Gaming athleticism
3. Ability to create generalized algorithms
4. Creativity
5. Competitive aptitude
With this blog, I will attempt to define each of these traits, and how these traits manifest themselves in a manner that could potentially positively correlate with competitive Brood War success.
1. Conscientiousness
Definition: Ability to dedicate your life for excellence within a field through high levels of self-discipline, ambition, and stress tolerance.
How high levels of conscientiousness tends to manifest within competitive Brood War: Players are able to endure potentially draining and repetitive excercises, that could be compared to the effort it takes to accomplish incredible proficiency at playing an instrument.
The best music (subjectively speaking) may not result from maximizing proficiency for various instruments, but superhuman levels of proficiency at instruments rarely result without high levels of conscientiousness.
In the same vein, players with superlative levels of conscientiousness often tend to be known for their proficiency for using various units that reward high levels of technical proficiency.
Downside of high levels of conscientiousness: Players with extremely high levels of conscientiousness sometimes tend to lack creativity and fluid outside-the-box conceptualization that could lead to supremely high-reward manners of playing the game.
Further more, not all units are used universally across all situations. Action was famed for his incredible work ethic within the eSTRO household, and was able to reach another level with his defilers. However, his zerg-versus-zerg wasn't up to par, and his defiler mastery might have well as not existed at all for this specific match-up. Even the most diligent of professional gamers such as FanTaSy wasn't able to have complete mastery over all the terran units, and was specialized towards specific units such as vultures and valkyries.
Epitome of this trait: Jaedong
Jaedong at the peak of his powers had unprecedented levels of self-discipline and dedication towards excellence at his craft. He mastered essentially all the necessary toolkits involving the technical aspects of the zerg race, ranging from how his drones seemed to have a longer firing range than usual, all the way to how he didn't miss a single dropship appearing on the mini-map with heat-seeking scourges. While other hard working players such as BoxeR, July, and FanTaSy had their own signature units, Jaedong probably had mastered the widest range of units to previously unseen levels out of any player in history.
2. Gaming athleticism
Definition: Aptitude for playing Brood War at a physical level. The hardware prototype of the perfect Brood War gamer, just like how there is a desirable physical prototype for any competitive athletic fields. Some of the more hardware oriented attributes would include the ability to maximize inputs within a short span of time (a metric that can be somewhat measured by eAPM), having a shorter reaction time, having more accurate mouse clicking abilities, and being in possession of larger than average hand-span to make full usage of all control-groups.
How high levels of gaming athleticism tends to manifest within competitive Brood War: Players with innate levels of high dexterity involving the mouse and keyboard are able to hit great levels of micro-management and macro-management even without having the best build orders, or the most dedicated practice schedule towards mastering all the intricacies of the units being handled.
I would guess that players who are naturally built for accurate and rapid manipulation of the mouse and keyboard would excel in other genres of video-gaming, especially first-person shooter games. Which is perhaps why NaDa (one of the most gifted gamers from a physical perspective) had such keen interest in playing Sudden Attack (a first-person shooter game) during his time as a professional. Terror[fOu] was prodigious talent known for his somewhat rigid, but mechanically solid mutalisk micro-managament based play during his amateur days, and now is known for his decent aiming abilities when he plays PUBG.
Downside of high levels of conscientiousness: Not much I can think of. Although there is a much lower return for being more physically suited for competitive Brood War than some of the other traits, having better physical attributes does not have any negative attributes that tend to tag alongside it, such as extremely high levels of creativity often being associated with low levels of conscientiousness.
Epitome of this trait: JangBi.
JangBi was a phenomenonally gifted protoss player who was blessed with a quick reaction times, accurate and rapid point and clicking ability indicative of an high end hand-eye coordination, and ability to sustain high eAPM levels even without much dedication or practice. When people discussed professional players with the fastest reaction times, JangBi was always the one of the first names to spring up in the conversation. Stork always said that he never saw a player who clicked units from his gateways faster than JangBi.
His natural talents allowed JangBi to quickly possess a delicate handling of all of the available protoss arsenal, ability to pump units from his numerous gateways with only a fraction of the time required for the average protoss user, which in turn allowed JangBi to focus more heavily on his playmaking with his units.
While I personally felt like JangBi never allocated his concentration to multiple screens effectively, or had necessary speed of thought combined with his fantastic gaming athleticism, JangBi in my eyes had the perfect hardware prototype for a great Brood War player.
Jaedong, another mechanical monster, had hands that were way too small (his hand-span was merely 18cm, which is why his mechanical prowess spiked earlier than most players, whereas JangBi's mechanical prowess remained top notch whether it involved handling a handful of units, or orchestrating a fully maxed out army), while Bisu, another player who stood out in terms of his hardware, had trouble differentiating himself when he focused his play within a single screen. Bisu's unmatched multi-tasking prowess had an element of great screen management and knowing exactly where and when to look next (mostly within the protoss-versus-zerg match-up), which is slightly different from being the sheer physical act of being able to click fast and accurately while hammering away ceaselessly on the keyboard pumping out units.
3. Ability to create generalized algorithms
Definition: Ability to process and organize all the information gained within a Brood War game in an efficient manner.
How high levels of creating necessary generalized algorithms tends to manifest within competitive Brood War: This is what I would regard as being somewhat synonymous with having superior general intelligence for the game. The ability to store and access the necessary information without delay is arguably what matters the most in a cognitive persuit such as competitive Brood War.
Downside of high levels of being able to create generalized algorithms: Nothing. More intelligence and re-organization of the brain to better digest all the necessary information pertaining competitive Brood War is always better.
Epitome of this trait: Flash
This is biologically proven. It was already proven that professional Brood War players utilized their limbic system (which plays a large role in long-term memory) a lot more than regular people when engaging in a game of Brood War.
However, Flash was unique in that in his fMRI study, he was way up the ladder in his utilization of the orbitofrontal cortex (compared to other all-time legends such as BoxeR and XellOs), an area of the brain playing a key role in decision making and expectation.
Flash is currently in possession of the most advanced algorithm for Brood War known to mankind. He makes his decisions faster and more accurately than any other being on the planet, and it may stay that way until DeepLearning manages to create a functional AlphaGo for the game of Brood War.
While it is true that Flash is no slouch when it comes to discipline or mechanical ability, what truly makes him stand out is his ability to assess the situation and process the information real-time in a rapid and efficient manner. Flash is known for his speed, but what people really should pay attention to, is his speed of thought, and his mechanics are amazing in that his speed of thought can be actualized on screen.
4. Creativity
Definition: Ability to think outside the box with novel ideas that are useful and change the course of history through paradigm shifts in the meta-game.
How high levels of creativity tends to manifest within competitive Brood War: Highly creative individuals often burn bright then fade away, since the game of Brood War was fixed on a single balance patch for over a decade (which means the relatively stable nature of the competitive environment has reduced benefits for a creative mind). The likes of iloveoov, PuSan, and sAviOr were creative geniuses who changed the course of history with era defining meta-games, but lacked the longetivity of more conscientious or more physically gifted gamers who could copy and absorb these meta-game advancements into their already fearsome arsenal of gaming attributes.
Downside of high levels of being able to create generalized algorithms: Creative individuals tend to be more open to ideas (even foolish ones) and euphoric experiences, instead of being more conservative with his actions and being calculated and responsible. Relying mostly on creativity is a high-risk, high-reward strategy, that can end in disaster as well as utter triumph. Creativity and conscientiousness are really hard attributes to have together, although there are exceptions to the rule.
Creative types would probably thrive in a more frequently patched game such as League of Legends, which may be why sAviOr had such success as an amateur League of Legends player (he was amongst the highest rated amateurs during the earlier seasons of League of Legends), and why iloveoov is having fair success as a coach of Afreeca Freecs (a Korean League of Legends team).
Epitome of this trait: sAviOr
I was initially going choose iloveoov due to his vast array of meta-game advancements, but sAviOr had such a perfect profile for this particular category that I had no choice but to name him. sAviOr was a creative genius who redefined the zerg-versus-terran meta-game, and instead of being pragmatic and data-driven, was more a free soul who just had a third eye for experiencing the game of Brood War.
