The above video has Soulkey talking about how he became a professional gamer. I thought it shed good insight into what sort of path these players had to go through in order to become a professional gamer, without too much embellishment or over dramatization.
This is the rough translation of what Soulkey had to say about his humble beginnings:
"Let's go back to the past. This was when I was an elementary student, and our generation was obsessed with Brood War. Back then, the modern version of fastest maps (with stacked minerals) didn't exist, so I played money maps that were popular at the time. Up until 6th grade, I only played money maps with my friends. Early rushes were forbidden, and I didn't know anything about regular melee maps.
These were the kind of maps that Soulkey spent his early years playing
Then came my middle school years. I had confidence in my Brood War abilities, and as you know, being good at Brood War meant something back then. Even if you were okay with your friends teasing you about anything else, it wasn't cool to taunt your friends about being bad at Brood War. It was a matter of personal pride.
Since I thought I was pretty good, I played against the best kid in my class when I was in 7th grade. I lost. I was completely outclassed. I kept losing. It was infuriating. I practiced hard for months on end. I challenged him again, but lost once again. So what do you think I did? I practiced Brood War instead of doing my studies. He was a terran player, and I played zerg. By the time I reached 8th grade, I was able to defeat him.
It didn't stop there. There was another kid who was the best in our class when I was in 8th grade. I don't remember what his race was, but I lost to him also initially. I was hyper-competitive, so I gave it my all to defeat him. I didn't bother with my studies at all. So eventually, I was able to defeat him before 8th grade ended.
Now there was only one dude left. He was acknowledged by everyone as the best kid in my school. Towards the end of 8th grade, I challenged him for the title of the best Brood War player of the school. I lost. He also picked terran as his race.
That dude ended up being in the same class as me when I moved up to 9th grade. I never stopped trying to overcome him. I kept losing. It felt kind of hopeless, as if I could never win against him. However, I didn't stop trying. I spent all my time trying to become better at the game, while he spent his time studying. It was only a matter of time before I eventually overcame him, which I ended up doing. By the time I graduated from middle school, there was nobody who could touch me in terms of Brood War capabilites.
So when I began my studies at high school, there wasn't a single guy who could challenge me. However, there was a bigger problem. My mother started to interfere with my life.
Soulkey now had the biggest challenge in his gaming life. Convincing his mother to let him follow his dreams.
My mother wanted me to quit gaming, in order to persue my studies. As she left for work, she would unplug the mouse from the computer. So I was temporarily unable to game at all. She really didn't like how I didn't study at all, and devoted all of my time to becoming better at Brood War. But I had a plan of my own. I had another mouse ready, and gamed while my mother was away from the house, and unplugged my own mouse just before she returned from work, and pretended to study.
But I got caught. My mother touched the computer to see if it had any heat, in order to figure out whether it had been used recently or not. So I had no choice but to confront the issue head on. I told my mother that I was going to be a professional gamer, and although she kept saying no, I kept persisting, and refused to study.
She likes my profession now, but back then, the public perception of gamers in general wasn't good at all. I understand her stance on the matter back then. It was how every adult thought about professional gamers at the time. It isn't as bad now, as it was back then.
So I was able to spend a lot of time getting better once more. I tried getting my semi-professional liscence, and won my first Courage Tournament (an offline tournament for non-registered amateur players, with the winner being handed a semi-professional liscence) after about four failed attempts. I beat Britney in the finals, he was a piece of cake back then as well.
Britney, the man who faced Soulkey in the finals of the 40th Courage Tournament
Now came the important part. I had to get drafted by a team to become a fully fledged professional player. But it isn't easy. You need to have good connections, or be well known as a beastly amateur player. I didn't have good connections, and I wasn't that well known. There was no reason for a professional team to draft me.
I wanted to play games against professional players, but I had no connections. Professional players don't bother playing against amateur players unless there is money on the line. So I had no choice but to play games with money on the line. Back then, online currency for a famous Korean networking site called Cyworld was put on the line for those kind of games. I joined the channel specifically designed for those kind of games, and played versus PianO. I lost all of my games, in a one sided manner. I lost about four games that day alone, and lost my online currency, and handed them over to PianO.
