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An Introduction to Starcraft Progaming

I think every male between the ages of 14 and 22 has, at some point, played Blizzard’s real-time strategy classic, Starcraft. With three completely different races, extremely balanced gameplay, and out-of-the-box multiplayer, SC truly set the standard for an entire generation of games. My first encounter with Starcraft was hearing the uber-nerds at my middle school discussing siege tanks over lunch. I did play a bit with my high school and early college friends, but I was never competitive enough to have a blast online.

I just recently got interested in Starcraft again, but as a spectator instead of a player. I’ve been following SC progaming, which basically means South Korean leagues and players.

Structure

Korea’s Starcraft scene produces and attracts elite players, and I kid you not when I say that SC is practically the national sport in Korea. Games attract both live viewers — tens of thousands for championship matches — and massive television audiences.

The competitors themselves are celebrities in their own right, scoring sponsorships, endorsements, and large paychecks for important victories. Starcraft in Korea is comparable to NASCAR in the States — major corporations support both individual participants and entire teams as they compete in several independent tournaments simultaneously.

The American hub for all things Starcraft is TeamLiquid, a collection of fans who write articles, commentate matches in English, and generally do a great job of compiling and organizing Starcraft information.

Leagues

There are three major arenas for Starcraft competition in Korea: the Proleague, the Ongamenet Starleague (OSL), and the MBC Starleague (MSL).

In the Proleague, teams (each with their own sponsors and coaches) battle it out in contests which are similar in structure to high school and college tennis matches. Each Proleague match features one 2v2 matchup — the only instance of team games on the professional level.

The MSL and OSL, however, are world cup-style tournaments of individual players that run several times every year. Players must qualify for elimination stages by making it out of group play, and the number of games per match increases as they advance — culminating in a best-of-five final that often turns out to be an epic matchup.

Playstyle

The absurdly high level of play requires that players restrict themselves to one race they can truly master — even so, their performance may vary significantly with the race of their opponents. The most exciting games are generally inter-race battles. Protoss vs. Protoss sees a lot of abrupt losses when one player deviates from a symmetrical build, Terran vs. Terran usually means at least a half hour of evenly pitched battles and drops, and Zerg vs. Zerg means an insanely short game with little building or expanding — sacrificing larvae to produce drones would mean being overwhelmed by lings and mutas.

Players are generally evaluated based on their “micro” and “macro” control. Good micro means efficient and precise use of individual fighting groups in specific encounters, and good macro means economic expansion, mass unit control and production, and appropriate technology choices. While a few years ago great micro was enough to dominate, today the emphasis is much more on well-rounded players with macro skill that will make up for errors in their micro control. In other words, Starcraft continues to become more and more competitive even at its highest levels.

Players

The players themselves are men between the ages of 15 and 25 — the older contingent is generally veteran gamers and the younger up-and-coming talent.

The most famous Starcraft player is undoubtedly Lim Yo-Hwan, SlayerS_’BoxeR’, or just Boxer. Boxer wowed early Starcraft audiences with his insane micro and creative strategy, and is most known for popularizing Terran by proving that marines and medics could dominate lurkers. Boxer’s peers were Yellow, July, Nal_Ra, and NaDa — several of which are still major powers today.

Boxer is now well into his mandatory military service and, though he still plays in the Air Force’s Proleague team, has yielded to a new generation of players. The front-runners are Stork and Bisu (Protoss), sAviOr and Jaedong (Zerg), and Iris, Hwasin, and Sea (Terran). sAviOr, who I personally don’t care for, changed Zerg strategy by going for an aggressively expansionist early game strategy and teching to more complex support units relatively fast. His defeat to heavy underdog Bisu in the MSL finals earlier this year upset the balance and sprung Bisu into the spotlight. All things considered, however, Stork is generally considered the favorite in the ongoing MSL and OSL.

VODs

A VOD, which stands for Video-On-Demand, is just a video of a Starcraft match as it aired on Korean television. You can find recent VOD packages as torrents, search through the TeamLiquid database, or just view them on YouTube: Klazart, Moletrap, and Diggity are three dudes who are doing an awesome job of commentating all of the major Korean matches in English. Obviously watching requires a good knowledge of the game, but the commentators will really give you a good idea of what strategies and techniques are at play in every match.

Here’s a short list of some of my personal favorites:

Boxer vs. Yellow, 2003 KPGA winners’ championship — this is the ultimate in micro greatness, the single most perfect rush in the history of Starcraft.

Boxer vs. Yellow, 2004 OSL semi-finals — an illustration of Boxer’s dominance versus Zerg: he executes the same exact strategy three times, and there is nothing Yellow can do to counter.

Bisu vs. Stork, 2007 MSL finals — this entire series is really worth watching, but the final game in this best-of-five is just epic.

Nal_Ra vs. Oversky, 2007 Proleague — some clutch play and big errors on both sides made this an exciting back-and-forth game.

Bisu vs. sAviOr, 2007 MSL finals — this is game two of the series that put Bisu on the map and showed that sAviOr wasn’t invincible. I remember expecting a sweep by sAviOr (who had just dominated NaDa in the OSL finals) upon seeing there were only three games in the best-of-five, and then just looking at my roommate in awe when we watched Bisu win game one.

For more great games, you can check out these threads at TeamLiquid.

Though I’ll never play Starcraft seriously — especially after watching these guys’ skills — I can’t help but be intrigued by Starcraft’s popularity in Korea. In my opinion, the games are as fun to watch as any sporting event. Here’s hoping that progaming can hit mainstream in the States.