is starcraft still popular in korea

This is just my wild (potentially controversial) hypothesis- but I feel like there's something about Korean culture that promotes things associated with Starcraft-to speak very generally, technology seems to be regarded more highly and gaming seems more acceptable than in the US, where being a gamer will put you in the bottom rung of the popularity ladder. Then the last remaining question is – what was the cause for StarCraft’s initial popularity? There is not. So you have to run a small business to spend time and make ends meet, but you don’t want to work too hard. We played with the Korean Saram. But the popularity of StarCraft in Korea far exceeds just the number of copies sold. I just recently came back from Korea. SC2 still has the same essential formula and it just does not appeal to such a wide audience today. So once people got a wind of the trend that online games, including StarCraft, is getting popular, they started looking into opening of PC Bangs. Due to their technological environment, there are a lot of video game players per capital as opposed to other countries. What do you think will happen when it's released, are Korean going to play it or ignore it? Brood War is still very popular in South Korea. Does this mean that any game could have taken the place of StarCraft? The most recent development would be the establishment of pro gaming leagues and cable televisions. It also had the most advanced graphics, with the only true 3-D units among the three. "StarCraft-related scenes and characters are popping up everywhere throughout Korea," an agent of a South Korea character goods company said in 2001. If not, is SCII popular there? tellos & counthaku, that will be an interesting question that will pretty much determine the future of the pro gaming league in Korea.Joanna, thanks for pointing that out. You have saved up a sizable nest egg but not quite sizable enough to live off of it for the rest of your life. (EA Game’s Command & Conquer series comes to mind.) The email is on the right. Furthermore, many of the top Brood War players ended up moving over to Starcraft II. Thank you for making known the ridiculousness of the Avatar phenomenon.I think the best part of the Starcraft craze is the class on Starcraft taught at the Korean's alma mater:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XiE_V0PZ8I'd like to question the Korean's explanation for the explosion of PC bangs and Starcraft, which seems undeveloped in some areas (and I only bring this up because it has puzzled me for a long time). Stock market is too volatile, and does not generate enough short-term cash to live off of at any rate. More stable and cash-generating derivative financial products are unheard of in Korea until early 2000s. A video game that engendered an entire industry is simply unheard of prior to StarCraft. Mr. the Korean, thank you for your very insightful post on this subject. Still, StarCraft II has retained a spot among the top five esports by prize money every year, and its popularity as a day-to-day title to stream … If you played it right it ended up being an attrition game where both sides bulilt big berthas and had to use doomsday machine or annilators to defend their bases.At which if the game lasted long enough people would have 10-20 big guns pummelling each others bases. Do any of you enjoy Baduk(Go)?The only reference I've read of Baduk in western literature was surprise, surprise, in "The Wheel of Time" series by now deceased Robert Jordan. Mysterious metal monolith in Utah desert vanishes. PC-Bang phenomenon changed all that. Starting in about 2003, pro-gamers started to become organized into teams, … These advantages played perfectly into Korea’s gaming trend at the time. So it appears Blizzard products are extremely popular among the Korean crowd. Also, practically no manual labor is required other than keeping the store clean. Even the average pro gamer makes more than the average Korean. For an equivalent American phenomenon, think. Starcraft is a decrepit 11 years old, but it's still hugely popular, especially in Korea, where it's some kind of religion -- and the sequel looks … Miyazaki Hayao's Laputa: Castle in the Sky was released in 1986"Yeah, it's straight out of the 1960's from the "Star Trek" episode, "The Cloud Minders," and the floating city of Stratos.You can take a look at it on Youtube: Star Trek "The Cloud Minders" Remastered FX Reel, Always enjoy reading your take on things :)Just a little clarification on your comment: "So put yourselves in their shoes. However, while I agree in principle with all you say, I still feel something is missing in the explanation. A lot of them never even played a computer game before SC.The logic of "People go to PC-Bang because they're there" mentioned in the article would apply here; A lot of people picked it up so that they can hang out with their friends and join the hype. Again, without the PC-Bangs, SC would've never gained this much popularity. All this being said, pretty sure poker finals can't draw crowds like this. StarCraft is immensely popular all over the world though, but only South Korea makes those gaming events and tournements epic. Being a pro-gamer was not an option before Starcraft. The Korean linked the source -- the match happened in a special stage on Gwang'an-li Beach in Busan, which is an annual event. That capture the imagination of the world! YES! Subscribe for 2 years and get an extra 1-month, 1-year-, or 2-year plan added to your cart at checkout. StarCraft, the game, is still huge. It’s received extremely high scores across the board from all sorts of different reviewers – for many, it scored a rare 10/10. StarCraft II “boomed” there than any place in the world. "Your only choice is interstellar war" — Tagline One of the StarCraft retail boxes StarCraft3 (abbreviated as SC or SC1) is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment and released for … At which somebody would build a nuke and the anti nuke was developed in response.There were some incredibly tense games in the past where we exchanged 1000s of nuclear missiles while triple tasking Kbot units to sneak an attack in while he was busy targetting nukes.Priceless. And it is not difficult to imagine why these things came about – they came about because people thought there was money to be made by setting up leagues and dedicated TV stations. The proliferation of PC Bang has much to do with Korea’s small business environment. When Blizzard launched StarCraft in the late 1990s South Korea was building up it’s online infrastructure and creating the fastest internet in the world. But I cannot imagine people playing TA, Red Alert, or any other RTS games in PC-Bangs as they do with SC. It’s well known that the StarCraft franchise is extremely popular in Korea, and while its popularity in the West is also very strong — as evidenced by the fact the North American servers are still well-populated to this day — it’s possible that its greatest fanbase simply lies outside the English-speaking world. No, it's huge — twelve years after it launched. Around 1998, there were three major franchises for RTS games – WarCraft by Blizzard Entertainment, Command & Conquer by Westwood Studios and Total Annihilation by Cavedog Entertainment. The game’s popularity in South Korea is due to, in part, good timing. The PC bang makes sense - for the first time (?) Red Alert was a fun game but was clearly not balanced for multiplayer at all - this was the game from which the term 'Tank Rush' was coined. People go because they are there, and because they are an easy way to kill some time. I've often said that 2D games age much more gracefully than 3D games and so it is with Starcraft, which I still prefer to look at over Total Annihilation and many of the 3D RTS's that followed it. The fun of an online game multiply with more players even though the original merits of that game may have fallen below those of a later game. "The way in which this game has become a part of the Korean culture can only be compared to the way in which the Star Wars Phantom Menace movie became a cultural icon in America." A series of events might have set the stage for the game, but the compelling experience the game offers is why generation after generation of Korean gamers continues to enjoy the title. I am truly amazed at the level of detail and knowledge that "Ask a Korean" puts into his blogs.Do you consider the fact that most Korean families live in apartments have anything to do with the popularity of PC bangs?I have noticed that the Korean teenagers don't spend a lot of time at home. According to website Ask a Korean!, it is best to equate pro StarCraft with professional poker. Now it's all about League Of Legends. Many thanks to Amelia P. for sending it. You have saved up a sizeable nest egg but not quite sizeable enough to live off of it for the rest of your life. I think it was Gwanganri, Pusan (beach area). Online cafes … "...pro gaming in Korea is about as popular as pro poker leagues in America." When are matches held at the Yongsan E-Sports Stadium? Its professional league, StarCraft Pro League, ran tournaments starting in 2003, and these events dominated the eSports scene for more than a decade. Well Starcraft II never actually got that big in Korea. Purely in terms of game play, Total Annihilation may have been the best game. Though the StarCraft series is popular all around the world, its home is arguably South Korea, where it enjoyed status not unlike that of a national pastime. In fact, leading up to the release of StarCraft II, Korean Air featured the face of series’ mascot Jim Raynor on several of its planes.. While Japan might have Gundam and Pokemon airplanes, South Korea has a StarCraft II jet. With an RTS, it's much easier to follow the flow of action. Starcraft is 14 years old and is still played by many people, in many countries around the world. This comment has been removed by the author. Yeh it was more popular therE than most country's but brood war is still played en mass there. Blizzard did get lucky, but luckily for Korea gamers, the studio offered a compelling title. Yet, StarCraft's success in South Korea was not simply good timing. Starcraft 2 was only available for four hours so I expected it to be jampacked- there were roughly 50 demo stations and not all were full. anybody could walk in, pay a small fee, and play a game they knew how to play without having to install the thing, buy a computer, etc. When Blizzard launched StarCraft in the late 1990s South Korea was building up it's online infrastructure and creating the fastest internet in the world. In America, Travel Channel and ESPN2 (particularly late night) have turned into dedicated poker channels. I saw Diablo 2, WoW, and Starcraft. Soon, PC Bangs began to mushroom everywhere in Korea. Any other references to Baduk(Go) in western lit. But few have taken a more objective view on this issue. Gaming and the continued growth of Esports keeps getting big time huge and 2020 hasn’t slowed anything down. One of my Korean friends once made the comment that Koreans suck at sports- if this comment has any truth to it, I wonder if that encourages the promotion of non-physical "e-sports," since Koreans have obviously demonstrated they can excel in this arena....I can't believe I'm commenting on an analysis of Starcraft with an analysis of my own... on a Friday night. Its