EPTGuess the deal was always the same with me. I would always do things in the wrong order.
See, I had a girl friend now, I had new friends and so much more... the subsequences of my life here were all gathering, however, the core was missing.
Pro gaming core could be in many progamer’s eyes the sponsor itself. I tend to disagree. The real core is winning. Plain winning. Not even talent nor skill nor determination. Winning.
I didn’t have it and never did. Mostly because you need that good share of personality, that agressiveness toward yourself for this matter, that I never got.
I’m not a concerned person.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I can and I fight for things I need everyday or what I want to do. I also do succeed.
However, winning, especially in Starcraft is something totally different. Winning at sports is the closest you could picture I guess.
There is this very special and decisive kind of will you need to build up or have already, to acess that state of mind where you’re somewhat blinded by the goal, making you unable to actually feel the overall absurdity of beeing a “champion” at something.
I’m not claiming sports or any kind of competition to be foolish. Not at all. I’m saying that in a champion’s thoughts, there is little to no room for that very small scent that absurdity leaves in every man’s concepts and recognition of his passed and future acts. That very thin feeling that would just make us laugh about ourselves, even at the most serious times.
The truth might be that deep within, I’m not much of a gamer. I really enjoy it, beeing hardcore and such, but I’m not like Elky for instance, I’m not a person that would break anything after losing a game (not that elky breaks anything when he loses, he just is, let’s say, very very very pissed).
Problem was, if I wanted to pursue my little Asian adventure, I needed to get on the job and quick. Win and get a sponsor. What’s fun when I now think about it, is that, I actually almost got to beileve I could win back then. Moreover the support of my friends was truely great each time I would score a win online against some good Korean player, that was our friend. I would get cheered to death by Su yeon and Jae yong, while right after Jaeyong would rampage the same guy 8-0 or so.
That’s enough about meh !
Let’s move on to what this entry is all about : The infamous and most feared Terran duo of that time, Cezanne and Jaeyong.
See.. speaking about winning “core”, these two guys, were winning cores thereselves. Walking winning cores.
Cezanne was one year older than me, one year younger than Jaeyong. His father was working on the market and just like many other pro gamers, he was from very poor social grounds. That guy got offered to be sponsored many times, but always denied these offers. He basically had two ways to make his cash : Either win tournaments or just work at a fishery.
I sometimes had the feeling his unique purpose to play Starcraft was to rape. He never did really plan ahead. As in any discussion we would have with him, me and jaeyong, late night about our future, sponsors, etc... he would just mumble and wipe it pooring our glasses. He really didn’t give a shit. He just wanted to win and dominate. Prove his superiority at the game I guess.
That’s another thing about Starcraft. The ultimate reason this game kind of makes you feel like a man when you play it :
Starcraft is about guts and showing in a very short time, that you’re right and the other is wrong.
It’s as stupid as that.
You willingly drag someone else onto virtual grounds where moving pixels with a mouse and keyboard is all that matters... and just as an abstracted thing a video game can be, so merely is your own existence at one and single given point of your life.
Because Starcraft is such an abstract thing in so many ways for the brain, it easily and unconscienly structures and compares within ourselves at the time we are playing it, to the other very abstracted objects that our mind commonly deals with, such as one’s existence view or perspective.
Playing starcraft is like gambling a share of your own existence. Losing, meaning that small share you dragged there was annihilated and winning meaning that you transcended it.
Cezanne and Jaeyong, but a very few tedious variations in their gameplay, were basically terran clones. Cezanne had more of a mechanical approach one would say. He loved to lock you in. Jaeyong was more of the prodigy style, very fluent and just toying with you until the point he got bored and decided to kill you, or that you just had passed out.
As for practice, they were machines. I said before we didn’t have any tight practice schedule like nowadays team have, but these guys were playing at the very least 50 to 60 games a day.
That’s something you might not know and that might have changed now because pro gamers mostly practice offline in their team HQs, but before, what made pro gamers so close as a community was that almost everyone was practicing with each other online.
They were of this kind of very resilient Terrans, that just wouldn’t die. I remember walking out to get some food as Grrrr... and Cezanne started a game, and come back about 10 to 15 mins later asking Guillaume how went the game, while he’d answer me this game was still the same and explain how he had wiped him out of the map once already, but that Cezanne had turtled and slowly took back the other half of the map and fought his way back. Ten minutes later Guillaume would Alt-Q-Q.
Jaeyong was more of an expert at fending things off. It was always quite something to watch him hold his ramp against waves of lurkers, zerglings and mutalisks, and, right after repelling the zerg horde, while his oppoenent had 5 bases and he had his main only, he would somehow run accross the map his 3 – 4 m&m packs, his 5 tanks and vessels and just control them so perfectly, that it seemed there was no way for the Zerg, even with all the money in the world, to overcome such a force.