I saw him again the next day, and challenged him once more. Handing over more and more online currency with every game I lost against him. It seemed as if PianO felt a significant enough improvement from my side. He probably thought I was pretty solid for an amateur player. From a professional gamer's perspective, all amateur players were terrible in terms of skill. It is totally different from now. Today, the difference in skill level between professional gamers and amateurs isn't that large, but back then, the difference in skill level was colossal. There simply was no way for an amateur player to be on a similar skill level to professional players.
After some time, PianO saw promise from my play, and recommended me to the team.
PianO was the one who introduced Soulkey to his team, and it probably wouldn't have been possible without Soulkey handing over free online currency for the opportunity
I was tested as a practice partner, with three games being played for each of the match-up against the Hanbit Stars members. My overall record was 1-8. GuemChi was the only Hanbit Stars player to drop a game against me (Soulkey ended up losing 1-2 overall). I still remember the match. I managed to defeat GuemChi on Blue Storm. I didn't get selected as a practice partner, but was given another chance. I was a seriously bad zerg-versus-zerg player back then.
The next time, I went with three other players hoping to get selected as practice partners. I was the only testee to have two victories (one from the zerg-versus-protoss, and one from the zerg-versus-terran match-up) from the nine available opportunities, and the other testees lost all of their nine games.
So that's how I got selected as a gamer for Woongjin Stars. They didn't have such a strong zerg line-up, with ZerO, ToSky, and Child being part of the A-team. Since I only knew about Hanbit Stars, I wanted to join the team. I didn't know about the financial dynamic of the various professional teams. I was very young, and was ignorant about such matters.
Hanbit Stars wasn't in such a good financial state at the time, and was struggling to find sponsors. I was already in the team as the online practice partner for a couple of months, but my mother found out about the bad financial state of Hanbit Stars. Both my high school teacher, and mother were concerned about the financial stability of my profession, and in order to commit to my profession full time (as the in-house practice partner), I needed their consent.
Thankfully, Woongjin sponsored Hanbit Stars just in time, and I was able to join the team as a full time in-house practice partner. Before that, I wasn't able to practice inside the house outside of weekends.
The player support from Woongjin was incredible. The practice environment was great, and food was great. I thought I was in heaven. All this wouldn't have been possible without my hyper-competitive spirit."
There is quite a lot of content from that video, with stories about his early years as a professional, and his practice dynamic with Flash (which I posted about in a non-blog post some time ago). However, I wanted to focus on his pre-professional years as a gamer, mostly because I found it interesting, and partly because I don't want to spend more time translating the entire video.
This was a highly appreciated translation about one of my favorite progamers. Thanks Letmelose.
It's so interesting to hear about how your BW-skills would influence your social status amongst peers in South-Korea. This was definitely not the case for the rest of us around the world. Playing a lot of BW wasn't exactly a sign of being very popular for most of us am i right? I guess in the case of South Korea, it would have drawn a disproportionate number of players from the pool of naturally gifted children, to pick up BW as a viable route to climb the social hierarchy. To not even speak of it being probably more exciting and fun than doing a bunch of studying as well. It's one one of the components to explain why koreans were and are so unbelievably dominant over foreigners in this game.
On November 19 2018 05:49 tanngard wrote: This was a highly appreciated translation about one of my favorite progamers. Thanks Letmelose.
It's so interesting to hear about how your BW-skills would influence your social status amongst peers in South-Korea. This was definitely not the case for the rest of us around the world. Playing a lot of BW wasn't exactly a sign of being very popular for most of us am i right? I guess in the case of South Korea, it would have drawn a disproportionate number of players from the pool of naturally gifted children, to pick up BW as a viable route to climb the social hierarchy. To not even speak of it being probably more exciting and fun than doing a bunch of studying as well. It's one one of the components to explain why koreans were and are so unbelievably dominant over foreigners in this game.
