The Olympics are going on right now. Phelps is winning gold metals like there’s no tomorrow, China and the USA are duking it out on the uneven bars, and it’s all very intense to watch—but so is Flash versus Jaedong.

I’m talking about the Averatech-Intel Classic finals I stayed up until 4am to catch with some of my former guildmates last Saturday. For a forty thousand dollar prize, hundreds of Starcraft players climbed a ladder and the final rung gave way to two players: Flash (Terran) and Jaedong (Zerg).

Now I know the concept of eSports is nothing new. Starcraft, certainly, is quite old. Perhaps that’s part of the magic. Years ago, I used to watch TheMarine and Boxer compete with others, analyzing their impeccable Vulture micro and powerful Siege Tanks. Fast forward to now and I’m watching Jaedong reinvent the same game, wondering how he manages to get his Mutalisks in such a perfect formation as they sweep down for a final turret destroying raid.

This is how, at 4am, against my better judgment, I’m taken in. It’s working somehow. Tasteless is announcing with style and aplomb, both players are gripping their mice with their lives, and a huge prize is on the line as well as reputations. Thousands of people watch from the auditorium, and millions tune in through the internet. Cheers erupt as Jaedong once again locks down Flash. He’s desperately trying to irradiate the Mutalisks with his Science Vessels and dodge hordes of Zerglings with his Marines, but he gets outmaneuvered and misled. In the third game, he manages to live longer than before and survives a few skirmishes against Jaedong against the Defilers, but then loses all his Vessels in a counterattack completely destroying his chances at winning.

It’s clear who the better player is and the soon to be loser, Flash, looks humbled; his lower lip quivering ever so slightly, his eyes downcast and somber.

The finals end in an unprecedented 3-0 and both players meet on the stage for a handshake with an interview session following. The crowd is still going wild and it’s eerily powerful. People just tuning in wouldn’t know they were watching nerds—they could have just as easily been two boxers shaking hands, or a pair of Olympian swimmers accepting their medals. Well, Korean boxers and Korean Olympian swimmers anyway.

The point is that, for once, video games look challenging. For once, they are a spectator sport.

It’s at that point, as the crowd screams again, that I realize I like eSports. This version, anyway. Truth be told, I couldn’t care less about World of Warcraft sponsorships and I’m still not fully sold on Super Smash Bros tournaments. This is mostly because I don’t like how luck-based WoW can be in arenas; how Shadow Priest and Rogue will still take out the best players, how racials sometimes tilt a battle in the other’s favors. In World of Warcraft arena, it’s all about composition and rarely about skill. It loses a lot in translation to pro-gaming as well. It just isn’t fun to watch. Matches are often boring and anticlimactic; often times, the losing team loses due to a surprise critical or an overtly long attrition war. It gets tiring.

But Starcraft doesn’t get tiring–and that, well, that is something.

I think I like Starcraft as an eSport because it’s timeless. Like a good match of DoTA, pushing the cart in Team Fortress 2, or walking down the tunnel in Counter-strike, it just feels epic to watch the first SCV take in its first load of minerals. It’s epic because you know that is going to be the only predictable part of the game—that while the beginning is always the same, the ending never is. You never know exactly how every match will play out. There is no perfect strategy guide on how to play and there are no imbalances to the races. Even though I played Starcraft back in the day, I’m seeing people playing a decade later with new tricks and different gameplay. In SC, there’s always a new strategy and there’s always a new counter for that strategy. You have to be creative. You have to reinvent the wheel a few times.

Starcraft is a game that’s not only balanced and intricate, but alive. Years later, it’s still alive—perhaps now more than ever.

I look forward to Starcraft 2. I want to see what Blizzard brings eSports with its next installation in the series. And even if SC2 ends up doing nothing for this growing area, it isn’t stopping any time soon. At the end of the day, eSports are becoming a reality now more than ever, and anything can happen.

For now, you can watch replays of Starcraft matches and scrims in Counter-strike with me. You know you want to.

Unless it’s Counter-strike: Source anyway. Watching Source matches makes you hate your life almost as much as the CGS Source players probably do.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Gamer Culture, RTS, eSports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.