user interface is beautifully streamlined, and the elements from Total Annihilation’s user interface can still be seen in more recent RTS games. It's a matter of which came first — the chicken or the StarCraft — but the game ended up in more and more net cafes. @baekgom84 NO way Total annilation ruled!, in that although there were tons of units people focused on several units. Particularly egregious was the enormous imbalance caused by Mammoth Tanks on the Soviet side. “PC Bang” is a Korean term for cyber café (“bang” meaning room,) but this is not the dingy kind with four computers you see at tourist traps in Europe. Then arm always went for peewee or flash tanks, Core always always started off weaker, with its basic Kbot units with a pilthy laser and its tanks no better either.But once you got to level 2 units it changed the other way the core got stronger.Then much stronger with its goliath tanks which nothing could stop. I can remember in the early 2000s when Internet cafes sprouted up all around my hometown in the US, obviously intending to draw gamers in- these cafes lasted two years maximum, and I believe the reason I brought up above is a major reason why these failed where their Korean counterparts succeeded.I also feel that there's more to Starcraft becoming a national phenomenon than simply the ubiquity of PC bangs creating an opportunity for a professional industry. And like all rare events, the current popularity of StarCraft in Korea took a lucky confluence of a number of factors – some unique to Korea, some not. South Korea remains the country to go to in search of top level competition, with South Korean players making up the vast majority of Premier tournament winners in the past few years. PC Bang is the perfect choice in this scenario. Thanks for the in-depth solving of this "mystery" :) Greetings from Germany! The result is that StarCraft became a standard rather than a choice. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/lss/1246071348.html. So, for example, the biggest pro-StarCraft players have about face and name recognition as the most successful pro poker players in the U.S. For a period of time in the early 2010s, “ StarCraft II” it was the most-watched game in the world, a sign that esports might actually take root outside of South Korea… So StarCraft lives on in Korea, even though it has been 12 years since the game came out. More entrepreneurs open PC Bangs because people go there. Hi there, I'm a bit late to the party, but this was a very informative and entertaining read. ", Sources: Ask a Korean!, GosuGamers, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Gaming Age [Pic, Pic, Pic]. Better yet in Korea, there was already a model for a pro league and cable TV stations dedicated to a game. StarCraft is a real-time strategy game for the PC.It was created in 1998 by Blizzard Entertainment. I even walked around town, and noticed a PC lobby store, and went in and played a bit. These are glorious arcades with anywhere between 50 to 200 high-speed computers, comfortable chairs, futuristic interior design and a snack bar in the corner. This has direct implications for the popularity of PC bangs, because if groups of friends/couples are going to out and want to use a computer for entertainment, they will need a way to do so. There're many factors that contributed to SC's success, but I think the single most important factor was that SC is easy to learn. The Koreans have 12 professional StarCraft teams with top players making fat six-figure salaries. Even with an entertaining storyline and some creative naval and air units, there simply was not enough room for innovative game play. Korea does not have guaranteed social pension like Europe, nor has it encouraged everyone to save for retirement like America (until very recently). "Look familiar? Brute force VS Sneaky side, heavy metal against weak but advanced tech, only stupid rush-mad idiots say it is unbalanced. The problem is that the computers themselves weren't very advanced, so all the Cyber cafes would just install low req games like Starcraft. Not too many people go there by themselves; they go with their friends! We all went and saw Jurassic Park, right? It's a classic title that continues to pull in new players. It was only a matter of time when TV executives caught on and turn this into an even bigger phenomenon. Not only did the three sides feature vastly differnet playing styles, they were also very well balanced - especially after Brood war (though I'm still inclined to think that Protoss has a slight edge.) Korean pension system was a lump sum system as opposed to the annuity form you usually see in the west. "Many Koreans easily become obsessed with activities or games that test their ability to think and react rapidly, and excelling in such activities for competition during youth is highly encouraged," says Nick Rumas, a South Korea-based filmmaker and writer. I thought for once, your seemingly infallible pool of knowledge might show a crack or two, but once again you've nailed it. I notice StarCraft was played by many of the folks sitting down. That’s certainly true, especially in Korea. The long awaited sequel SC2 hit the market in 2010 and has since been very popular, even if it has fallen behind some of the most popular competitive games of today. But the advanced graphics may have been a hindrance, as it required a Pentium 133 Mhz and 24 MB RAM in order to run smoothly – a laughable requirement now, but very, VERY high end in 1997. Now, pro-gamers in Korea are looked upon like Sports stars in the states. The StarCraft syndrome cannot be explained without bringing up the PC Bang explosion.

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