BW Magic-- It's not in the game. - Page 5

On October 31 2011 15:53 RedJustice wrote:
Is it fair to ask other people to love your game or see what's so wonderful about it? Not really. Without the experience, it's just not the same. Some people will love it. Many people will think-- that's nice. The history of it is awesome. It's not so special as you say. I still like my own games best.

TL;DR: Respect each other, and I found BW fun to watch, but not particularly special.

EDIT: Since people seem to not be picking up on this... my point is that whatever makes a game more wonderful to you that every other game in the world is never inherent in the game. A game can be admirable for what it does well on paper, but "the magic" is the emotional connection people develop to a game when it becomes part of their lives over time. Any game can have "the magic", it just depends on an individual's experiences with it.

On October 31 2011 16:00 Ideas wrote:
then what game DOES have "the magic"?

On October 31 2011 17:49 HawaiianPig wrote:
Here's my deal.

I didn't have the 10 year experience you seem to be alluding to. In fact, I'd hazard a lot of TL "veterans" who are accused of Brood War elitism today joined about as late as I did.

I started watching in 2008 at the behest of a friend of mine (shoutouts to goatrope). He assured me that this game required a lot of skill. I personally thought RTSes were stupid and boring. But, nonetheless, he took me under his wing and started teaching me. Later, he showed me TL and exposed me to the thriving ESPORTS scene.

At this time, there was no nostalgia to be had and the history of the competitive scene meant nothing to me... In spite of that, I somehow managed to fall in love with the game. There was magic. But where did it come from?

Why did I, someone who thought RTS games were stupid and boring, suddenly think Brood War was absolutely amazing?

Because of the sheer complexity of the game.

It took a while for me to realize this. Heck, I didn't know that was the reason at first.

The thing is, and I recommend you explore this yourself:

The more I learned to play the game competitively the more I realized it was something special.

As I learned more, I became more and more aware of how much I didn't know. As someone with a competitive FPS background I was quickly able to appreciate this.

I soon realized that what set apart a D player to a D+ player to a C player on ICCUP was a staggering amount of perspective with respect to how the game worked.

I realized that the game has incredible and unrivaled depth. And therein lies your magic.

The strategic depth, the mechanical depth, the sheer depth of skill required is beyond anything I've seen in any other game ever. I have yet to be presented with another game that rivals this depth.

Where does this depth come from? Between what's probably a fluke in game design and the mass adoption by Koreans (which lead to a thorough exploration of its depth), I can't know for sure.

Do other games have this depth? Maybe. But I haven't seen it, and I don't think other games have had the luxury of being explored as deeply as Brood War had. SC2 certainly hasn't. This is probably why that when I watch SC2 played competitively, I pine for the incredibly more developed competitive depth of Brood War. (I fully admit to not being as well versed in SC2 as I am in BW, and that undoubtedly plays a factor)

In any case, few games can make a claim to this kind of depth.

Most games are shallow. They're solve-able. This is why you'd never play something like... Halo Wars competitively.

Other games do have depth, but haven't been explored to the same extent.

Brood War is an ocean. We've ventured into its depths, but the true extent of it is seemingly unrivaled and not completely known.

If the game's competitive scene had topped out, had the game been "solved" or the skill plateaued at any point in its history, it would have died. It's had 10 years to let this happen and it keeps on growing.

The reason it continually evolves is this depth. And that is in the game. That's the magic. It's the reason the competitive scene remains fresh to this day. It's the reason it's so exciting to watch.

The more you learn about the game itself, the more this "BW elitism" will make sense to you.

This is why BW elitists seem to have this insufferable air about them. That off-putting disposition where they think they're privy to some information that you "noobies" aren't.

Take the time to learn the game. Find someone who is good at it and have them teach you. Then follow the scene.

Strategically, you'll be floored. Every movement, every decision, every timing will matter.

Mecanically, you'll be amazed. Every impossibly controlled, yet precisely and exactly executed engagement, will never cease to amaze you.

For example, with the right kind of perspective, TvTs, notorious for being 40-minute "snooze fests," can be incredibly entertaining to you. Just a few months back I can recall a game between Flash and Mind where the map split and Flash was behind. I thought the game was done for, but Flash somehow flies a force of six fully loaded dropships through a small opening in Mind's defenses and drops behind his lines. The graceful execution of this maneuver was not only a testament to Flash's incredible mechanical skill, but his "game sense." His perspective. His seemingly clairvoyant sense of where Mind's forces and attention would be. His understanding that this attack would tip the scales ever so slightly back into his favour. It was incredible.

Any yet, this match occurred in a regular Proleague exhibition match. Nothing was really at stake. No epic rivalry existed here.

I was floored... and no nostalgia was required.

Your argument hinges on some abstract notion that everyone who likes Brood War is in it for the history. While I have come to immerse myself in it, it wasn't until I had been around the scene long enough to develop favourite teams and players that I started to care about the history. It wasn't until I read TL regularly that I started to care about specific players themselves.

I was a Brood War fan long before I was a Bisu and SKT fan.

On October 31 2011 17:42 shaun3h wrote:
I was never a strategy game player. I came in at sc2 a couple of months back therefore i will never appreciate bw in the way most of you will.

Instead of having grown up with it and had the emotional attachment, seeing how groundbreaking it was at the time, experiencing the ups and downs of following the pros in tournaments... in my head im stuck with the rather primitive thought "this looks less pretty and less intuitive then sc2". By having sc2 first instead of looking for all the positives in a new and exciting game im forced to compare it to what i have, not what you had.. i just can't fall in love the same way.

I may well be missing out on the greatest game ever made but unfortunately like the OP i can't feel the magic. Instead of being shown the first car ever made in all it's glory, im being shown it after having owned a modern day one. The original may have been amazing, groundbreaking, well made, thought out and designed... but its impossible to appreciate it properly with the newer version on my drive. Obviously an exaggerated metaphor but from many of my other friends gaming (who've come to sc2 w/o bw experience), the feeling is similar in that we only could've appreciated bw in the same way as many of you if we had also seen it before sc2

instead of focusing on which game is better then another, more popular, thriving/dying, etc i think sadly, although its not for any malicious reason, many of us will simply never share the same view.

I understand im a rather ignorant "caveman fps gamer" compared to pretty much every user here but hopefully nothing in this post is wildy offensive to bw players/followers im just trying to explain my perspective coming from an fps.

On October 31 2011 18:05 HawaiianPig wrote:


Exactly, the drop wasn't some heavy handed killing blow, it was a surgical strike that took out tech that gave him the extra few seconds on his own tech to put him ahead in the Battlecruiser count later in the game. The snowball effect this had on turning around a game he was losing was utterly amazing.

And the fact that you too remember this largely insignificant Proleague match with nothing at stake stands as an example of the game being incredible on its own without needing the storied history to be exciting and interesting.

On October 31 2011 18:05 HawaiianPig wrote:


Exactly, the drop wasn't some heavy handed killing blow, it was a surgical strike that took out tech that gave him the extra few seconds on his own tech to put him ahead in the Battlecruiser count later in the game. The snowball effect this had on turning around a game he was losing was utterly amazing.

And the fact that you too remember this largely insignificant Proleague match with nothing at stake stands as an example of the game being incredible on its own without needing the storied history to be exciting and interesting.