In Korea, Starcraft players are endorsed athletes and make a living playing Starcraft…
At Memorial Day barbecues, as beer and burgers flow, the conversation usually turns to sports – baseball season is in full swing, the NBA and NHL Finals are happening, and this year there’s the World Cup too. Much to my wife’s chagrin, however, the conversation at a barbecue I was attending turned to the sport of…Starcraft. Amongst geeks and nerds, Starcraft is the video game equivalent of sports. What makes it so special?
For starters, Starcraft is such a deep game that it’s practically the national pastime in Korea. It’s so big that there was even a match fixing scandal amongst a bunch of the pro players, the Korean version of the Black Sox. How crazy is that?
The next thing I realized at the barbecue is Starcraft is like sports because it’s all about matchups. In sports, you are always analyzing the matchups, does Player A have an advantage over Player B, does Player C’s style make it difficult for Player D to excel, etc. Starcraft is the same way. With the three races, it’s not enough to know the strengths of each race – you also need to know how they matchup against other races. Zerg vs. Protoss plays a lot differently than Zerg vs. Terran. If Protoss is massing Void Rays, what’s the best counter for that if you’re Zerg? No, seriously, can someone tell me? Because I keep losing. 
Another similarity between Starcraft and sports is the fact that there are major turning points in games. Just like it’s difficult from teams to recover from, say, a back breaking 2-out home run, Starcraft has a lot of switches in momentum and many games are decided by one or two key decisions. Did you repel a rush? Then you have the advantage, but if you don’t press it, your opponent might flip it back upon you. Did you go all out to take out an expansion but not quite finish it off? Watch out. This is what differentiates Starcraft from a multiplayer FPS, since the changes in momentum aren’t as obvious. Plus unless you are playing Halo, you don’t have the benefit of replays to see what turned the tides.
Finally, the last similarity between Starcraft and sports is this undeniable truth: I suck at playing both but love analyzing both. I can’t hit a 3 pointer for my life, but I know how to recognize a double screen and roll to set one up. In Starcraft, I can’t micro worth a lick, but I bet I’d be decent at “calling replays” like some of the YouTube people do. In the end, I know I’ll never be great at Starcraft. But I love playing and I love watching replays, it’s just fun to see what happened. If the US had a Starcraft TV channel like Korea did, I’d probably watch that. It’s that amazing of a game.
Why am I writing this post? Well, I’ve been playing Starcraft mostly, and I can’t really write about how to improve one’s game, since I suck. Secondly, I’d like to make a plea to Leveling Down readers: get Starcraft! It’s a great game, and you (likely) won’t regret it! Especially if you suck at sports…
the counter to void rays is generally massed light units i think. as zerg that means either you gotta go with massed massed mutas or hydras – which is pretty much what zerg has to do anyway in team games for midgame it seems
i did chuckle a bit when you ashamedly admitted that you spoke with friends about starcraft at your memorial day bbq. it was like that for a while with me and my friends when we played wow – got kind of bad because practically all my non-WoW friends were like “uh…ok” as us WoW players were talking about gear, raiding, guild politics, etc. of course we had to we stop talking about wow in real life when i came to that realization. it was too ostracizing haha
yall play and don’t tell me about it until it’s over and then when i ask to play, everyone’s done! ANGRYFACE (not really) Why does this keep happening!!
it gets tricky because void rays will own your buildings pronto. it’s the equivalent of going mass marines vs mutas. you win outright, but mutas have more mobility.
you have to force the confrontation in order to win with hydras. you have to attack their base if they attack yours
or you can just scout and own them before they mass enough void rays.
hydras keep pwning my void rays.
i’ll be on tonight if any of you guys want to play. then again, i’m basically on every night heh
what’s your handle espion4ge? I’m TrentSteel.
sent you a msg on live with my email to add…