Play that game and make me proud, my boy.

This post was written after reading a post in a forum I like to visit. In the post I actually made a reply regarding the use of nicknames, but I thought it would be nice to bring up another point on my personal blog. This was the forum post…

OttoSilver wrote:

I doubt you will get far in Diamond with constant rushing, especially not to 1700. I doubt he will get far in the tournament though. I suspect he is mostly doing this for experience. It is cheap enough to enter, so why not. He might just get the change to play one of his heros.

Interestingly, he asked me who I liked and I mentioned TLO, to which he replied "Dario?" Strange how the Koreans prefer to use real names rather than game names.

stafo wrote:

This is one of the main reason why I believe that e-sports, as a serious sport, has not gone mainstream in the US. Korean players are mainly known by their real names and not a cheesy username (yes..even mine is cheesy ). While there still is a stigma on e-sports in general in Korea, it's far more accepted there than it is over here.

When I talk to my Korean friends who've watched past progamers and mention them by their username, at first they don't know who I'm talking about. When I say the player's real names, then they know.

For the non-Korean, casual fans, Korean names are harder to remember than the usernames due to the language barrier. I had to change my name to a Western name early on in order for my teachers and fellow students to not butcher my Korean name.

US (and maybe European?) casters, commentators, and players almost always refer to a progamer by their user ID rather than their real name. Maybe it's just part of the geek culture, but I think once people are more remembered by their real names and not by their usernames, e-sports will likely take off quickly.

One of my students will be competing in the StarCraft 2 Open Preliminaries today. I doubt he will get very far, but he is exited and will be gaining valuable experience playing in a high stakes pressure situations.

Commonly referred to as The GSL, this is a tournament with a first prize of 100 million won (approximately $85,000). Yes, I said 100,000,000 won, for playing a computer game. The runner up still gets something like 40,000 won. What’s more is that that this tournament is currently held once a month. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, but here is the question: “Why is it ridiculous?”

Top football player in England easily get 150,000 pounds a week, not a month, a week, on top of which they still get various bonuses and sponsor payments. Let’s be conservative and say a top player gets 200,000 pounds a week with four weeks in a month. That is approaching a million British pounds a month. That is more than a million dollars a month. In the US sport stars get way more than that, I believe.

“Sure”, you say, “but they are playing a legitimate sport.” That is a matter of opinion. To me the key word that is missing it “Spectator”. They are playing a legitimate spectator sport. In essence the various sports are in no way better than computer games. The various “sports” are pre-computer games, games that people play with friends to have fun and pass time, yet they are rarely considered a waste of time that keeps students away from their studies.

This is slowly changing, however. The GLS offering so much money for a single tournament has suddenly make people everywhere sit up and take notice. This weekend the Gom TV feed actually crashed because so many people wanted to watch the GSL Finals online and those are people how paid to watch that feed. Personally, I had to stand in line for 2 hours before “doors open” to get in to the arena.

At the event itself the players’ proud families sat in the VIP seats and now they can say "My boy/brother/boyfriend has a sweet job. He has fun while making $85,000". Isn’t it about time we start considering e-sport as a bit more than just a waste of time?