Something amazing with those two, is that a game never ever was truely over. I could give countless exemples of games, that from the begening to the end, no matter the time of the day, had to be filled up with epic moves.
Getting 5 pooled when opening with a 11 barrack / 12 gas, barely making it out alive, while the zerg had powered to lurker slow drop, and then watching my terran fellow manhandling these drops (at mutiple droppoints at the same time) with 3 marines, 1 flame bat, 1 medic.
Sometimes you’d even laugh at the player they were beating up online, asking who was that noob, and upon asking seeing H.O.T. or Themarine or whoever else, typing GG and leaving. They could make some of the top players look like newbies. And that would turn us on.
Cezanne wasn’t much of an enlglish speaker, but a very nice guy. He would not talk often to me or Guillaume – actually even in Korean, he barely spoke at all. He would however hang out with us alot. Coming to the PC room as much as he could, he was always part of the group, when me and jaeyong were going to lans. I also recall Guillaume liking him alot.
I think at first Cezanne was very lonely and didn’t want to mix up. But he was friend with Jaeyong online. Prolly Jaeyong told him to come over and share the fun and he actually liked it. As I said he didn’t speak much at first, however, like many other times in Korea, as we started to travel together and spend alot of time, he slowly started to open and actually on the end, happened to be a very fun fellow and one hell of a joker. What I always noticed over there, is that smart Koreans are always very very good jokers.
Just like almost every single Starcraft tournament that wasn’t mainstream at that time, unless you actually were a “pro gamer” or a “semi”, you wouldn’t know about it. Eventhen, it was hard to find the site where to register, or even, as most of the time there weren’t any pre registering, the actual date and place of the event.
Week before I had fail to qualify for the Gamei weekly lan. Jaeyong and Cezanne didn’t make it to the top eventho they went to the live part. I was kind of down, it was about 10 Pm. Jaeyong shows up to me, telling me him and Cezanne are taking the night bus 3 hours from now, to Junju, where a Starcraft festival is to be held tomorrow, meaning a country side qualifer for the national latter tournament that will take place next month.
I, of course accepted the offer to come with them. I was somewhat worried however, because I knew neither me, cezanne or Jaeyong had any money left. We had about 20 000 won total and I wasn’t actually sure it would pay the trip back and forth. But hey, they were beasts, at least one of us would win the qualifers and get enough money to pay us the trip back. I don’t remember exactl if I asked Guillaume or Jong min for some cash, however I recall that we left the PC bang with about 40 000 total, wich would be sufficient to cover our travel expense.
Junju is a city not so far from Seoul. I recall it being a few hours bus trip. Now we took the night bus because it was cheaper. As the travel was kind of long we decided to sleep in the bus. It was kind of easy for us these days, to actually decide when to sleep, as we didn’t have any sleeping schedule anymore, since a long time.
Jaeyong always was a little weaker than me and Cezanne on the sleeping part. He needed much more sleep. Me and Cezanne were just walking batteries. As Cezanne unlike many other Koreans, never liked to care for others, I was on duty to wake Jaeyong up and such. Cezanne was always the one walking alone in front, joining the party only when he felt like sharing some fun.
Autumn was almost at its end and that very young morning we got in Junju, will always be carved in my memories. It was about 4 or 5 AM, dawn wasn’t there yet as a light, only as a scent or a mere presence. You could just feel night was over, but there were no visible signs of it yet. Maybe the skies were a little clearer, maybe the air, eventho cold, was a little warmer, but it was fresh and full of that youth you can feel in the very begening of a new day. Countryside felt right away so different than Seoul.
We got off the bus into some frozen mud. It wasn’t a real street, just a road I guess. I, for a moment, thought we got on the wrong bus, but Jaeyong told me this was Junju. As it was kind of dark still and I couldn’t see clearly all the town surronding us, I really wondered for a while where the hell would there be a Starcraft lan.
I needed cigarets. As Jaeyong was still sleepy I left him there and rushed to street corner where I just had spoted one of these common Korean small groceries about to open. Jaeyong however realised I was running alone in the dark and went after me.
What happened there is pretty comical. As I stepped into the shop and started to wander around, to check what I could buy for me and Jaeyong, as we were both hungry, I didn’t realise that the woman running this small and tiny and messy place, was silently staring at me, closing and opening her eyes, while mumbling something to herself in Korean.
As I asked her for cigarets and started to count my money to pay – she didn’t react. She was just standing still without moving in front of me. I asked again twice and it took one last time and Jaeyong asking her in Korean (while laughing) what’s up, for her to come back to herself and promptly give me the things I asked. She then moved to touch and feel my hand skin while saying stuff in Korean, but Jaeyong had to tell her this was enough and to politely thank her while dragging me outside the place.