You could tell sAviOr had greater intentions of enjoying his status, rather than working to extend his status as the greatest Brood War player on the scene, and his longetivity had a lot to be desired for.
He also decided to take risky ventures into match-fixing once his skills started to fade away instead of engaging in a losing battle versus the next generation of more dedicated superstars, like NaDa chose to do before him, and instead stayed true to his colours to the very bitter end.
5. Competitive aptitude
Definition: Ability to learn and adapt to the art of competing, which is a different art altogether than the art of mastering Brood War (the game itself). Players who totally flopped in this regard (Canata) remained as practice bonjwas who had no idea how to translate their skills for the game into success on stage.
How high levels of competitive aptitude tends to manifest within competitive Brood War: These players have realized that there is more to competitive Brood War than being simply better at the game. The best move for any given situation in a theoretically perfect match will never be the same as the best course of action under the same exact circumstances against a player with unique idiosyncracies and tendencies.
Players such as BoxeR, Calm, and EffOrt always preferred to have extra time to specifically prepare and get inside the heads of their opponent, as opposed to players such as Light or HiyA, who sucked dick in a best-of-series, and tended to do better with less preparation.
These are the kind of guys who might do well in a poker game, where it is just as much about reading your opponent, as it is about reading your current situation.
Downside of high levels of competitive aptitude: These guys tend to suck balls against monotone players who are difficult opponents even if they are somewhat predictable. BoxeR always struggled incredibly hard versus XellOs, a player known for his somewhat inflexible, yet sturdy playstyle. Calm and EffOrt, during their professional years, struggled much more versus Light, who was known for his incredibly predictable, yet sturdy playstyle, than the likes of Flash.
In any competitive environment where the time to prepare for each and every individual and map was minimal (such as Winner's League portion of the ProLeague), these kind of players struggled to create their competitive advantage, which may be why EffOrt never managed to complete an all-kill during his professional years.
Epitome of this trait: BoxeR
There were geniuses of this particular kind such as YellOw, but the player that comes to mind for me personally was BoxeR, the man who loved to play mind-games versus players who were probably more well-rounded than him from a sheer technical and theoretical gaming point of view, especially towards the twighlight years of his professional career.
BoxeR was a gamer who was winning tournaments back in 1999, when the likes of SSamJang, and Freemura were active as a the top dogs of the scene. Compared to the more orthodox and arguably more sound style of TheMarine, BoxeR somehow managed to stay relevant as one of the most successful gamers way past his prime as a player due to his excellence in small scale micro-management, and incredible individualized preparation for various players.
Whether it was confusing and agitating his opponents through the use of chat boxes (KeSPA banned the use of chat after BoxeR used it extensively to defeat JuNiToSs), baiting PuSan's dragoons to break position with a lone siege tank to by-pass his defense with vultures, or abusing iloveoov's relative mediocre micro-managament by engaging in an all-or-nothing micro-management fest involving marines and medics, BoxeR was somebody who was willing to do anything it takes to win, outside of outright sabotaging the integrity of the competition with blatant cheating.
BoxeR was hated by the likes of Autumn, who was jealous of BoxeR's success, and claimed that BoxeR was winning in a unworthy manner, and that a real gamer would try to win with their gaming skills alone. However, while BoxeR is mostly remembered for being a pioneer in terms of his micro-management advancements, he added depth to the competitive realm with his well thought out plans and trickeries to confuse, infuriate, and ultimately defeat his younger, and more vibrant opponents.
 
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United States33122 Posts
Interesting to see you write more of an opinion piece after all of those data-based posts
Will be looking forward to more going forward :O
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Really enjoyed it!
The Competitive aptitude and Boxer as an example - I instantly remembered the 3 bunker rushes against Yellow. That was so dirty, but so epic at the same time lol
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United States1434 Posts
Really spot on write up. I agree with you on all points.
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Interesting post.
Actually your definition of creativity requiring a shift in meta is a little surprising, and then your definition of competitive attitude seems to include more elements of what I would think of as creativity. Particularly Boxer and Nal_Ra were not just people who played their opponent, but who played the map too and had a lot of really murderous one-time cheese strats. And if there is anything Boxer is remembered and treasured for, it is the showmanship of his strategies. The game wasn't being patched, but new maps usually had a few unexpected possibilities for creative players to exploit.
One of my favourite things about BW in the pro days was how many different but successful approaches there were to the game, and this post goes some way to highlighting a few of them.
On the points about Flash: maybe all players did this to an extent, but Flash said in an interview that he constantly had simulations of StarCraft running in his mind when he wasn't playing. And some years before that, Nal_Ra had made some offhand comment that to be good at StarCraft, you have to play, eat and sleep StarCraft. In such a situation, your mind is always accessing information about StarCraft, so it's no wonder it lights up the MRI. Flash's career was also sort of unique though, because he started so young. So I have to wonder is it because he has a super-brain, or is it because he was a pro while his brain was still a sponge for knowledge. Certainly his work ethic was much higher than an ordinary kid.
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On July 23 2018 18:04 Waxangel wrote:
Interesting to see you write more of an opinion piece after all of those data-based posts
Will be looking forward to more going forward :O
I agree, I always found your personal voice slightly more interesting than the statistics and patterns brought forward (which have always caught my interest as well!).
You made a very nuanced point about creativity by mentioning Savior's behavior in regards to succeeding and thinking outside of the box (of course completely disregarding morals and self respect).
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Flash is known for his speed, but what people really should pay attention to, is his speed of thought, and his mechanics are amazing in that his speed of thought can be actualized on screen.
Excellent statement, I agree completely.
I am surprised though at your conclusions for creativity. One would think that a static game state would reward creativity moreso than a dynamic one, no? Or at the very least emphasize it more since any paradigm shifts/new trends are that much more impactful.
In my opinion games like LoL emphasize adaption to a constantly changing ruleset which, I assume is still a hard skill to cultivate, is really not the same as innovating in a static state where you must not only strive to surpass your peer's current knowledge, but continue to do so even after you've changed the paradigm knowing that it is only a matter of time before they catch up and the new trend becomes standard.
Interesting read as always, I really enjoy your work.
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I liked reading it. It was worth the time, tho i dont agree with some of it, and some of the examples seem a bit off, overall 8/10, would be great if u did some more stuff like this. Awesome.
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On July 24 2018 03:41 Chef wrote:
Interesting post.
Actually your definition of creativity requiring a shift in meta is a little surprising, and then your definition of competitive attitude seems to include more elements of what I would think of as creativity. Particularly Boxer and Nal_Ra were not just people who played their opponent, but who played the map too and had a lot of really murderous one-time cheese strats. And if there is anything Boxer is remembered and treasured for, it is the showmanship of his strategies. The game wasn't being patched, but new maps usually had a few unexpected possibilities for creative players to exploit.
One of my favourite things about BW in the pro days was how many different but successful approaches there were to the game, and this post goes some way to highlighting a few of them.
On the points about Flash: maybe all players did this to an extent, but Flash said in an interview that he constantly had simulations of StarCraft running in his mind when he wasn't playing. And some years before that, Nal_Ra had made some offhand comment that to be good at StarCraft, you have to play, eat and sleep StarCraft. In such a situation, your mind is always accessing information about StarCraft, so it's no wonder it lights up the MRI. Flash's career was also sort of unique though, because he started so young. So I have to wonder is it because he has a super-brain, or is it because he was a pro while his brain was still a sponge for knowledge. Certainly his work ethic was much higher than an ordinary kid.
This categorization is somewhat forced. I'm certain it is full of holes and can be adjusted more accurately, both in terms of wording and concept.
However, my reasoning is as follows:
1) Creativity, in my eyes, essentially stems from the need to minimize organized effort through fluid reasoning. It is why so many creative geniuses struggle to apply themselves despite being immensely talented. Riding off the success of a huge meta-game shift is infinitely more cost-efficient in terms of effort expended than having come up with a novel strategy for each and every opponent.
2) Both BoxeR and Nal_rA were some of the hardest working gamers of their generation. BoxeR's practice habbits are relatively better recorded. Even if there was literally nobody left to practice against, BoxeR would simply would go over the empty map in painstaking detail, figuring out which terrain can be abused, which parts of the map can be walled-off, what escape paths can be planned out for certain types of units, and if there are any possible methods to gain a competitive advantage by knowing something more about the map than the opponent.