I think the relative lack of understanding of the environment that birthed so many of these great players is one of the reasons why some non-Koreans tend to value individualistic merits so highly, with qualities such as potential skill cap and innate talent being quite overrated in my opinion in terms of what induces great competitive results.
The most successful gamers were rarely the most gifted, and there is a good to fair chance that players who didn't devote themselves fully to the game initially had superior gaming promise as Soulkey mentioned in his anecdotes.
So when some people claim no player has ever been gifted as such and such player, with absolute disregard for their actual competitive results, solely based on their limited abilities to recognize innate talent or capabilities in the player, I kind of roll my eyes, because chances are there is some random nobody in the world with greater innate talent for the game, but nobody gives a fuck because talent that is not proven in the competitive realm is useless outside of imaginary conceptions. What made these professional players special is that they actually realized whatever their talent was, and proved it on the competitive realm.
In the same vein, I think it ultimately does not matter if there was a potential Brood War talent lost because he did not have the same feedback mechanism to improve as Soulkey had during his youth. Dozens of potential world class athletes die every day due to malnutrition or warfare, and people who change the world for the better with era defining ideas and thoughts weren't technically speaking the absolute most intelligent people on the planet.
However the world isn't meant to notice and foster the full potential of all the individuals out there, as if all individuals are starring in their own franchise films. What mattered is that competitive Brood War thrived and advanced beyond the wildest imagination of even the most optimistic of gaming fans, and I think the game saw way more advancement when Korea locked on to it, than when the rest of the world was fully involved. It really didn't matter if individual potential from elsewhere was lost, in my opinion, because the games we witnessed all these years were of a ridiculously high level that would have been difficult to match with a different set of circumstances even with an infinitely more diverse influx of talent. I don't lose a moments worth of sleep over who could have theoretically been more suited for the game, because I know I witnessed what was basically a miracle come to life.
On November 20 2018 05:18 BigFan wrote: Interesting, thanks for sharing. Guess we owe it to PianO for Soulkey being here.
Soulkey went into deeper detail than most, and seemed to have the sort of honesty that made me want to translate.
Professional gamers rarely enter scene in a blaze of glory and hype. The famous tale of iloveoov being the amateur player who could go toe to toe with professionals, then made his debut as the professional, and proceeded to kick ass is the ultimate exception that proves the rule. Even Flash, one of the most talented players the scene has ever seen, started off as the online practice partner for KOR (precursor to HITE Sparkyz), because he placed 4th out of seven testees, and KOR could only afford space for three in-house practice partners. He later got scouted by the precursor team for WeMade Fox, due to the word around him, especially involving his young age (the industry seemed to prefer younger players). Flash's initial in-house practice results were absolutely atrocious, as he said on stream, but he did get good very fast. By the time he joined KTF MagicNs, he was already a beastly player, and was the best player in terms of practice results the day he entered the team.
Jaedong only got accepted as the practice partner for PLUS (precursor to Hwaseung Oz), because PLUS needed somebody to manage their homepage, and a n.Die clan member worked for free, for the trade-off that two of their clan members (Jaedong, and BestGod, who perhaps had the most promise out of their clan members at the time) would join the PLUS team as full time in-house practice partners.
So many things had to go right for these players to reach where they got, and without a certain key sequence of events not taking place (Soulkey impressing PianO enough to get tested by Hanbit Stars, Flash's parents giving him a fair chance to prove his ability to make it as a professional gamer, or Jaedong's clan taking that extra step to provide opportunities for their clan members), there's a probability we end up having never hearing of these players. Individualistic merit and companies recognizing the best talent was important, but there was so much more that needed to take place in order to shape the career paths of these amazing players to levels we end up being familiar with.
Interesting. Yes, I would think it's extremely difficult to join that industry due to its competitiveness and such. One thing that is always interesting is how well organized everything was. I mean, even managing to take it so far with BW being on TV, and being prestigious etc... Just amazing overall. After all, the e-sports industry started all thanks to BW. Pretty cool to see the n.Die clan have such weight to pull around as well. Too bad we'll never see this ever again How did BestGod fare after that btw? Did he at least make some impact?