What happened there is that the women prolly never ever had seen a white foreign boy in real life before, maybe she did only on TV, and, figure the shock (Korean folks for some are pretty sensitive and easily shocked), of that woman opening her small shop, in a country side town, just like every 5 am morning, barely awaken, upon seeing a 190 cm Frenchman with blue hairs roaming into her shop and asking in an alien dialect his favorite cigaret brand. Got a little surreal for the lady I guess.
As we got out of the shop, Cezanne showed up successful in his mission to find a PC bang were to practice until the tournament that was scheduled to start at 11 am. When we got there, to my surprise, the place was kind of big and very full of youngsters. Now what happened few minutes ago in that lady’s shop, had yet to happen again.
We sat in a corner quietly, but as soon as one of teenagers there, spoted me, he ran to his friends that were about a dozen to tell the news. I was really surprised actually at the age of the boys staying that early (or that late rather) in the Pc room. Most of them were barely 16 or 17.
In less than a minute, I had a gang of young Korean teenagers staring at me and surronding us. Jaeyong was nicely answering their questions about me, while Cezanne was acting pissed off and basically telling to get the fuck away of him any of the kids that wanted to play a game with him. A few of them kept making commentaries about my face, my eyes and my skin, to the point, I actually had to let one of them touch my face with his hands. After that, we were left in peace and Jaeyong made fun of me because of this for an entire week.
I know this sounds crazy and it really was. You have to remember however, that at this time foreigners were much fewer than they are now in Korea. It really changed in the matter of a few years. My friends there, tell me now that everything’s different and that you have so much more foreigners in Korea.
Anyway, Jaeyong played a few games with me, and decided to sleep when he actually lost one, saying things were getting wrong. I couldn’t agree more.
Until the tournament time I just watched Cezanne play on Gamei. Now he was a true hardcore at practice. He was the type that wouldn’t stop playing just because he had to eat. He’d ask me to get him a bowl of ramen, and while eating it, would play with one hand only, and because he couldn’t play terran with one hand, would just pick zerg and 4 pool every game until he was done eating. That way, he wouldn’t actually STOP to PLAY while eating, eventho I never really saw the point in practicing 4 pooling.
The tournament time came up and neither me or Cezanne had slept, we didn’t need it, coffee was sufficient. However, I was worried for Jaeyong because it always took him a shitwhile to get himself together upon waking up, and the tournament was really close to start.
Junju university turned out to be actually a big place, with several buildings facing each other in a long street (now my memory can be a little wrong about that kind of stuff, maybe the university itself was only the building where the tournament was held, but to me, as there was a very tall gate at the entrance of the street, it seemed the whole area was the university).
As this was in the country side, you had trees about everywhere and it really looked nice. There was that weird feeling, just like actually in many other places over Korea, that comes from this way new and old, modern and poor are mixed, even jammed sometimes, together. Like outside the university you had small and cheap houses with really gray and crappy building, around a mud street, while the university place istelf was brand new and shiny.
So we got there on time and I got to meet Jinam and Jinsu and their manager who I had a chat later with, as he was quite nice. A dozen other pros and semis had made the trip over there, but for the most part the players, as several other qualifers were to take place later on in many other cities, were local and close town or seoul far suburbs gamers.
Actually that kind of tournament is tricky and the more dangerous than other ones filled with players you know and practice with. Because you’ll go winning easily your games and then yet another random person will show up, that will actually turn out to be extremly good, eventho you didn’t know his name, and there is the risk of you getting owned.
I didn’t get to face that risk as I was considering pretty much every single of the players there a strong opponent for me. While Jaeyong and Cezanne were trying to gather infos from other pros or semis they knew there, on who was good and had to be feared, I was randomly shaking hands of people coming up to me, a few of them even asked for a an autograph, that I first tried to decline as I was telling them I was a nobody ( I had given autographs before however), but they wouldn’t understand it so I had to. Like, eventho I had lost all my games on GAMEQ I still had made an appereance, and these kids knew me from there, so I didn’t really have a choice.
I got through the first round easily, killing a terran with my first reaver. I lost the second round to mutalisks micro, game wasn’t very interesting, I could’ve actually win it, had I been little less agressive. However I was avenged later on by Jaeyong who killed that zerg 1 round before the finals.
The qualifer format was rather simple. It was Bo1 until the finals. Now two players would qualifiy for the latter main event here, so you’d basically have two finals held at the same time, but the two winners of these games wouldn’t face each other.
About 150 players had showed up I think. Maybe more, maybe less. Can’t remember really. You didn’t have the right to sit behind the players while they were playing, so you had to stand far behind and couldn’t see well. I remember however a protoss player that I liked alot that day.