3) Specialized strategies after rigorous brainstorming for a certain map, or a strategy designed to abuse a particular trait of an opponent can be regarded as creativity, as it indeed is thinking outside the box, but I personally thought it was fueled by the need to gain a competitive advantage, rather than the need to live out life by a high-risk, high-reward behaviour.
4) The reason why I didn't list BoxeR or Nal_rA as prime examples of high discipline or conscientiousness was because they used their extensive practice hours to win against an opponent, rather attempting to get better at core mechanical skills. Both were monstrous during their primes, but for the vast majority of their careers, they stuck around near the top based on their uncanny ability to come up with competitive advantages. The days of BoxeR winning with his core skills alone were limited in number.
5) I picked sAviOr as the epitome of the creative player not because he came up with the most abundant novel ideas (BoxeR would run circles around him in that regard), but because his profile suited my conceptualization of what constitutes a creative genius. sAviOr could go on cruise-control and minimize his effort before and during the matches, due to his creative forces conjuring up a magical flow-chart for him to follow into almost guaranteed victory during his peak years. The likes of BoxeR and Nal_rA spent incredible mental resources before the match to ensure their victory, while the likes of YellOw and EffOrt were incredibly cunning during the match.
As for Flash, I don't know how many professional players went through the fMRI tests (BoxeR, XellOs, and Flash did for sure), and I am not claiming that Flash has superior general intelligence (although he is indeed smart) in contrast to every other gamer in history.
I am simply of the opinion that Flash has superior general intelligence for the game of competitive Brood War alone, and studies involving his brain activities whilst playing the game prove that Flash's brain is better organized in terms of information processing for the competitive game of Brood War specifically. The level to which competitive Brood War algorithm (pure gaming theory on competitive maps such as Circuit Breaker) has been ingrained in Flash's mind is what makes him truly remarkable. It does not mean Flash is necessarily faster to learn new abstractions (both unfamiliar Brood War territories such as two-versus-two team games or fastest maps, or entirely new games such as League of Legends or Starcraft 2), it simply means that he can process competitive Brood War information faster.
Flash won the Courage Tournament at age 15. He is a prodigy of the highest calibre, but SnOw won his Courage Tournament aged 14 (youngest ever Courage Tournament winner), and there are other players such as Sea, Mind, Baby, HoGiL or BoGus that started off their professional careers at an incredibly young age also. Something about Flash was different than the others, and he went on to re-organize his brain perfectly for competitive Brood War.
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On July 24 2018 07:19 chaosTheory_14cc wrote:Show nested quote +Flash is known for his speed, but what people really should pay attention to, is his speed of thought, and his mechanics are amazing in that his speed of thought can be actualized on screen. Excellent statement, I agree completely. I am surprised though at your conclusions for creativity. One would think that a static game state would reward creativity moreso than a dynamic one, no? Or at the very least emphasize it more since any paradigm shifts/new trends are that much more impactful. In my opinion games like LoL emphasize adaption to a constantly changing ruleset which, I assume is still a hard skill to cultivate, is really not the same as innovating in a static state where you must not only strive to surpass your peer's current knowledge, but continue to do so even after you've changed the paradigm knowing that it is only a matter of time before they catch up and the new trend becomes standard. Interesting read as always, I really enjoy your work.
I personally believe creativity thrives in a more volatile environment. Proper data organization and correct implementation of the established rule-set becomes more valuable in a more stable environment. As always, there could be exceptions to the rule.
I think people sometimes over-estimate the overall productivity of professional careers of the likes of iloveoov and sAviOr were based on their peak form alone. Longetivity was something these creative geniuses lacked compared to even much less talented players.
JJu, for example, had more round of 16 appearances throughout his career than sAviOr, despite having won literally zero best-of-five series in his entire career. Hwasin had the same number of round of 16 appearances as iloveoov despite having his career cut short (Hwasin was in prime position to qualify for the both individual leagues since he reached the round of 16 for both leagues during the prior season).
I know some people don't rate longetivity, and think burning brightly then fizzling out in a blaze of glory is all that matters. However, I'm of the opinion that is a great disservice to truly great players who managed the best of both worlds by having incredible highs and extreme longetivity and consistency. Taking into consideration only the peak performance from a player is like judging football players by their highlight reels. The entire competitive output of a player's professional career has to be judged, and not by metrics specifically designed to make them look good.
People tend to over-rate creative geniuses in terms of competitive merit, or devalue competitive merit to emphasis the merits of these creative geniuses. From a sheer competitive merit point of view, I think creative talents are better suited in a game like League of Legends, although the circumstances for that competitive scene are far too different for a direct comparison, what with it being an entirely different genre, and being a team game on top of that. I would mention Starcraft 2 as a somewhat similar game involving more frequent patches, but I have next to zero insight for that gaming title, so I would be totally out of my depth.
I always judge competitive results first. This isn't a performance art like figure skating. There is a clear end-objective everybody has agreed upon prior to competing. A player failing in the off-line qualifiers is always competitively inferior to a player who makes it to the round of eight, who in turn is competitively inferior to a player who finishes first.
It doesn't matter if Canata was better as a player in a vacuum setting than BoxeR in 2005, if BoxeR was more capable of producing competitive results back then. In the same vein, all the titles won by iloveoov and sAviOr, doesn't change the fact that their results pale in comparison to the overall body of work gained by the likes of NaDa, Jaedong, and Flash. I don't consider these three players as typical creative geniuses, although they all had their contributions towards the meta-game advancement. Considering iloveoov and sAviOr were as successful as creative geniuses got (contrasted to the likes of PuSan they most certainly had incredible competitive results), I do believe competitive Brood War isn't the ideal setting for a creative genius.
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interesting post. i thought Bisu would make a appearance in the gaming athleticism section but i can't blame jangbi for being the choice there. Interesting people left out of this were JulyZerg and Stork "cerebral intelligence of sc" and FantaSy for the creativity in gaming awarded section.
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On July 24 2018 11:30 funnybananaman wrote:
interesting post. i thought Bisu would make a appearance in the gaming athleticism section but i can't blame jangbi for being the choice there. Interesting people left out of this were JulyZerg and Stork "cerebral intelligence of sc" and FantaSy for the creativity in gaming awarded section.
A single player can belong to multiple categories, and a single attribute can have multiple fine candidates.
Bisu was a conscientious player, a fine physical specimen in terms of video gaming, and if we restrict the conversation to the protoss-versus-zerg match-up, was both a creative pioneer, as well as having the best real-time algorithm of what to do. I do not think Bisu had good competitive aptitude, especially after he transferred over to SK Telecom T1. I believe Mind once said that Bisu would be almost entirely focused on perfecting a certain build order during practice, rather than attempting to breakdown his upcoming opponent in a methodical manner. Bisu's mechanical prowess was of course innate to a large degree, but I believe his wonderful-to-spectate FPVODs was a product of his insane dedication towards his execution (combined with his knowledge of exactly where and when to look within the protoss-versus-zerg match-up in particular) rather than the kind of innate accurate mouse clicking and superhuman reaction times seen from JangBi, who was never known for his work ethic.
July was one of my prime candidates for conscientiousness (especially in terms of initial intensity), but I chose Jaedong instead because he had superior stress management over the long haul. July was way too burned out by his insane practice regimen (which may have been even more intensive than Jaedong's), and I've heard newer generation of players such as Bisu say that July barely practiced towards the latter half of his professional career. Jaedong's discipline towards his craft was unmatched once you factor in his dedication over the years.
Stork is a hard one to pin down. He doesn't practice to unhealthy levels (yet has some of the best micro-management of any protoss player). He does have extremely clean execution but lacks the raw speed at which it is done. He doesn't create landscape changing meta-game shifts. Judging by his finals preparation (versus Flash and FanTaSy in particular), where he does the same builds because they worked so well in the lower brackets, only to get completely stomped by build order losses in his preferred match-up, he doesn't even have superlative competitive aptitude. I'll have to go over his past and current games much more to understand Stork's core essence.
