The next time I was there, I was with friends. I'm going to skip that experience because it was very similar to the first one. I think it was KT vs STX round 1 of playoffs.
Anyways, here we are, CJ is down by 1, and they have to win twice against KT to go to China (at the time) and face SKT T1. I bring my brother to MBCgames.
All the knowledge that my brother had about BW? Not much except few CJ Entus players (we visited the house few days before) and the two famous 'RIBORIBO' and 'PLAYGUUUUUU' videos. With that being said, I told my brother to just have fun and cheer together, so I did.
Few games go by, and I explain how Flash is the best player in KT's team, and CJ has to beat him in order to advance. 1-3. Crap.
Comes a TvT, Leta vs Flash (by the way, if you haven't seen their match on La Mancha, go watch it now. Amazing TvT).
First, I tell him that CJ's opponent is Flash. Oh crap. Second, I tell my brother that TvTs are usually boring and takes up about 30 minutes to hour or so. So I told him that it's natural to get bored in TvTs, and it's okay for him to slack off a little.
Turns out...
My brother, who hasn't been watching BW until I showed him few clips before coming to Korea, was now fully into the game. Not only he started cheering harder for CJ, he was basically into the match. For the first time in my life, I felt like I did something right. I made him feel happy while making myself feel happy. And this really never happened; one of us had to make small sacrifice to make other laugh for few seconds.
Amazing experience, except my brother didn't want to get on the TV. Oh well. He still loved the experience.
Although CJ lost 4-2, my brother had an amazing time, and my mom was happy that we had good time together.
I tell him few days later that MBCgame is going to shut down. This is one of the first time I've seen my brother getting mad other than educations/family members. He knows the joy of BroodWar. He knows the experience of being at MBCgame with amazing casters and enthusiastic fans. But I didn't tell him that it was going to be his first/last experience.
He calmed down quickly, but I felt mad afterwards. Mad at myself for not warning my brother earlier. I didn't know that he would like it that much, that he was sacrificing a little to make me happy by going to MBCgame together. That wasn't the case.
MBCgame now shuts its doors forever. Sure, it's been a wild ride, but I was finally happy that I got to be part of its 10 year history. And at the same time I've been mad.
Now, here's probably a long rant about the Korean eSports scene in general.
Lets go back to the late 90's. PC Cafe WAS the business you wanted because at the time, not everyone can afford computers. And even with computers, there was not much you can do since not a lot of people had personal Internet. With PC Cafes, it was possible for people to play games together, go online, and just have some fun. For $1, you can use the PC for an hour and do whatever you want.
StarCraft was released in the similar age, as well as other games. At first, these games were just a distraction to students, keeping them away from school just like the arcades. Another distraction, GREAT. Adults didn't like it, but teenagers loved it.
With the boom of PC Cafe came emergence of gaming tournaments. DDR/Pump It Up from the arcades, Rainbow Six tournaments, and few other games that I can't remember from top of my head. However, all of these tournaments got caught on cable TV or mainstream television after StarCraft got famous. Dial-up, broadband, or even LAN. It didn't matter, people wanted to play the game. All you had to do is pay one dollar and you can play SC for an hour. Walk in with friends and play BGH while cussing at each other, or try to do a 1v1 and see who's actually better in the game.
The competitive BW scene started off with OGN's first ever tournament. How it happened was actually funny: In 1997, everyone was waiting for the France World Cup. One producer from Tooniverse thought "what will happen if we casted a simulation match using France World Cup '98 game and predict the winner using the game itself?" This idea became a reality, and it gathered a lot of fans. His ideas, however, did not stop. Taking a step further, he wanted a show where live games were casted. At the time, SC was booming everywhere, with many offline tournaments. The producer, Hwang Hyun Joon, thought that StarCraft was the most appropriate game to try, so he hosted a KPGL Hitell Gamenet tournament. This was the first ever SC tournament on Tooniverse.