This guy played the exact same way, each game, no matter what race he was facing. He’d go 1 gate to reaver rush into 3-4 gate dragoons from his main. He didn’t expand a single time through the tournament and reached quarter finals. It was really fun to watch him, trying as hard and pushing it as hard as he could and hanging no matter what to his strategy eventho the situation would’ve required some kind of adaptation. But his mighty reavers and dragoon would always prevail in the end. That’s the kind of stuff that tends to make me beileve that if you’re good at pressuring and constant fighting, you can pretty much win only relying on unit count and time, without worrying about unit combination and change. This was long ago however.
What happened that day, is that, Cezanne and Jaeyong pretty much decimated every single person on their way. They both took the two qualifying spots available and from the few games I saw of them that day, it wasn’t really hard at all. At that time most of players were Zergs still and the kind of Terrans Jaeyong and Cezanne were, was basically a race designed by a higher will for the only purpose of erradicating Zergs. The only protoss they would find on their way would lose, as he would get confused facing openings he never saw before. Their TvP was very strong in the way Terrans weren’t main stream yet and you couldn’t really expect the strats they would use on you. You’d pretty much as protoss, fall into there traps, get tricked and owned. It was very enjoyable to watch, as that day, they just looked like two secret Kung fu students dropping off their mountain training to amaze the mortal crowds with their magic arts.
As the tournament ended and we were invited by Jinam’s manager to eat and drink nearby as to celebrate, I realised there was no actual prize for the winners. No money ! and we were short on cash. However I didn’t really care and we went on drinking and eating.
I hardly remember the diner. I think the talks pretty much revolved around Cezanne beeing asked if he wanted to join their team, but him declining stating that he wasn’t looking for a sponsorship. Now Cezanne was a target, as he was pretty famous offline and online. But he constantly declined all offers.
As we got to the bus we realised we didn’t have any money left. We were drunk and I was the one who went up the bus driver begging him to let us on, thing that he kindly did.
When we got back to Seoul, Cezanne went to sleep at his home and I went with Jaeyong to his team building office, where his loosy managers, busy at smoking and watching Tv, didn’t even told him “good job” upon hearning about his victory. They gave him 10 bucks as a “bonus” for his win. I think I remember him that day telling me on the way out the building, how much he hated his managers.
That’s around this time I got summoned by the holy Ophium in a mail, asking me to bring up Jaeyong and Su yeon to GameQ office within the week. Ophium would usually mail me to go and have a drink, he loved hanging out with me and Guillaume. But this time it was for official stuff – I however didn’t know what.
Our trio took the taxi on a sunny day to the GameQ office, where we were greeted with drinks and snacks. Ophium was there with an official of the national motorbike company (cant remember the damn name). He explained about a league they were setting up, and they were missing a few teams to make it to the format they wanted it to be.
So they asked me, su yeon and Jaeyong if we wanted to form a team. We’d have to play every week, and get paid 250 bucks each one of us every time we played. Ophium also said that if we did good in the league, the Motorbike company we were “representing” in the league, would maybe consider sponsoring a pro gaming team. All this was shiny and very welcomed, as our dire need of money was starting to feel real hard.
That’s how our KGL team was borned.
KGL was an awesome opportunity for players. Previous KGL was a 1v1 classic format league, that Guillaume had won twice in a row before.
But this year GAMEQ wanted to bring something new, and changed it. That’s how they ran the first Pro team league ever.
You had everything in there and everybody.
Sponsored pro teams, clans, or even random friend teams like us.
Format would go this way : 2 Male 1v1s, 1 female 1v1, 1 male 2v2 and one male/ female 2v2.
Thing is that the atmosphere with the gameq events was always great and friendly. Sometimes the games wouldn’t be broacasted in the Office, but rather in a cosy Apkunjong Pc bang that had a recording studio. Basically the day would be about playing games, having fun, chilling out. Wasn’t every time like this, but any given time, where the team we were facing was just as cool about it as we were, then the afternoon would drag a long way until evening, where everyone would eat and get drunk together.
Days of KGL were times we would rejoice, as they would mean fresh money for the week. Not to mention that motorbike sponsor hope had given us strength to keep on going. That’s the first time however, Ophium frankly spoke to me, saying he was able to get us the deal not because of Jaeyong massive skills, not because I was remotly close to beeing good at starcraft, but only because I was foreigner and was good looking.
He didn’t say it in a mean way at all, but rather to tell me that was the way I should try to make things happen and not count on winning ^^.
Next will be about my young relationship, how I was traveling 2 hours across the whole city to see my girl and how I got finally sponsored and turned into a real Pro Gamer !.
And maybe some more depending...
Hope you enjoyed it !
PS : We need to make this blog grow ! More views and more comments !