FanTaSy in my mind was one of the most conscientious players to ever exist. I don't think he was ever physically gifted for the game itself, and tended to thrive more with extra time to prepare, which would suggest that he tried extremely hard to gain the competitive advantage. I did hear about the time FanTaSy went over one of his replays against Flash over one hundred times just to find all the possible habbits and tendencies that he could abuse in the future. However, it seemed more fitting to name BoxeR since his career longetivity was almost entirely based on his competitive aptitude in my opinion.
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Can you tell us more about these fMRI-tests? When did they happen?
I think Stork fits into a similar classification as Flash. They both seem to have pre-processed a lot of the situations that occur in games, meaning they are quick to respond and that they respond and adapt incredibly intelligently to most situations within a game. Stork is also really good at preparing strategies for opponents, although not as good at doing it in big finals. Whereas Bisu is one of the best Protoss in small scale micro battles (around one control group of units), Stork has really impressive control and decision making when it comes to mid to large size armies (Bisu is completely brain dead when it comes to decision making in these kind of situations).
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On July 24 2018 22:07 LaLuSh wrote:
Can you tell us more about these fMRI-tests? When did they happen?
I think Stork fits into a similar classification as Flash. They both seem to have pre-processed a lot of the situations that occur in games, meaning they are quick to respond and that they respond and adapt incredibly intelligently to most situations within a game. Stork is also really good at preparing strategies for opponents, although not as good at doing it in big finals. Whereas Bisu is one of the best Protoss in small scale micro battles (around one control group of units), Stork has really impressive control and decision making when it comes to mid to large size armies (Bisu is completely brain dead when it comes to decision making in these kind of situations).
There was a program on KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) called Science Cafe, and several professional gamers have made guest appearances (Flash appeared on it in early 2010) on it back when professional Brood War was still a major social phenomenon. The show has gone off air, and professional Brood War has gone away, so it is difficult to find past records, but Flash's appearance on it still has past articles left to be discovered online (the details of which I already mentioned).
I am not sure how many professionals appeared on the show, and since all the past VODs of it are gone forever, there isn't a lot of details to tell, really, unless you want me to talk about the time NaDa appeared on it, the brief summary of which still exists online for some reason.
NaDa appeared on the show in 2006, and tests showed enhanced development on parts of the brain correlated to voluntary movement (frontal lobe) and manipulation of objects (parietal lobe), as well as having a faster reaction time compared to the average individual. It showed that he had enhanced abilities to maneuveur the mouse and keyboard, somewhat comparable to how pianists have increased parietal lobe activity compared to regular folks. This would suggest that NaDa had greater gaming athleticism than most, and explains why he had such monstrous mechanical ability despite not having the greatest discipline. It also explains his fondness for the FPS genre.
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ya true. none of the players i put up really had "A" careers that they could really sustain every week in - week out of a season be it PL or individual tour. But they did display flashes / moments of brilliance which will always live on in brood-war history forever. Probably once every 3-6 weeks for these players in their peak time. July peak was hard to know when it was really, pretty short, Fantasy and Bisu had peaks that came around the same time.
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very good read. how did you come up with/decide on these traits? some i wouldnt really expect one to come up with. do you have any personal competitive gaming background?
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On July 26 2018 00:20 Socke wrote:
very good read. how did you come up with/decide on these traits? some i wouldnt really expect one to come up with. do you have any personal competitive gaming background?
I have absolutely zero credenitals, both as a competitor and business insider. I simply have crack-addict levels of consumption of Brood War content, whichever form in may take (televised matches, online streams, articles, or discussions on active communities).
People on various online communities have always categorized players by their APM numbers, how well suited they were for planning out a best-of-series versus a known opponent, and how well suited well known players would be for other competitive fields mostly involving the mind such as scholastic tests, other gaming titles, board games such as GO, or card games such as poker. Most of the concepts discussed here were ideas discussed in one form or another elsewhere.
I just ordered various attributes that could be (in a somewhat incomplete and forced manner) broken down to core clinical profiles that had positive correlation to competitive Brood War aptitude, starting from attributes that could be measured somewhat objectively (conscientiousness, gaming athleticism), and finishing with attributes that were much harder to quantify in an objective manner (creativity, competitive aptitude).
For example, hours spent for practice per day is a coarse method of judging player conscientiousness, but it does provide some clear objective insight into how they tick in terms of discipline. People with high levels of stress tolerance combined with high levels of drive can simply do more stuff per day even if it isn't in the most cost-effective manner.
On the other hand, it was infinitely harder to have a clear definition for what constitues creativity, and coming up with some basic objective metric for which it can be measured by. I thought the ease with which a Brood War player comes up with game-breaking meta-games (novel ideas that work in the real world that ultimately results in allowing minimal effort for the creator) was a mildly relevant measurement of a player's creativity. As you can see from the responses in this thread, the premise wasn't really well laid out judging from the confusion and disagreements.
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Interesting read. Would be interesting to see how the importance of these traits changes with time.
For example, creativity may be more important in the early stages with weird maps/no replays.
Athleticism may also become less important post-post 2010.....
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On July 26 2018 17:11 HaFnium wrote:
Interesting read. Would be interesting to see how the importance of these traits changes with time.
For example, creativity may be more important in the early stages with weird maps/no replays.
Athleticism may also become less important post-post 2010.....
I'll go through my thoughts for each attribute, and how it relates to the changes in the scene:
1. Conscientiousness is something that is universally beneficial regardless of the circumstances in my opinion. Part of why AlphaGo defeated the top Go players in the world was because it played so many games against itself, that no single human was able to compete with it in terms of overall number of data-set to draw conclusions from. Driven individuals known for their extreme intensity within practice such as Cristiano Ronaldo, or Kobe Bryant, would be some examples from other competitive fields. As long as your body and mind can tolerate it (the theshold levels differ between individuals), more dedication inevitably leads to better results. It is why having good stamina, having high stress tolerance, and being less neurotic are traits that are much appreciated in the modern society.
Such traits were maximized within systems instituted by KeSPA, but even in the much more lackadaisical nature of the current streaming industry, some of the most hard-working players such as herO, Larva, and Shuttle have seen way more competitive success than they were able to manage during their years as professional Brood War players.
The antithesis of this statement would be laid back individuals such as Rain, who achieved great competitive success, partly due to his great ability to come up with efficient Brood War algorithms within his mind. He seems to have faster appreciation of what makes each game tick, whether it is Brood War, Starcraft 2, or League of Legends. If we had a general intelligence testing (such as an IQ test) for all the gamers, I think he would be on the upper end of the distribution. There is a reason why coach Park of SK Telecom T1 said Rain was the smartest player under his wing.
2. Gaming athleticism does not necessarily have high returns by itself, but is basically a multiplier of whatever else it is you excel at. I think Terror[fOu] had quite high levels of gaming athleticism (high eAPM numbers, ability to in excel in micro-management based UMS, and having good shooting accuracy within the FPS genre), but was a complete disaster in other aspects (Terror[fOu] was one of the most highly sought after amateur players, and BeSt once said that he was beaten soundly by Terror[fOu] during their amateur years, but he remained exactly the same in terms of skill, while BeSt kept improving).
However, while the best football player on the planet is definitely not the fastest (otherwise track and field players would dominate the sport), it is undeniable that key physical attributes such as speed and stamina were frequently found in ample dosage in some of the greatest players to have played the game. Di Stefano had great stamina, Pele was a great athletic specimen, and even today Cristiano Ronaldo has great overall physical attributes. While athletic ability alone did not make these players great, it was a great amplifier of their other key attributes. Having good dribbling is good, but being good dribbling on top of being fast makes you deadly. Having good ball heading skills is good, but having good vertical leap (seen in athletic specimens such as Pele or Cristiano Ronaldo) makes you a major aerial threat.
In the same vein, having naturally fast reaction times, having superior hand-eye coordination, and innately superior dexterity to handle the mouse and keyboard makes almost everything that you do more lethal once you master other key components of the game. It is why Bisu was so deadly within the protoss-versus-zerg match-up. He understood the core principles of the match-up at an astoundingly deep level, but it was the combination of that generalized algorithm of the match-up with supreme levels of gaming athleticism that made Bisu a god within the match-up.