The tournament was a huge success, and it helped created a eSports scene in Korea. Hwang Hyun Joon is the creator of the OSL, and founder of OnGameNet. He was successful at making gaming industry a part of Korean culture, at least on cable television. MBC, on the other hand, overtook a small cable television company LOOK TV (subdivision of CJ Cable, now called CJ Media) and named the channel geMBC. It was the company's first shot at cable television. With KPGA tournaments, MBCgame (name change in 2003) created a rivalry with OnGameNet throughout the Korea eSports scene.
Which broadcasting station did better didn't matter to me, at least. It finally showed to the world that gaming can be a culture, not a hobby that distracts students from studying. It became part of Korean culture, as it started growing more and more. If you doubt me, look at the pictures of proleague finals from year 2007, and few OSLs held back in early-mid 2000's. It was to a point where the gaming industry had bigger, if not similar, fanbase as the baseball industry in Korea.
What really surprised me was when the team Airforce ACE was formed. All Korean male, unless you were exempt, have to enlist in military. BoxeR was no exception, until something special happened. Airforce in Korea wanted to make a better image of themselves, so they formed the Airforce ACE.
Now call Airforce selfish for promoting themselves if you want. The fact that they made special exception for progamers to practice games while also training at the army is incredible; something that any Korean would never have thought of in the past. It also brought back many old gamers and kept them in shape to play in Proleague while serving military duties. It kept many progamers from retiring just to serve in the army, and it also raised the image of Airforce ace. However, what surprised me the most is that the Airforce picked BroodWar to improve their image in Korea. They picked a video game. A real-time strategy based video game that seemed foolish to adults back in the late 90's. And Korean Airforce used that 'foolish' game to promote their image.
This is BroodWar in Korea. It's part of the culture, no matter how someone looks at it. No, Koreans aren't all good, some even don't play it. But everyone knows what the game is, and for most, they have played it at least once with friends. That's why those seldom imitations of starcraft brought out laughs from the audience (KBS Gag Concert). They knew what the game was. They know the units.
I might be copying Kim Tae Hyung's words here, but I really thought that Koreans established a solid eSports culture. Even adults started thinking different about games; it's not just about smashing keyboards and bashing mouse all day long; it is an actual competition.
When did this started falling apart? Matchfixing. StarCraft tournament was started out by game lovers, and those people established the eSports scene in Korea. It became part of Korean culture. However, with match fixing, the image of BroodWar was tainted. How serious was this? The news was on prime time news coverage on all three of the big stations, plus few cable news channels in Korea. What surprised people more was the involvement of the players in this match fixing. People have worked years and years to build a solid foundation of gaming in Korea, and few people helped destroy the scene within a year or so. The public eyes started looking away from gaming scene, as they thought that kids were corrupted for playing games too much, that kids only sought money because they didn't receive good education.
(Sidenote: I don't care how good Savior was or how good he is at streaming. He destroyed something that people have built for many years, and he doesn't even feel guilty for what he has done. Tainting the image of 'national eSport' and thinking that it was just some "silly betting" while still earning money off the game that he was evicted from. I don't care, I can't respect him, and I won't. Sense of guilt? None.)
With that and the whole KeSPA-Blizzard argument and so on, the scene starts to crumble itself apart. OSL has harder time finding sponsors for the tournament, and MSL becomes a joke (among the fans) in Korea as their sponsors for two consecutive tournaments are from file-sharing websites.
Sure, Jangbi's OSL win has raised the BW scene a little, but it still has a long way to go before recovering from the match fixing incident. OGN and MBCgame are here to help us out......
But in fact, only OGN is here. MBCgame is gone.
MBCgame ran MSL. MBCgame ran Proleague. MBCgame ran Tekken Crash (which was arguably as famous as MSL except for finals). MBCgame helped the Korean eSports scene grow in this past 10 years, even though it had its downsides (blackout MSL). And to be quite honest, it's even hard to keep the scene together at this moment, given the current situation. But because of few corporate leaders who thought that MBCgame was not profitable, they shut it down.
I completely understand their view from financial perspective, but I've witnessed something else. Part of the Korean gaming culture has been erased because of money. Something that people loved in the past, something that was tainted because of few spoiled players, but something that is still trying to fix themselves.