On November 20 2018 11:47 BigFan wrote: Interesting. Yes, I would think it's extremely difficult to join that industry due to its competitiveness and such. One thing that is always interesting is how well organized everything was. I mean, even managing to take it so far with BW being on TV, and being prestigious etc... Just amazing overall. After all, the e-sports industry started all thanks to BW. Pretty cool to see the n.Die clan have such weight to pull around as well. Too bad we'll never see this ever again How did BestGod fare after that btw? Did he at least make some impact?
The details for an unsuccessful player like BestGod is sketchy at best. I actually had to look him up to get reminded of how thoroughly forgettable he was as a professional player.
BestGod was a several years older than Jaedong, although I have absolutely no clue about the details for him in particular, it may have been the case that BestGod saw greater initial success.
BestGod was the first Courage Tournament winner to come from the n.Die clan. He won the 11th Courage Tournament, unlike Jaedong, who needed ten attempts (which is quite a lot of attempts even after taking into consideration the cut throat nature of the Courage Tournaments), and only got his semi-professional liscence after winning the 18th Courage Tournament.
The highest major individual league placement for BestGod was 17th ~ 28th during his run for Incruit OGN StarLeague (he was eliminated by GGPlay), and retired with a 3-5 record in the ProLeague. He retired from professional play in 2009, after years of being a player who struggled to break into the main entry his teams within the ProLeague, as well as being good enough to escape from the offline preliminary stages from time to time, but never being good enough to do anything beyond that.
Wow, it's cool to see Soulkey's crazy competitive spirit. Thanks for the translation LetMeLose. Also, do you know where I can find your post about Soulkey/Flash?
On November 27 2018 07:52 Chronopolis wrote: Wow, it's cool to see Soulkey's crazy competitive spirit. Thanks for the translation LetMeLose. Also, do you know where I can find your post about Soulkey/Flash?
If you can understand Korean, Flash talked about it on stream as well. The details vary slightly depending on which source you translate, but the fact of the matter is that Flash has always talked very highly about Soulkey's zerg-versus-terran prowess during his days as a professional, especially in terms of his decision making.
Thank you for sharing, wish I could read even more history - motivated by Don't Forget our Esports Dream into looking into the lore of pros again like I used to back in the day when I first signed up for TL
On November 27 2018 07:52 Chronopolis wrote: Wow, it's cool to see Soulkey's crazy competitive spirit. Thanks for the translation LetMeLose. Also, do you know where I can find your post about Soulkey/Flash?
If you can understand Korean, Flash talked about it on stream as well. The details vary slightly depending on which source you translate, but the fact of the matter is that Flash has always talked very highly about Soulkey's zerg-versus-terran prowess during his days as a professional, especially in terms of his decision making.
Thank you so much for this translation. Reminds me of my own middle/high school days when I would wait for my parents to go to sleep so I could grind until 4 am, catch 3 hours of sleep, then go to school, snooze or copy homework through most of it and then come home and fire BW up all over again until my parents got home from work in the evening at which point I'd say I already did all my homework haha. I was playing an absurd amount but like my studies I was half-assing it, not bothering to truly study pro reps and strats or mimic players who were better than me, and I guess that's what separates the fanatic from the professional, the brainless addiction from true dedication.
If I could go back, I would do it all over again, but with a real work ethic... ah, to think of what might have been... ,, I am so old.
EPT![[image loading]](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/tistory/222FBA4C57F74E0306)
![[image loading]](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gamegrumps/images/b/ba/Mom_Hid_My_Game.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/640?cb=20180314171049)
![[image loading]](https://image.fmkorea.com/files/attach/new/20170403/486616/37455427/619402539/594e4ba80d12423a745315d783388c5c.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/File:Piano2.jpg)
How did BestGod fare after that btw? Did he at least make some impact?