3. In the current streaming industry, players who have a flow-charty feel to the game, such as Flash, Rain, herO, and BeSt have found the most competitive success within the game. Perhaps it is because the accumulation of knowledge over the years has become so great, but I also feel like there is a limiting factor for the other attributes due to the change in the environment.
The difference in the meta-game from 2012 (the very end of professional Brood War) and 2018 isn't as vast as one might imagine. It certainly is not as noticeable as the change from 2006 to 2012. Yet the very best players in 2012, such as FanTaSy or JangBi, were players known for their playmaking abilities with key units such as vultures, and high templars.
With the map pools basically being a re-hash of what went on during the final few years of professional Brood War, and the overall gaming mechanics not being as crisp as before, it seems quite reasonable to assume that having the best general intelligence for Brood War would reign supreme in the absence of extreme top-ends of the distribution for other traits that was around during the professional era. There is definitely nobody who works as hard as FanTaSy did towards the end of professional Brood War right now, and certainly nobody who could make vultures come to life as he once did.
4. Not only is it hard to define creativity, it is difficult to give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is a major problem in the creative arts department, and it isn't much different for Brood War also. Did Bisu really re-invent the protoss-verus-zerg match-up, or did he plagiarize from older generations of protoss players such as DaezanG or PuSan? Did FanTaSy re-invent the terran-versus-zerg match-up, or was he an extension of iloveoov's genius? Depending on how you spin the narrative, you can either glorify or nullify the creative merits of an individual.
Further more, there has been tons of creative individuals who had little to offer in terms of competitive merit such as Shark or Force[Name], but influenced the competitive landscape more so than players who benefitted from their creative exploits.
If there was a properly structured AI specifically designed to play Brood War at human levels of mechanical competence, I'm sure there would be plenty of creative outlets for it advance the meta-game even futher. The theretically ideal meta-game evolution has not slowed down that much, in my opinion, but the overall gaming population has dipped so much that the pace of evolution has grinded to a snail's pace. The frontier of what constitues orthodox play isn't decided by the elite that frequently. It is a domain where shit players like me have an opportunity to shine, since it is basically an infinite monkey theorem, where if the sheer number of random novel ways of playing the game reaches a certain critical mass, there is bound to be at least a couple of salvageable ideas to implement for the elite gamers to incorporate into their game.
So again, I think the current status is more indicative of the state of the overall Brood War scene, rather than creativity losing its value altogether for competitive Brood War now that the game has been "figured out" (a statement I personally don't agree with).
5. Competitive aptitude is always going to be relevant as long as there is competition. Good competitive aptitude is also not a single entity, there is an art to staying physically healthy and managing your stamina for a short 3 day LAN, and there is an art to preparing for a specific opponent for days on end, and trying to breakdown every abusable gaming habbit of his.
Being the best does not mean playing the best. There is an art to performing well within a ProLeague setting separate from pure Brood War skills. There is an art to performing well within a single-elimination setting. There is an art to performing well within a best-of-five setting. Tournament organizers play a part in that they get to decide how much competitive aptitude a player can show off, by how they design their competition. Some prefer a minimalistic approach, where pure gaming capacity alone can win you the tournament, whereas others make game-breaking tournament designs (MSL group selections had significant game-breaking elements that could be abused to further your chances of advancing, for example) to test a player's competitive aptitude (the influential nature of the MSL group selections was part of why it seemed more exciting, because it had real competitive consequences).
NaDa lost his mouse and keyboard prior to playing versus GoRush in the finals of YATGK MSL, an opponent he recently defeated in a best-of-five setting in a double-elimination format of that very same tournament. Flash brought along a ruler to make sure everything about his setting was picture perfect. In the countdown for their third game of the semi-finals, Jaedong started to spam sdsdsd in chat, as if he was preparing for a standard build, knowing that he was going to 4 pool FanTaSy. All these little things to take that every inch of competitive advantage could sometimes make the difference between a champion, and a mere gamer who was excellent at the game.
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"Jaedong started to spam sdsdsd in chat, as if he was preparing for a standard build, knowing that he was going to 4 pool FanTaSy."
Haha that is fantastic, do you have a blog post with examples of mind games such as this one?
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That was an interesting read, and I enjoyed your writings about the depth of Brood War. I think one way to make it even better would be to include examples for people like me who aren't knowledgeable enough (thought I understand that you've already written a lot)
For example, would you please elaborate on what BoxeR typed?
(KeSPA banned the use of chat after BoxeR used it extensively to defeat JuNiToSs)
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On July 29 2018 23:45 JieXian wrote:That was an interesting read, and I enjoyed your writings about the depth of Brood War. I think one way to make it even better would be to include examples for people like me who aren't knowledgeable enough (thought I understand that you've already written a lot) For example, would you please elaborate on what BoxeR typed? Show nested quote +(KeSPA banned the use of chat after BoxeR used it extensively to defeat JuNiToSs)
JuNiToSs thought he had BoxeR contained, and had delayed his expanions for long enough. BoxeR attempted lull JuNiToSs into a false sense of security by attempting a hidden expansion then proceeding to type "it is too narrow  ", referencing to the narrow ramp he needed to go down in order to secure his natural expansion. BoxeR went on to defeat JuNiToSs after a difficult start where he had his gas stolen and had to battle his way down the ramp without having sufficient tech.
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On July 29 2018 12:44 Essbee wrote:
"Jaedong started to spam sdsdsd in chat, as if he was preparing for a standard build, knowing that he was going to 4 pool FanTaSy."
Haha that is fantastic, do you have a blog post with examples of mind games such as this one?
It is not a trait I particularly value, but iloveoov was famous for using intimidation tactics versus his opponents. Not only did he proclaim outlandish statements during pre-game interviews, when he recognized that he had the game won, he would purposefully drag his games out and toy around with his prey, in order to give them the false impression that they had zero chance of winning against him no matter what they did. iloveoov wanted his opponents to forever have that feeling of hopelessness, in order to gain the competitive edge against them.
Jaedong deployed this tactic too, when he faced off against UpMaGiC, when he had two groups of mutalisks that could end the game right then and there if he chose to. But he purposefully did simultaneous mutalisk harassment in two separate battle fronts simply to humiliate UpMaGiC and flex his superior multi-tasking and micro-management, merely to prove a point that he was that much better than UpMaGiC, and gain the psychological advantage in the future. He wanted his opponents to know that he could manhandle them in terms of mechanical prowess. It was something that he used extensively, making the most out of his units, not only on screen, but within his opponents mind. Leta once said something to the effect that he felt afraid of Jaedong's units, and felt stifled in terms of his strategic options because he was playing scared.
Flash was also known for using pre-game interviews to mindgame his opponents. He purposefully baited Stork into thinking he had prepared specific builds to counter Stork's carriers, and when Stork attempted economically greedy builds to counter that, Flash simply cheesed Stork in what was the shortest finals in terms of game time.
He also taunted Bisu non-stop for having bad carrier micro-management during their all-star match (because you are allowed to chat during non-KeSPA sanctioned showmatches), a couple of days prior to their MSL round of 32 match-up. Bisu went on to have one of his worst displays of atrocious carrier usage against Flash in what was a really advantageous game for him, and got eliminated in the round of 32. Perhaps it was mere coincidence, and Flash denied claims of attempting to trigger Bisu into using carriers against him in the post-match interview, but I believe he went a little overboard with the Bisu bashing (who was his senior and looked a little offended during their all-star match) for a reason (to gain the competitive edge).
The only true all-time great who was subpar in this particular aspect of competition was probably NaDa. iloveoov said while NaDa was a great gamer, he was easy to read and claimed that his lack of emotional control was apparent with his unit movement, and contrasted this with XellOs, a player he traditionally struggled against because he was so difficult to read emotionally even if iloveoov had the strategic upper hand initially (a sentiment shared by BoxeR, who also claimed XellOs was very difficult to read emotionally). GoRush also said that he struggled more versus iloveoov, because NaDa was easy to predict, and it was only his flashes of sheer brilliance that caught him off-guard (his EMP shockwave against defilers after holding off the masses of ultralisks with a medic wall-off being one of those examples).