Now why is this important to everyone? We have less channels for gaming, notably OGN and (if you count a computer application as broadcasting station) GomTV. We've gone from 3 to 2 ladies and gentlemen. The number of Proleague matches have been downsized, Tekken tournaments are gone forever, and other amazing game-related shows produced by MBCgame are now history. With less channels, it's much harder to make eSports grow in Korea.
Let's face the facts. "SC2 is the newer game, and BW is slowly dying, so SC2 will rise to the top someday" <- this was the general thought on the forums when SC2 was released but didn't have much attention as BW. Fact: Even to this date, BroodWar has more fans than SC2. Fact: Overall, there are less eSports fans compared to the glorious days (i.e. 2007). Without new content, new tournaments, new shows, its hard for eSports to grow in Korea.
People hoped that SC2 would bring new evolution of eSports in Korea, but this didn't happen in the early days, partially due to KeSPA-Blizzard negotiations, and Blizzard's mistake on advertisement/pricing/packaging etc. So who were supposed to help Korean scene grow? The stations. OGN, GomTV, and MBCgame. Well, now we have only 2, and they have more work to do for themselves.
I'm not saying that there's no future for eSports in Korea, as LoL have attracted quite a lot of people, and it might bring a second revolution if it finds its way in Korean culture. However, with MBCgame gone, almost one half (sorry, GomTV is too new at the moment) of Korean eSports culture went down the drain, and we have less force supporting the scene.
I don't know who you are, but I hope you're happy because now you're making few extra dollars after changing MBCgame into MBC Music. However, I know this because you guys are only looking at things financially. Just because it wasn't financially beneficial doesn't mean that MBCgame did not have a fanbase, nor the Korea eSports scene. You've deleted half of Korean eSports culture because of $$$, and you've prevented, or at least delayed, the second rise of eSports in Korea because of $$$.
So I hope you're happy that you're making extra bucks off from music. Because those extra bucks meant a lot to eSport fans around the world, who hoped for a second coming in South Korea.
P.S. Will edit for grammar/wrong information in the future, but only if you point it out. Also, parts, if not most, are my personal opinions on the situation; please do not generalize MBC corporation itself or others on this particular situation.
Really informative post about the broodwar scene in korea and you have covered thing's from the perspective as a person who is a resident in korea it self . Only gave more credibility to the issues that you have raised . Thanks again for this and I didn't realised until now that mbc game is one of the pillars that actually made korean broodwar and the whole scene reach to it's highest point .
MBC Game Liquidation for the existence of MBC Music is really not favourable for us bw fan's and to those who have enjoyed the game for 10 years . But what do Higher exec's care about value except getting more money for them selves ? . I am hoping for another game channel to arise but unfortunately I don't see it happening .
So I hope you're happy that you're making extra bucks off from music. Because those extra bucks meant a lot to eSport fans around the world, who hoped for a second coming in South Korea.
That line pretty much clenched it there for me. I'm more of a person who tries to understand both sides of the argument before making judgement, but I feel that the decision to change MBCGame to MBC Music is one that is simply a huge middle finger to e-Sports fans. Hopefully OGN will have innovations that will bring the second coming of eSports in Korea or even a revival of BW. =D
On January 24 2012 13:45 Sawamura wrote: Really informative post about the broodwar scene in korea and you have covered thing's from the perspective as a person who is a resident in korea it self . Only gave more credibility to the issues that you have raised . Thanks again for this and I didn't realised until now that mbc game is one of the pillars that actually made korean broodwar and the whole scene reach to it's highest point .
I don't live in Korea, nor have lived in Korea since 2003. I was not into BroodWar back then, but I was part of the PC Bang group who played BW for fun, and knew a lot of people playing it, including the proscene.
I've also talked to few e-Sports related persons, including CJ Entus PR who was into sports marketing (managed sports and eSports all together, shows how some Korean corporations treat Proleague)
How big was the scene? Even my mom knows who Lim Yo Hwan is (BoxeR). Then again, no one would've thought about progamers being invited to the Blue House (Korean equivalent of White House) in the past. BoxeR broke those views and was invited to visit the President of South Korea.
