StarCraft changed my life

MLG Orlando is the penultimate stop on the MLG Pro Circuit, a full season of professional gaming that hops around the country throughout the year, filling huge convention centers with thousands of gamers and fans (15,000 showed up in Orlando, more are expected in Providence for finals this weekend). Each year brings a slightly different combination of games, mostly centered around first-person shooters and real time strategy games. MLG’s popularity has exploded since the inclusion of StarCraft II in the roster last year, and in addition to the live event, hundreds of thousands of viewers join in through live streams and archived clips. BarCraft is just the latest outcrop of the premiere e-sport’s popularity, with die-hard fans gathering in bars around the world to watch live internet streams of their video game heroes.

I asked the hostess for a table, but quickly changed my mind when I realized I'd be all alone for the next eight hours at a table meant for four. I retreated to the bar (also empty), and asked for a Diet Coke. For reasons I won't go into, I wasn't drinking alcohol that weekend, so I caffeinated pretty heavily that Sunday.

I was all alone, sipping faux-sugar water through a straw, out of a bar glass that faintly smelled of soap. A StarCraft II game, broadcasting live from MLG Orlando, blared in front of me, but I was still a little too groggy to understand what was happening. A couple of college students huddled in front of the projector did homework. A waitress eyed us all warily, wondering if we tipped… or bit. What had I done? What brought me this low? A crippling addiction to the sport of the future, as it turns out.

StarCraft II is the fastest selling strategy game of all time, with around 5 million copies sold, and another couple million pirated. Millions more play StarCraft II for free in Korea (the game is free with an active World of Warcraft subscription there), or for a small hourly fee at a cybercafe. Comparatively, there are around 400 "professional" StarCraft II players, with about half those hailing from Korea, though it’s hard to tell how many earn enough to make a career out of it. Many of the popular players run Twitch.tv livestreams to augment their erratic prize earnings.

Elbows up on the gleaming, vacant bar, I was sure I had made a terrible mistake. As my Diet Coke neared empty, I started formulating an exit strategy. I had hyped my BarCraft plans for weeks to my callous hipster friends. What would I tell them? That it was really lame, so I left? They'd pin a "captain obvious" medal on my chest and then get back to something obscure and artsy. I had to see this through.

I summoned all my social butterfly courage and walked over to a table, manned by another lone StarCraft soul. He let me sit down, and all of a sudden I had an ally. His name was Dimitar, a Bulgarian, who roots for Barcelona in soccer because he loves Messi. What a normal human being! Zerg is his favorite race, and he was rooting for Stephano, an 18-year-old professional Zerg player from France.

Stephano's opponent was BoxeR, possibly the most famous StarCraft player of all time, who plays Terran. His comprehensive mastery of Terran, and innovative new strategies, converted many players from the then-popular Zerg back in his original StarCraft days, and Terran is now sort of the "default" race in StarCraft and StarCraft II especially for Koreans. He lost the first game of a best of three to Stephano, but rallied back and won the second.

The third game started off with BoxeR's patented, now-traditional opening "Hellion harass." Hellions, a quick, offensive unit with flame throwers mounted on the front, look like RC from Toy Story, and have the potential to wreak havoc on an opponent’s economy in the early game. A few Hellions can easily melt a dozen of your workers if you’re not careful, but Stephano saw it coming, and danced his workers away from the threat. Stephano charged toward BoxeR’s base with units of his own: a handful of slow, ranged Roaches (they look more like a rhinoceros beetle, with a green slime attack), and a small swarm of Zerglings (which look like raptors, and surround their prey much like the scarabs in The Mummy). While the Roaches slimed some of BoxeR’s workers, BoxeR maneuvered his faster army around in front of the Roach squad, and pinned Stephano. With no retreat possible, and no Zerglings to help, BoxeR killed the Roaches with his force of Hellions and a newly-spawned Tank.

After several back-and-forth battles, BoxeR amassed a formidable force near Stephano’s territory, and killed off Stephano’s fourth and fifth bases. When Stephano responded, half of his units were caught out of position, and his remaining force wasn’t sufficient. While BoxeR resupplied his army, Stephano attempted to upgrade some units into ultra-powerful Brood Lords, but BoxeR spotted them with a radar scan and knocked them down before they could finish transforming. BoxeR cleaned up the rest of Stephano’s limping army in little skirmishes all over the map, and as BoxeR finally stormed Stephano’s main base, the Frenchman forfeited the match with a simple, polite "congratz ! and good luck !" Stephano fans (myself newly-minted), Dimitar and I were in the minority, and the bar congratulated BoxeR on his well-earned win.

If a top professional could be compared to LeBron James, I'm your four-year-old niece. Sure, I can dribble the ball (kind of), and I made a couple baskets one time when my dad lifted me to the rim, but while I'm playing with the same equipment, I'm essentially playing a different game. I own the exact same copy of StarCraft II that Stephano owns, but I can't make it sing.