It was a cut-throat competition, and players were often ruthless (within the boundaries of reason of course) with sabotage tactics to tilt or intimidate their opponents into playing below their optimal standards. NaDa would often talk about being nice and respectful to his opponents, and letting your skills do the talking. It is one of the reasons why NaDa personally hated sAviOr because he had such a disrespectful character about him. But he was wrong. People from competitive fields, whether it is chess, tennis or boxing, can attempt to gain the competitive edge by means other than pure excellence at their craft. People don't always play nice, and engage you with the aim of all parties involved playing at their maximum capacity for a great game of Brood War.
If there is an apparent skill discrepency between two individuals, the obvious short-term solution is to devise methods of negating that skill difference, and the greatest competitors always understood that. There has never been a pure attempt at Brood War excellence alone with zero inter-personal dynamics.
I'm sure there are other examples, but it is something I don't really like delving into too deeply.
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I think it is extremely important to differentiate between pure gaming capacity, and overall competitive Brood War capacity. There are numerous examples of players who were good at the game within a specific capacity (just pure fundamentals with zero competitive nature involved), but were not able to translate that into competitive success.
1) Jaedong was accepted as a practice partner for PLUS (later became Hwaseung Oz) in 2005. After a several months of hardcore training, people say that Jaedong was already the best player on the team during practice, but ironically, was unable to gain his semi-professional liscence because he kept failing in Courage Tournaments partly because he stubbornly refused to play anything but standard build orders. Anytime may have had worse results than Jaedong during practice, but he was already a OGN StarLeague champion by late 2005, while Jaedong didn't even have his professional liscence. It wasn't until 2007 that Jaedong qualified for his first ever major individual league (EVER 2007 OGN StarLeague), despite dominating practice sessions since 2005. Anytime once said in a television show that he couldn't understand why Jaedong took so long to succeed.
2) PGTour Season 6 had its first ultimate rank player in ilovejs, a random protoss who had over 20,000 points, yet nobody had a clue who it was. It was Bisu, a professional who was drafted in late 2005 and had next to zero competitive results thus far. He was ranked above the likes of Iris, iloveoov, and Canata who was also ranked extremely high that particular season. A year later Bisu was crowned as the MSL champion, but his success was not immediate despite his potential being seen earlier on.
3) JangBi on arrival, was said to be the best player within the Samsung Khan household ever since he set foot on the Samsung Khan gaming house in 2006, and his first ever games were against Stork who he defeated soundly, starting off a one sided dynamic that was sustained for the rest of JangBi's professional career. However, despite coach January boldly claiming that she had a super rookie within her roster (in possession of a gaming talent that was probably superior to Stork), JangBi went on to have a ProLeague record of 6-15 (28.6%) for the 2007 ProLeague season, while Stork played a key role with a ProLeague record of 30-9 (76.9%) as well as reaching consecutive finals of the individual leagues.
Hwaseung Oz practiced often against Samsung Khan, and players such as Sky have went on the record that JangBi was simply monstrous during practice, while Stork was much more manageable. Stork often claimed that he could never defeat JangBi. However, apart from the very final moments of professional Brood War, Stork had a vastly superior competitive success than JangBi.
4) Canata was the best player during practice at a time when his teammate iloveoov was widely regarded as the best terran on the planet. BeSt once said that players who hit rank one on the ladder such as Anytime and Bisu prior to their debut championships, were guaranteed to have future competitive success, except for Canata, who was great during in-house practice sessions and online ladders, but was thoroughly mediocre outside of his comfort zone.
If competitive success was directly correlated to "gaming skill" alone, there is no reason why Canata was suffering in the depths of mediocrity for the first several years of his career while his teammate BoxeR was still reaching the round of eight despite being active since 1999 and being quite unremarkable in terms of raw fundamentals by that point in time.
5) Rain was said to be the best player during practice within the SK Telecom T1 household towards the end of professional Brood War. The very team that had the likes of FanTaSy and Bisu around. However, within the actual competitive scene, Rain was simply a rookie protoss with a 49.1% win rate in the ProLeague, who never even made it to the round of 32 even once during his professional career.
There are other players such as Jaehoon (Sea said he was just as good as Bisu during practice during the earlier parts of their careers), Hery (the practice bonjwa of the old-school KTF MagicNs house-hold), BoGus (practice god of STX SouL), and Soulkey (the only zerg to go even against post-2010 Flash during practice), who never had the kind of professional success that their gaming talents would indicate.
It is extremely rare for players to hit the peaks of all five attributes simultaneously, just like it is rare for athletes to hit their peak athletic ability, game understanding, and competitive aptitude within the same window of time. Flash has a deeper understanding of the game than he did in 2010, but his gaming athleticism isn't the same as before. BoxeR probably had more competitive aptitude in 2005 than he did at his actual peak as a gamer in 2001. Players who boast extreme longetivity probably had to reinvent themselves multiple times, or expand their overall atttributes as a competitor over the years.
For example, July is a great example of a micro-management god who got his remarkable skills through some innate gaming athleticism, and mostly excruciatingly intense practice regimen. However, after being thrown away like a used ragdoll for his services for the team, July was no longer the mechanical god (Jaedong usurped him in that regard a long time ago), nor was he a disciplined individual (Bisu once commented that July was one of the laziest players he saw). Everything that made him stand out beforehand was mostly gone. However, July was able to abuse the lack of competitive aptitude in younger players such as BeSt, and won a championship in an era where Flash was returning as the defending champion. There is no way July was more fundamentally sound than the likes of Jaedong or Luxury during practice at the time, but it wasn't about being better within a vacuum setting, otherwise competitive Brood War would be like figure skating and we would be rating players by how pretty their FPVODs are and how theoretically sound they are.
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There are so many differences between practice house games and televised games it's hard to single out just one as being the cause of a player's difficulty in translating their practice house results. Not only is it harder to perform for some people when they are being watched (it takes up their head space just thinking about the novel situation when they need to focus on their task), but I imagine it takes a little while before players get used to making the settings just like home, get used to a different desk and chair, realise in the middle of the game that their keyboard isn't quite where it normally is. On top of that, their opponents are not playing like it is a practice game, are not playing like it is a ladder game. The tricks will be dirtier, the objective is skewed further toward just winning than improving areas of weakness. To say nothing of the emotional pressure and distraction of needing to prove yourself, of trying to realise the profits from the immense investment you've put into getting there. I always felt very bad for a player losing to a 4pool or some such cheese, because whatever they had been practicing for a week was basically wasted. At the same time, if anything would get you used to being on TV, it was a crummy cheese strategy that is many magnitudes less complicated and difficult to execute than strategies that hit their stride mid-game.
In a sense, first generation players had it a little easier, because they were playing against other players who were not used to playing on TV or getting their settings right. On the other hand, that made players with high self-confidence and good luck hitting upon an effective way to setup right much more powerful, and it's probably why a lot of handsome guys like Boxer and Reach did very well. In a funny way, that was probably very good for the sport, since it greatly improved the image of nerds playing games, and drew in lots of fans who might otherwise have been turned off.
The story about Bisu hitting ultimate was new to me. I actually remember Bisu being made fun of by the foreign community quite a lot before the final vs Savior. His ascendance took a lot of people off guard, I think, but I guess the Koreans completely saw it coming. Or maybe it was only me who didn't know.
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On August 01 2018 00:22 Chef wrote:
There are so many differences between practice house games and televised games it's hard to single out just one as being the cause of a player's difficulty in translating their practice house results. Not only is it harder to perform for some people when they are being watched (it takes up their head space just thinking about the novel situation when they need to focus on their task), but I imagine it takes a little while before players get used to making the settings just like home, get used to a different desk and chair, realise in the middle of the game that their keyboard isn't quite where it normally is. On top of that, their opponents are not playing like it is a practice game, are not playing like it is a ladder game. The tricks will be dirtier, the objective is skewed further toward just winning than improving areas of weakness. To say nothing of the emotional pressure and distraction of needing to prove yourself, of trying to realise the profits from the immense investment you've put into getting there. I always felt very bad for a player losing to a 4pool or some such cheese, because whatever they had been practicing for a week was basically wasted. At the same time, if anything would get you used to being on TV, it was a crummy cheese strategy that is many magnitudes less complicated and difficult to execute than strategies that hit their stride mid-game.