On January 24 2012 13:45 Sawamura wrote: Really informative post about the broodwar scene in korea and you have covered thing's from the perspective as a person who is a resident in korea it self . Only gave more credibility to the issues that you have raised . Thanks again for this and I didn't realised until now that mbc game is one of the pillars that actually made korean broodwar and the whole scene reach to it's highest point .
I don't live in Korea, nor have lived in Korea since 2003. I was not into BroodWar back then, but I was part of the PC Bang group who played BW for fun, and knew a lot of people playing it, including the proscene.
I've also talked to few e-Sports related persons, including CJ Entus PR who was into sports marketing (managed sports and eSports all together, shows how some Korean corporations treat Proleague)
How big was the scene? Even my mom knows who Lim Yo Hwan is (BoxeR). Then again, no one would've thought about progamers being invited to the Blue House (Korean equivalent of White House) in the past. BoxeR broke those views and was invited to visit the President of South Korea.
Oops sorry SNM I always thought that you are living in korea that's why you are bilingual . Also boxer getting invited to visit the President of South korea , that's one hell of a achievement . I am just curious , Does the CJ Entus PR have a good outlook about the future of broodwar , I like to hear what he think's about broodwar as a whole .
On January 24 2012 13:45 Sawamura wrote: Really informative post about the broodwar scene in korea and you have covered thing's from the perspective as a person who is a resident in korea it self . Only gave more credibility to the issues that you have raised . Thanks again for this and I didn't realised until now that mbc game is one of the pillars that actually made korean broodwar and the whole scene reach to it's highest point .
I don't live in Korea, nor have lived in Korea since 2003. I was not into BroodWar back then, but I was part of the PC Bang group who played BW for fun, and knew a lot of people playing it, including the proscene.
I've also talked to few e-Sports related persons, including CJ Entus PR who was into sports marketing (managed sports and eSports all together, shows how some Korean corporations treat Proleague)
How big was the scene? Even my mom knows who Lim Yo Hwan is (BoxeR). Then again, no one would've thought about progamers being invited to the Blue House (Korean equivalent of White House) in the past. BoxeR broke those views and was invited to visit the President of South Korea.
Oops sorry SNM I always thought that you are living in korea that's why you are bilingual . Also boxer getting invited to visit the President of South korea , that's one hell of a achievement . I am just curious , Does the CJ Entus PR have a good outlook about the future of broodwar , I like to hear what he think's about broodwar as a whole .
We didn't talk too much about BW, because I wanted to hear his thoughts on SC2 (and also the fact that I drifted into Mr. Ma by accident). He did say that it will gradually happen, but seemed like he was talking about a different team for SC2. I might be wrong though. But from what I've heard during that talk, it seems like they know that SC2 is bigger globally, but BW will be bigger in Korea for next few years, if not longer. (This is, of course, from top of my head. I did not conduct an official interview nor had official questions and memorized answers. It was a formal talk)
It doesn't matter though, because if you read tons of fomos articles and dailyesports articles, they pretty much say that Korea needs new eSports content because BW is declining slowly, and I find this to be true. Hopefully, LoL can help Korean eSports grow in general along with more establishment for SC2 and continued support for BW, or else BW would've been the only game that did well, and contributed to Korean eSport's short 11 year history.
Sorry Special Force 2 fans. I love the game and love the scene, but not that many people follow it. Needs bigger advertisement T_T.
I doubt LoL is gonna help korea. I can't help but think that koreans are not charmed by the noob-friendliness of games. I noticed that this game called chaos (dota clone) is quite popular among koreans. Koreans don't seem to have much interest in dota from what i've heard and seen.
When i first saw someone playing chaos, something huge i noticed is the apm. On screen, they played chaos, but looking at his keyboard made it look like he was playing bw or wc3. Looked like 100~150 apm, no spams. Im sure you dont need that many apm for dota. And then there is the case with bw and sc2. Of course, im not sure, but thats the impression that im getting, that they dont want to be catered for.
