The Beat October 2002

Starcraft and the Korean PC Revolution
By:John Bocskay Photos: Andrew Cranston Tanslation assistance: Min-Joo Park

When I first came to Korea in 1998, there was exactly one PC room in downtown Ulsan where I lived. During the course of that year, I twice watched it more than double in size -- from 16 terminals, to 40, to over one hundred. Faster than dandelions, other PC rooms popped up around the city, and around the country. Today, there are over 25,000 PC rooms in Seoul alone.

The rise of the PC room in Korea was meteoric, and still continues. People come to hang out online and chat, maybe a few get some work done or write letters to Mom, but the great majority come to play games. Of all the games out there, Starcraft has been the biggest, so much so that it‘s impossible to tell the story of the rise of the PC room without telling the story of Starcraft.
Korea has embraced the Information Revolution more than perhaps any other country on Earth; more than 50% of Korean households have high-bandwidth connections (compared with less than 10% in the U.S.). Competition has brought rates down to record lows; even a school kidcan scratch together enough money to spend some time online at a PC room, where an hour of use still costs less than a dollar.

Low prices made the PC rooms affordable, but PC room owners needed something to get the people in the door, and that something has been games. Starcraft appeared in 1998 and was a tremendous hit. Young Koreans fell in love with the mad future world where three races (Terran, Zerg, and Protoss) scramble to control resources and annihilate each other. In the crowded Korean cities, millions of kids escaped into the vast cyber horizons of virtual planets, replete with steaming volcanoes and bloodthirsty aliens. People buckling under the social weight of Confucian hierarchy and workaday petty despotism could become the supreme master of a cyber universe, enlisting slaves to mine resources, assembling massive armies, and sending them all to a gory death for the motherland with a few keystrokes.

The first Starcraft tournaments were organized in the PC rooms, but the snowball rolled and saw the creation of pro leagues and team clans. With the blessings of the government and the media, televised tournaments were staged with big cash prizes. Starcraft became a spectator sport, with thousands attending the events and millions more tuning in on TV to watch the best players in the world go toe to toe.

This huge exposure made many teenagers famous, and the prize money, endorsements, and sponsorships made some of them moderately wealthy. The most successful Korean player in 2001, Lim Yo-hwan, earned an estimated US$114,000 that year playing Starcraft, and has 97,000 members on his website.

A couple of years ago, a poll of Korean middle-schoolers found that their most popular job aspiration was pro PC Gamer, which for the first time nudged the old stalwarts doctor, scientist, and pilot. In America, kids who spend all their time plugged into games are often derided as geeks. In Korea, there is very little of that stigma, and the best players are actually respected. Here it‘s not strange to see kids spending hours honing their skills in bloody computer battles. What is unique is that here it is considered by some to be a worthwhile pursuit.

Kids studied the moves of the pros on TV, and listened carefully to nuances of the game as called by the commentators. Online schools sprang up too -- Starcraft University promises you will “learn to play like a pro.” The “professors” are teenagers with names like Terrorific and DeathScythe, and they offer free online courses from Zerg Structures 152 to Advanced Nuking 454, and even graduate courses if you think you're ready to rock and roll with the elite.

In an age of instant obsolescence, Starcraft defies the rule and hangs in there, though its star seems to be waning. The appearance of online subscription games (like Fortress and Lineage) in 2001 spelled a decline in package game (CD) sales around the country. However, according to the July 7 issue of Korea Now, Hanbit Soft still sells 40,000 copies of Starcraft a month (They‘ve sold 2.5 million total in Korea to date).

'What is the secret to Starcraft's longevity?” I asked Yeo Young-soo, the manager of Cyber Jaewang PC Room in Seomyeon.

'Each game of Starcraft is different. You have to adapt your strategy. Other games fall into patterns and can be the same after a while,” said Yeo. Many pros also cite this as one of the game's merits, often comparing it to chess in its variety of tactics and strategies, which must be tailored very closely to those of your opponent in order to be successful.

I picked out a couple of old Starcraft hands, Kim Tae-soo and Kim Yoo-ho, both aged 24. The said they've been playing Starcraft 3 or 4 times a week since 1999, and the speed of their moves certainly backed it up. They echoed Mr. Yeo's thoughts, and stressed the social element as well: “When I first started playing, I cared more about the game itself, but now it's become more important that we play together,” said Tae-soo. They play in groups of as many as eight, sitting in the same room and making a night of it.

The social aspect of PC gaming is also part of the success of the PC rooms in general. Online chatting with distant people has become popular, but PC rooms are often full of couples and groups, either playing the same game head to head, or a different game side by side. Classic Korean togetherness for the modern age.

I spoke to a couple who were playing Fortress – a game in which players take turns lobbing missiles at each other, making it seem oddly like a high-tech equivalent of the old schoolyard game “punch for punch”. “Annie” said she liked it because it was “comfortable”. When I asked her boyfriend, Hyun, if he played it because she liked it, he said, “Uh, yeah, that's one reason.” The important thing: they played together.

Despite the hardcore fans who stick with Starcraft, there's a new game rising to challenge it for mastery of the real-time strategy game market. Warcraft III is similar to Starcraft in the essentials, (you must mine resources, build structures, and mass armies) but the actors are Humans, Orcs, Night elves, and Undead. Warcraft III has also incorporated features like “level-up” and item gathering to make it something of a hybrid, reminiscent of Diablo, another hugely popular game.

Hanbit Soft is hoping Warcraft III will revitalize CD sales as titles like Starcraft and Diablo wane. Early signs are encouraging; it rated well in testing with professional gamers, and when released in July, it sold 200,000 copies in the first week.

I asked the experts at Cyber Jaewang if Warcraft III would ever replace Starcraft as king of the Korean game world. Mr. Yeo said Starcraft fans are “too devoted”, and it is simpler to play though similar in style to Warcraft. Tae-soo and Yoo-ho agreed, adding that Warcraft is a slower game, perhaps the result of its more-detailed graphics.

However, many Warcraft enthusiasts said that they like to try new games. Yi Gyoung-mo took a momentary break from slaying orcs to tell me that Starcraft was “too old”. Jang Jae-hyo, 16, said that he liked the new hybrid features, which add a new dimension and give it a leg up on Starcraft.

Games will come and go, and it's interesting to ponder the possibility of a post-Starcraft Korea. Will we one day refer to 2002 as the “Early Warcraft period”? The jury‘s out, but one thing is certain: PC Bangin‘ is here to stay.