In a sense, first generation players had it a little easier, because they were playing against other players who were not used to playing on TV or getting their settings right. On the other hand, that made players with high self-confidence and good luck hitting upon an effective way to setup right much more powerful, and it's probably why a lot of handsome guys like Boxer and Reach did very well. In a funny way, that was probably very good for the sport, since it greatly improved the image of nerds playing games, and drew in lots of fans who might otherwise have been turned off.
The story about Bisu hitting ultimate was new to me. I actually remember Bisu being made fun of by the foreign community quite a lot before the final vs Savior. His ascendance took a lot of people off guard, I think, but I guess the Koreans completely saw it coming. Or maybe it was only me who didn't know.
One thing I noticed, is that when people tend to vouch for players being worth more than their competitive results suggests, they often bend reality to assume that whatever component these players are lacking, will somehow be magically fixed, while tunnel visioning on the select few qualities they were initially impressed by. It is the kind of reasoning that makes Maradona state that Jorge Gonzalez was one of the top greatest footballers of all time, simply based on his raw footballing skills without accounting for less sexy traits that actually contribute towards footballing excellence such as work ethic.
It is one thing to praise a player for certain attributes, but I have never understood why some people attempt to extrapolate that into overall competitive greatness, when the entire premise of competitive Brood War is to figure out the objective competitive greatness of the players involved, not the subjective context of how it can be interpreted. It is hard enough to objectively quantify the competitive results of players, but when I see people skipping that key step to go straight for the the near-impossible attempt of correctly assessing the raw gaming talents or abilities of certain players, it makes me wonder about the level of delusion it takes to pretend to have that kind of insight (when even professional gamers have differing opinions on subjective matters like raw ability), or question whether these kind of people have zero interest in being accurate and just want to beat their drum about their favourite players with absolutely no care in the world whether they are over-estimating or under-estimating certain attributes, or whether they are even considering all the variables involved.
Good looks and natural charisma are key traits that I probably shouldn't have left out if I wanted to be truly wished my list to be comprehensive. BoxeR's longetivity was partly fueled by the adulation from his unequaled fandom. Capturing the imagination of the audience is reflected on the ratings, which in turn influences the decisions of the sponsors and tournament organizers. BoxeR was able to get a superior practice environment and competitive edge over his peers largely due to his immense popularity, and gained energy from the crowd in a manner that wasn't dissimilar from home crowd advantage in sports like football.
If I am to make an excuse, it could be stated that all that played into his overall competitive aptitude. Good looking dudes who have the ability to capture the imagination of the larger audience have it much easier than dudes who are simply godlike at the game. EffOrt struggled to get into a gaming house (Hwaseung Oz was one of the teams that rejected him as a practice partner) because he was judged to be "too ugly" and struggled to find his place within the CJ Entus household initially, whereas good looking players with even minimal initial promise tended to be looked after so much better. Broadcasting stations were incentivized to artificially push the narratives of more attractive players, even if they were thoroughly unremarkable otherwise, such as JuNiToSs.
It was one of the things I used to loath about competitive Brood War, how young boys were marketed as sex objects to impressionable young girls as if they were members of boy bands. I used to cringe every time idiot girl fans, who didn't even know the races of their favourite players, shrieked in excitement at the most random timings because Hwasin would make their insides feel funny. The superiority complex I had over these kind of fans was insane. However, I've come to realize these kind of fans was far more valuable towards the industry from a sheer business perspective, so they are one of the necessary evils that has to be catered to if competitive Brood War wants to succeed as a whole. Attractive and charismatic players such as BoxeR, YellOw, and Reach were integral to establishing competitive Brood War as a staple television content for over a decade.
I don't think many people seriously thought Bisu had a good chance versus sAviOr, Korean or otherwise. I personally was already turned off by the idea of a practice bonjwa partly because Canata had been such a disappointment despite being hyped so much by the likes of BoxeR. I simply thought he was a promising young protoss who was way too over-hyped by the Ongamenet commentators when he first qualified for the OGN StarLeague as a teenager, and all I could remember was that he had solid macro-management. Players with great initial promise have always been around, whether it was Canata or Shudder. I think it would have been silly to be certain of such a meteoric rise simply because Bisu was fantastic within a ladder setting. It was more of an retroactive statement, after-the-fact assessment of a player who went on to achive great things (because the tale of a player hitting the number one spot on a ladder ending up in utter professional mediocrity has been seen time and time again).
BoxeR predicted that iloveoov would change the entire landscape of competitive Brood War before he even made his professional debut. However, he also thought Canata would go on to achieve great things. These things tend to be hit and miss, and only the hits tend to be remembered.
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On July 30 2018 10:31 Letmelose wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2018 23:45 JieXian wrote:That was an interesting read, and I enjoyed your writings about the depth of Brood War. I think one way to make it even better would be to include examples for people like me who aren't knowledgeable enough (thought I understand that you've already written a lot) For example, would you please elaborate on what BoxeR typed? (KeSPA banned the use of chat after BoxeR used it extensively to defeat JuNiToSs) JuNiToSs thought he had BoxeR contained, and had delayed his expanions for long enough. BoxeR attempted lull JuNiToSs into a false sense of security by attempting a hidden expansion then proceeding to type "it is too narrow ", referencing to the narrow ramp he needed to go down in order to secure his natural expansion. BoxeR went on to defeat JuNiToSs after a difficult start where he had his gas stolen and had to battle his way down the ramp without having sufficient tech.
hahaha I wish chat like that was allowed. Perhaps something like outright insults could be banned but I think allowing chat only adds to the game
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I don't see good looks or charisma as being anymore unfair than being born with a wide finger span or happening to have a set of experiences that predisposed you to understand StarCraft more quickly. There is a temptation to think of intellectual sports like Go or Chess as being pure and free from the pettiness of day to day life, but they will always fail that expectation.
Charisma is often enough just another word for interpersonal skills, so it should be even less subject to judgement as petty. Whether it is by good looks or interpersonal skills, being better at receiving aid makes you a stronger competitor. Having difficulty with that means being at a large disadvantage. It makes perfect sense that you would select players based on charisma and good looks not just because they might attract more money from sponsors, but because they have a better chance at harmonizing with the team and receiving help from teammates.
At the same time, there is a selling point to the ugly players as well, if they are skilled enough or have good enough interpersonal skills, because people who relate to them will want to cheer them on. To be honest, there is not a lot of difference between the fan who begins cheering for a player because they're good looking, to the fan who gets satisfaction from the less attractive competitor winning the prize and fulfilling their personal fantasy of skill and diligence overcoming looks.
Either way, there were plenty of not-so-good-looking players in StarCraft. Effort wasn't the worst of them by a long shot. Having watched some of his videos subtitled, he's a very funny guy but probably an acquired taste for most. I am suspicious of a statement that it was only his face that held him back. We're talking about an industry filled mostly with funny looking guys. Though I don't deny at all good looking people always get preferential treatment, there's only so many stunners in the world, there's always room for people who are just good talkers.
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EffOrt was definitely rejected from one of the former renditions of Hwaseung Oz as a practice partner due to his looks and initial impressions alone (when his skills were not outstanding enough to compensate for his mediocre looks), However, I did omit one of the major reasons for initial difficulties on CJ Entus, which was that when he introduced himself to the team, he said he looked up to July and wished to be like him, when it clearly wasn't the smart thing to do considering sAviOr was there right in front of him.
Ruby had some of the worst levels of anger management issues ever seen from a professional, but was personally recommended into professional gaming by MBC Game HERO, instead of being drafted in. Something tells me it wasn't his awesome Brood War talents that made MBC Game HERO overlook his severe anger issues (tales of his conduct whenever he lost was legendary),
There certainly is respectable merit to a player who motivates people around him to work harder, as well as raising the overall happiness level around him. On the flipside, I'm sure there were Brood War geniuses who were difficult to work with and had a diva-like personalities that wouldn't have meshed well with other young players within a team environment. I'm not sure where EffOrt lies exactly, but he did get set back purely based on merits that applies more to fields such as the fashion or movie industry.