A pretty nice read, well done. Another element is that it feels like the BW scene itself has been stagnant ever since the match fixing scandal. Seldom do events of interest exist and persist. It's been pretty stagnant and less than competitive(in more than one way) for at least a year, and given the other circumstances, that will certainly take its toll on the scene. I've felt more like "will this game yield the result I want?" than "will there be some awesome games to watch?" for a while. No wonder I'm losing interest quickly.
On January 24 2012 14:16 sharky246 wrote: I doubt LoL is gonna help korea. I can't help but think that koreans are not charmed by the noob-friendliness of games. I noticed that this game called chaos (dota clone) is quite popular among koreans. Koreans don't seem to have much interest in dota from what i've heard and seen.
When i first saw someone playing chaos, something huge i noticed is the apm. On screen, they played chaos, but looking at his keyboard made it look like he was playing bw or wc3. Looked like 100~150 apm, no spams. Im sure you dont need that many apm for dota. And then there is the case with bw and sc2. Of course, im not sure, but thats the impression that im getting, that they dont want to be catered for.
I would like to disagree, as League of Legends Invitation on OGN has gathered so many fans (it even outnumbered Proleague from what I've heard), and now they're forming a regular league that runs during OSL's timeslot.
Here's a picture:
In my opinion, gaming industry in Korea is shaky at the moment, and LoL can solve parts of the problem. LoL itself cannot solve the whole problem, but it can start second coming of eSports in Korea, and hopefully more content will be created, and another broadcasting station will be formed.
On January 24 2012 14:44 Golgotha wrote: savior really doesnt feel guilty for match fixing? i am pretty sure he regrets it greatly.
I don't think Savior doesn't feel any regret from the incident. Why?
1. While in court, the prosecutors asked what his job was. All of previous progamers stated either ex-progamer or jobless. Savior was the only one who said: Progamer
2. After getting prosecuted and getting fined, it seemed everything was over. Then, he shows up on afreeca, which causes quite a lot of rage among the fans and eSports related people, including KT Rolster's head coach Lee Ji Hoon.
3. Currently, Savior is best BJ on afreeca, making money off from streaming BroodWar. He helped destroy the scene all together, then said that he was going to study and go study abroad or something. Well, I guess he studied how to stream on afreeca all this time.
Even if he regrets it, from 3rd person's view I don't think he does. And I can't honestly call him the 'bonjwa' or whatever nick name either. I don't think he deserves anything that's related to BW, and yet he somehow managed to make money off from BW yet again.
(This is my personal opinion btw, feel free to disagree)
On January 24 2012 14:44 Golgotha wrote: savior really doesnt feel guilty for match fixing? i am pretty sure he regrets it greatly.
I don't think Savior doesn't feel any regret from the incident. Why?
1. While in court, the prosecutors asked what his job was. All of previous progamers stated either ex-progamer or jobless. Savior was the only one who said: Progamer
2. After getting prosecuted and getting fined, it seemed everything was over. Then, he shows up on afreeca, which causes quite a lot of rage among the fans and eSports related people, including KT Rolster's head coach Lee Ji Hoon.
3. Currently, Savior is best BJ on afreeca, making money off from streaming BroodWar. He helped destroy the scene all together, then said that he was going to study and go study abroad or something. Well, I guess he studied how to stream on afreeca all this time.
Even if he regrets it, from 3rd person's view I don't think he does. And I can't honestly call him the 'bonjwa' or whatever nick name either. I don't think he deserves anything that's related to BW, and yet he somehow managed to make money off from BW yet again.
(This is my personal opinion btw, feel free to disagree)
Reading luxury personal account of the whole thing , put tears into my eyes , I mean his word's which still haunt's me "just because of damn single game I throwed " my whole life as pro gamer is over . The whole match fixing scandal is worst thing to happen for broodwar , no where do team disbanding made me feel so sick as to the whole savior and the whole outsider influence on game's out come .
Fantastic blog SNM. Far out, I still remember when the whole match fixing thing was just surfacing, felt surreal.
As for Special Forces 2, when ever I tuned in on Nana's stream and he was streaming SF2, there were never many people there to watch live T_T. Gave me the impression it wasn't popular at all tbh.
