Fanboy Unbound

Disclaimer: You will probably be annoyed by this post if: a) you think that 1337 is a number b) you had a girlfriend or boyfriend in high school, or c) you have ever confused Star Wars and Star Trek.

Last weekend I went to the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2007. No, that shouldn't mean anything to you. Basically it was a big thing thrown by Blizzard, a video game company, in Seoul's Olympic Stadium and surrounding buildings. That might give you some idea of how big it was. My rough guess is that there were at least 5,000 people there (see the pictures for yourself, courtesy of Seattle Matt). Blizzard is the maker of what at this moment is probably the most popular video game on the planet: World of Warcraft (8.5m people play $15USD per month to play it). I never began playing this game for fear that it would cause me to flunk out of university. After all, Blizzard's 1998 game Starcraft almost prevented me from graduating from high school. OK, that's an exaggeration, but it could have if I had been required to do any kind of work in high school. Anyway, the event had 4 or 5 K-pop performances, lots of convention booth games and stuff, really long line-ups, a 30ish-piece symphony playing video game music, plus Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and Starcraft tournaments.

Now, you might be curious as to why a game released almost 10 years ago is still being played competitively in Korea? You might also be asking yourself why video games are played competitively. If so, please refer to the disclaimer above. Right, so, Starcraft in Korea is a violently popular cultural phenomenon, which is saying something because games in general are much more popular here than in North America. I could write more about that, but I think I have an example that will sufficiently convey this point. I used to work with a Korean woman named Cathy. She claimed to play a dancing game, Audition Online, until all hours of the night. There is nothing unusual about that, except for the fact that she used real money to buy special clothes for her online character. Lots of money, from what she said. And I don't know that these clothes even made her character any better; they were just special because few of the other people--people she will never meet face-to-face--would have them. Go figure. You might not be surprised to learn that Cathy has since been fired. Poor Cathy, how will she pay for new virtual clothes?

Back to the insanity that is the specific focus of this post. It has many times been said that Starcraft is basically the national sport of Korea. One of the best Starcraft players has reported making $200,000USD in one year, from tournament prizes and sponsorship--really. There are multiple channels in Korea devoted to showing replays of top-level games--no, really. South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun has reportedly challenged Kim Jong-il to a game of Starcraft decide the border issue between their two states--OK, I made that one up. Anyway, it's insanely and inexplicably popular here, which is neat because, as the greatest RTS game ever, it is my favourite game of all time. Yes, I did just say greatest ever (something I never say), so I will qualify it (something I always do). Starcraft is the greatest RTS game ever, based on sales, longevity, and critical concensus, which, as rough objective indexes, are things anyone has the prerogative to ignore since art is, finally, a subjective experience.

Now, none of this would have been very exceptional, except that, appropriately, Blizzard's main reason for throwing this shindig was the announcement, after 9 years, of Starcraft 2. (Whoa, that was some weird comma-abuse, oh well.) Now, I'm not into video games as much as I was before, say, I met Roxanne. So I wasn't ecstatically excited about this, but, according to what TV tells me, being among the first people in the world to see something on TV is great. So, huzzah!