Superficial stuff such as looks and good presence on screen played a larger role in the success of professional Brood War than I personally would have liked. It is like how David Beckham brought so much attention as a footballing icon, partly due to his world class footballing abilities, but mostly due to his extremely good looks.
I guess it may seem rather hypocritical of me to draw the line at superficial beauty, when I just ranted pages upon pages about needing to judge competitors as a whole, not purely based on their select few gaming traits or attributes. I too am somewhat guilty of distorting the reality, just to pretend that on screen persona and superficial beauty doesn't have much importance in the realm of competitive Brood War when it quite clearly does.
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Well, I think having grown up in the narrow period of time that lots of people started having computers, but not many had microphones or webcams, and most communication was text, and the initial experience of Brood War was that pretty much only what you wrote and how you played defined you on Battle.net. I think for a lot of intellectually inclined people that was a wonderful and seductive idea. Besides people writing under pen names, there is pretty much no equivalent. A lot of people would like to know how they would be judged, how others would be judged, if you took the appearance and sound of a person completely out of the picture. It is just by itself an interesting question, but it isn't one that professional Brood War ended up answering. As soon as the internet got faster, that question became hard to answer again. I remember when Let's Play first started having people put their faces in the corner and there was backlash that it was self-obsessed and took away from the game from some groups. Now it is just the done thing a lot of the time. This tension and desire to get away from human image is always met with difficulty, and only facilitated when technology or convention of anonymity absolutely can't get your face in front of people.
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On August 02 2018 21:40 Chef wrote:
Well, I think having grown up in the narrow period of time that lots of people started having computers, but not many had microphones or webcams, and most communication was text, and the initial experience of Brood War was that pretty much only what you wrote and how you played defined you on Battle.net. I think for a lot of intellectually inclined people that was a wonderful and seductive idea. Besides people writing under pen names, there is pretty much no equivalent. A lot of people would like to know how they would be judged, how others would be judged, if you took the appearance and sound of a person completely out of the picture. It is just by itself an interesting question, but it isn't one that professional Brood War ended up answering. As soon as the internet got faster, that question became hard to answer again. I remember when Let's Play first started having people put their faces in the corner and there was backlash that it was self-obsessed and took away from the game from some groups. Now it is just the done thing a lot of the time. This tension and desire to get away from human image is always met with difficulty, and only facilitated when technology or convention of anonymity absolutely can't get your face in front of people.
Every system has a loophole. Even the most well designed systems has unforeseen flaws that can be abused to create positive results in a unwanted manner. Creative people tend to discover those kind of loopholes, while conscientious people tend to maximize the most obvious (not the most effective, but most visible) and often intended method of getting positive results.
I think the discussion over stuff like superficial charm infringes on the territory of overall success for the person, not the competitor as I personally like to separate from the person. It is a futile attempt for sure, just like I mock people for attempting to separate the gamer from the competitor without sufficient insight and knowledge. For example, I am not really interested in how gifted Bisu was at negotiating his salaries, and how that particular dynamic may have influenced his overall drive as a competitor. It encroaches on everyday real life bullshit (for me) issues I wish to get away from by engaging on what I perceive to be a more pure form of competition than real life.
The ends justify the means, if the means are sufficiently well thought out and managed properly. It is why I don't rank musicians by their sales or politicians by their votes, because I think the means to succeed in those fields are utter bullshit. In contrast, I think the means to excel in professional Brood War was mostly well managed, which is why I place such high value on the competitive excellence of the players involved, but it isn't to say that here were some aspects of getting competitive success that I did not appreciate at all.
Getting picked easier by professional teams due to non-gaming related first impressions, being fostered as a potential media superstar and being catered to based on that quality alone, and tournament organizers being consciously, or unconsciously aware of the fact that your success is correlated with higher viewership, and that influencing their overall decisions is stuff I hated about professional Brood War. Perhaps it is a reason why I was always overly critical of media darlings, who I thought did not deserve the kind of competitive merit they were often praised with.
It is one of the reasons why I always preferred the professional era of Brood War over the streaming era, although the actual range of video content involving Brood War (FPVODs, personal player insight, broadasted discussions between players themselves, and forays into related fields like fastest maps and UMS maps) is arguably more plentiful than ever before. The means to success for this era is not well defined enough for me to place much value on competitive placings alone, which makes objective quantification of players so much more difficult, as evidenced by Rain claiming that it is useless to go all-in at getting better at Brood War, since his streaming income is not dependent on that quality alone, and girl streamers sometimes gathering more viewership and donations than actually fantastic gamers such as Soulkey for their entertainment value.
Success as a professional Brood War player was so well defined in comparison that while the actual raw gaming quality may be higher right now (it is probably true in terms of sheer gaming concepts), what I actually loved was the expression of Brood War excellence within the context of the professional sceene. The results were objective enough to be quantified as comparable end objectives, the manner in which results were gained was done through almost entirely legitimate pathways (with each competitor having varying emphasis on stuff such as academic understanding of the game, creative build orders, psychological mindgames, or raw fundamentals), and the end result was aesthetically pleasing on the eyes. It was as perfect as anything I experienced in life in terms of its overall package as an aesthetic experience, clearly quantifiable end goals that summarizes the entire overall process in a neat and tidy manner, and nuanced enough to have multiple approaches so that it doesn't have the single pattern of success being honed to perfection over time. I don't think I'll ever experience that again, although I'm sure nostalgia has much to do with it.
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Many thanks for your detailed explanations. Your posts are always very informative especially to us foreigners to get a glimpse of the korean brood war scene. Like you I do feel very nostalgic towards the professional scene....
By the way you've got a few posts about successes can you maybe talk about failures/slumps? I.e. the famous KTF slump... (maybe in a different post...)
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On August 04 2018 09:59 HaFnium wrote:
Many thanks for your detailed explanations. Your posts are always very informative especially to us foreigners to get a glimpse of the korean brood war scene. Like you I do feel very nostalgic towards the professional scene....
By the way you've got a few posts about successes can you maybe talk about failures/slumps? I.e. the famous KTF slump... (maybe in a different post...)
Perhaps I'll cover redemption narratives of famous players or teams for another day. Failure is natural and unavoidable given enough time and competition, but recovery from the deepest depths of failure makes for great story-telling.
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You forget about the reg BW and WC3 players whose work they built on.
Seriously, this article is too short.
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Nice summary.
Makes a lot of sense, especially when koreans use phrases like "He has strong mental" or "He has strong physical" -- sounds weird in English, but it's just a more Korean way used to describe it. I like your summary because it provides more context to those types of phrases I've heard often.
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On August 08 2018 18:33 HUKYOU wrote:
You forget about the reg BW and WC3 players whose work they built on.
Seriously, this article is too short.
The title of this blog is the five traits of competitive Brood War. A quick glance would suggest that the content would discuss competitive players who competed at the highest level, not random casual players who maxed out their competitive advantage by dodging difficult opponents and picking broken maps to climb up on the ICCUP ladder.
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On August 08 2018 21:27 ProtossGG wrote:
Nice summary.
Makes a lot of sense, especially when koreans use phrases like "He has strong mental" or "He has strong physical" -- sounds weird in English, but it's just a more Korean way used to describe it. I like your summary because it provides more context to those types of phrases I've heard often.
My thoughts are derived from those types of categorizations of players, although I am in hopes that my take on the matter has a slightly more nuanced feel to it. However, my categorization is certainly not free from its limitations.
For example, BoxeR always had really good win rates on newly created maps, compared to his peers, because he came up with ingenious ways to abuse certain terrains or timings. This trait could be attributed to his conscientious nature, because he spent that extra-time studying and breaking down these new maps. It could also be attributed to his creative nature, because it is more cost-efficient to abuse the chaos created from new maps, than it is to establish, then master the orthodox play on those particular maps. However, I personally thought this kind of trait could be best attributed to his competitive aptitude, because he spent that extra effort trying to win, instead of focuing on orthodox play. Depending on which way you cut it, the terminologies can be argued over endlessly because the parameters have not been defined perfectly.
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EPT