In fact, I know exactly how much worse than Stephano I am, thanks to Blizzard's incredibly mature Battle.net multiplayer matchmaking and ranking service. I'm currently in Bronze league, which represents the worst 20% of players in my North American region of play. The next 20% is Silver, then Gold. Dimitar, who claimed he's "not very good," plays Gold. Next up is Platinum (a Platinum asked to borrow my menu), and later on a girl joined our table who plays Diamond, representing the final 20%. My Platinum menu-borrower knows a Masters player (the top 2% of Diamond), and then there's the Grand Masters league. While Masters-level players often enter tournaments, Grand Masters typically win them. A Grand Master ranking means you're in the top 200 active players in your entire region. In Europe, as of the end of September, Stephano was #1 on the European ladder. I have a long way to go.

It took me a little while, but I started to understand a little bit of what was going on. Husky straddles the line between education and entertainment. His audience straddles the same line: they're watching a match on YouTube to be entertained, but they plan on using any strategies or knowledge gained in their own StarCraft II matches. Husky will explain a small feature of a map, or a little-used ability of a unit, or the strengths and weaknesses of a certain build order. As the battle heats up, so does Husky. In the mid-to-late game, Husky's casting style is one of constant near-hyperventilation. He often forgets to breathe during big battles, and sometimes I'm worried he's going to pass out during a particularly elongated exchange of aggression. The excitement is contagious.

I've been watching StarCraft II matches for over a year, and every day it gets better. In addition to the sheer eye-hand, speed-click athleticism of play, the depth of difficulty and strategy is on par with chess or Go. In fact, Go might be the better comparison; unlike chess, both Go and StarCraft are still too complicated for computers to master — the best players can roll over even the most powerful AI available. The game is still being figured out by humans, in fact. Players discover new strategies constantly that change the competitive landscape — in tension, or in tandem, with Blizzard’s ongoing tweaks to the game. And I don't just have to think of these strategies in abstract: I can watch them literally explode all over my screen, with Husky losing his voice in a casting-frenzy, and the 10-year-old inside of me weeping quietly for joy.

When two top players clash, something beautiful happens. There are little impossible moments, where the physical limitations of the computer interface fall away, and armies appear to be an extension of each player's mind. The battles’ tidal ebb and flow and scrappy tug-of-war over every inch of the map make a pixel vs. pixel war between aliens and humans suddenly seem like the most natural, vital thing in the world.

In July, the Koreans descended on StarCraft II. There had been a natural buffer: as a pro gamer, where margins are slim as it is, you have to follow the money. Until relatively recently, the money was in the Korean StarCraft leagues. But StarCraft II's huge international following has made tournaments outside of Korea more lucrative, and Major League Gaming pulled a major coup at its Anaheim tournament, with nine Korean professionals in attendance. They destroyed the foreigners.

Ever since then, foreigners haven't been winning. IdrA was this bar's great American hope against the cold, calculating machinations of BoxeR. Even BoxeR's play-style, something he's been honing for a decade, is the epitome of heartless brute force. Sure, he's the nicest guy ever, and a true ambassador for his sport, but for the next hour I hated him. We started a new chant: "USA! USA! USA!," and finally this was something that the upstairs patrons could agree with.

When IdrA beat BoxeR 4-3 in a nail-biting best of 7 matchup, the bar exploded. "USA! USA! USA!" we chanted again. You'd think we'd just beat the Soviets at the Olympics. Not everybody was converted, however. On her way out, after about as much StarCraft education she could take, my sister overheard some discontents: "Why is this stupid video game playing at Legends?"

Meanwhile, a new Korean threat was brewing, named MC. Battling up through the loser’s bracket, MC eliminated the much-beloved MarineKing after HuK knocked him off a legendary, incredibly entertaining tournament run and into MC's path.

And so IdrA found himself up against another formidable opponent, and it’s his least favorite matchup: Protoss. While IdrA / HuK might be the most famous feud on the scene currently, the MC / IdrA rivalry is no less vitriolic. At MLG Columbus in February, MC beat IdrA in what turned out to be a fight for third place, jumped down to the crowd, high-fived his fans, and then pointed at IdrA in an age-old taunt. IdrA flipped him off. At Orlando, arm chair psychologists had MC winning the match before it even started, and he did just that, beating IdrA 2-1. For the upcoming MLG Providence event, IdrA is on record saying his only chance against MC is a "balance patch."

At Legends, all two hundred of us turned our loyalties over to HuK, who remained above the fray in the winner's bracket for most of the day. Since HuK is Canadian, our USA chant wouldn’t work, and "North America! North America!" is a little syllable-heavy, so we resorted to a rapidly repeated "HuK! HuK! HuK!" Dimitar's soccer-fan prowess helped the crowd refine the chant, starting out slow and then speeding up into a frenzy, exploding into cheers at some spontaneous moment that I could never quite sync up with. HuK went against TheStc, who had been undefeated in the tournament up until then, and won. Next it was MC’s turn against TheStc, and MC won that match as well. Suddenly, we had two Protoss in the finals.

Games played previously in the tournament carry over, so HuK went into the best of seven matchup already up 2-1.