Pro StarCraft players are insane
But they are also quite entertaining to watch, especially when accompanied by surprisingly compelling and comprehensible commentary in English.
For the next couple months, something that the website calls the Averatec-Intel Classic 2008 Season 2 and the video intro calls the TG Sambo Intel Classic is taking place in Korea, and a fellow named Nick “Tasteless” Plott is on location to deliver a spirited play-by-play alongside the amiable but rather less enthusiastically knowledgeable “Lil Susie.” The organization running the event is streaming it live as well as archiving the videos on its site. (Note that the videos are listed newest first.)
As someone who hasn’t played StarCraft in years and would probably receive a negative ranking just for logging onto Battle.net, I still find these matches to be a great watch. Plott’s audible excitement curve appears to track with the events of the game (not that I would be able to independently understand the in-game actions well enough to be able to verify that), and even my minimal level of StarCraft knowledge—I know the names of the units, basically—is enough of a grounding to allow me to keep up with the calls.
I’ve watched replays of pro StarCraft matches before, and though I can appreciate the high level of play, simply by being aware of the ludicrous number of actions being performed per second, the appreciation was more borne out of novelty than of a genuine comprehension of what I was seeing. Hearing narration by somebody who is himself accomplished enough of a player that he can fill in those gaps for me actually makes it genuinely enjoyable. And when he gets excited, I know I’m supposed to be excited too. Somehow, this actually works.
Korea’s pro gaming phenomenon—and more specifically its StarCraft phenomenon—is something essentially alien to me. Sure, I remember the days of Thresh, and now we’ve got Fatal1ty, but pro gaming in the U.S. (and nearly every other country as far as I’m aware) always seems outside the bounds of mainstream relevance, and on the brink of death.
I don’t really know if housewives in Korea could actually name their favorite StarCraft player, but the whole scene certainly seems more prominent than anywhere else. Being able to see it through the eyes of somebody whose language I understand is fascinating.
(A warning: Watch enough of these, and you will learn to hate this Goddamn band with all your heart.)
Tags: blizzard, korea, pc gaming, pro gaming, starcraft
September 26th, 2008 at 1:19 am
I watched every show in the last weeks of the 1st season, it’s incredibly entertaining and tasteless enthusiam can be really enjoyable at times (although every now and then I was afraid he might get an heartattack)
The Razertsl should also be mentioned here (http://razertsl.teamliquid.net/), although it’s not active right now, you can still watch vods of the first season. (I think they even have a complete torrent package, with spoiler-free vod directories and names.)
The main difference here being that noone from Korea is allowed (as those guys would definitely win anyway and they already have 3 leagues ;) )
They got a good variety of commentors there, some very good (at times better than tasteless IMO), some not, but definetly as much fun as the whatever-classics. Some of them worked so well together, I thought there babbling was even better than the actual game. A nice change from other “sports” (not THAT discussion again pls) where most commentators annoy the heck out of me.
Whatever, bottom line is, the more people are aware of this the better, so we will have more of this until SC2 comes out =D
September 26th, 2008 at 6:10 am
also check out http://www.sc2gg.com for more commentaries on youtube
September 26th, 2008 at 8:00 am
If you haven’t seen it yet, I actually think the first Tasteless GomTV tournament was the best by far. They only invited 16 of the strongest players at the time, so the quality of the games was very good throughout. The current “Classic” tournament is good, but the start with so many players that there are just a ton of games with players you’ve never heard of and it gets kind of stale. In the Invitational, every game was compelling and it really positively affected the commentary as well. Tasteless is hilarious!
http://www.gomtv.net/videos/?page=5&cate=1&sort=regdate&keyfield=&key=