On January 24 2012 14:16 sharky246 wrote: I doubt LoL is gonna help korea. I can't help but think that koreans are not charmed by the noob-friendliness of games. I noticed that this game called chaos (dota clone) is quite popular among koreans. Koreans don't seem to have much interest in dota from what i've heard and seen.
When i first saw someone playing chaos, something huge i noticed is the apm. On screen, they played chaos, but looking at his keyboard made it look like he was playing bw or wc3. Looked like 100~150 apm, no spams. Im sure you dont need that many apm for dota. And then there is the case with bw and sc2. Of course, im not sure, but thats the impression that im getting, that they dont want to be catered for.
I've heard of Chaos but I couldn't find any videos~ but I hear it's harder than dota and I THINK I saw a game before on ogn or something.
I'm gonna disagree with you that LoL won't help Korea~ as much as I don't like the game it has a retarded huge fanbase in Korea. I've actually made a LOT of Korean friends just by playing LoL and have met some well known afreeca BJ's who play LoL and just by them broadcasting their games creates more and more fans.
Just by my observation from all this they all really enjoy watching and playing the game and just imagine the other people in PC Bang's n shit o_o.
I've asked some friends if they've tried dota, hon, or knew about dota2 (I think everyone I asked didn't know a thing about dota 2 lol) but they didn't know what it was or BARELY knew about it lolol. Some of the ones that tried/seen dota/hon said it was really hard to play or looked difficult. I'd like to see some Koreans play Dota 2 but with all that love with LoL it might be hard haha.
On January 24 2012 14:16 sharky246 wrote: I doubt LoL is gonna help korea. I can't help but think that koreans are not charmed by the noob-friendliness of games. I noticed that this game called chaos (dota clone) is quite popular among koreans. Koreans don't seem to have much interest in dota from what i've heard and seen.
When i first saw someone playing chaos, something huge i noticed is the apm. On screen, they played chaos, but looking at his keyboard made it look like he was playing bw or wc3. Looked like 100~150 apm, no spams. Im sure you dont need that many apm for dota. And then there is the case with bw and sc2. Of course, im not sure, but thats the impression that im getting, that they dont want to be catered for.
I've heard of Chaos but I couldn't find any videos~ but I hear it's harder than dota and I THINK I saw a game before on ogn or something.
I'm gonna disagree with you that LoL won't help Korea~ as much as I don't like the game it has a retarded huge fanbase in Korea. I've actually made a LOT of Korean friends just by playing LoL and have met some well known afreeca BJ's who play LoL and just by them broadcasting their games creates more and more fans.
Just by my observation from all this they all really enjoy watching and playing the game and just imagine the other people in PC Bang's n shit o_o.
I've asked some friends if they've tried dota, hon, or knew about dota2 (I think everyone I asked didn't know a thing about dota 2 lol) but they didn't know what it was or BARELY knew about it lolol. Some of the ones that tried/seen dota/hon said it was really hard to play or looked difficult. I'd like to see some Koreans play Dota 2 but with all that love with LoL it might be hard haha.
Also~ I love reading your stuff SNM 5/5 <3
LoL, if anything, has a solid foundation and solid fan base, unlike SC2. Thus, it is easier to start off a tournament and make it grow. However, the problem is, how will OGN handle the tournaments/leagues, and will it succeed in the future?
At the moment, it seems like OGN invested some time into LoL, as the new LoL league is taking over OSL time slot (not sure for how long). If it works out well, then it will help the overall scene and make eSports and gaming industry prosperous once again. It's a risk that OGN's willing to take, but it seems like a safe one at the moment.
Also, I'm just going to leave additional photos here:
I thought my first visit would be many of my visits to MBCgame in the future. Turns out, it became my third last visit.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i52.tinypic.com/mc6non.gif)
![[image loading]](http://img.dailygame.co.kr/news/201201/attachments/20120119_e2f9d64d8ac74ba5d874ab55c1f385c1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i40.tinypic.com/b88m8l.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i39.tinypic.com/2zisx0n.jpg)
