Monday, June 11, 2012

On Professional Starcraft, Koreans, and Hard Work

Sometime during my Junior year in college I happened to be waiting for a meeting to start.  I decided to kill time in a computer lounge near the meeting location.  The computers had the video game starcraft already installed (best university computer lounge ever?).  It was a game I had played when I was much younger, probably 12 or so.  I mostly watched my older brother play, and I had gotten about halfway through the single player portion of the game before getting bored and moving on to another game. This time around, though, my interest was sparked and I played for about 10 minutes until the meeting started.  That simple event sparked a hobby that I still enjoy to this day.

The game itself is easiest to explain as chess played in real time (no turns).  You collect resources, build fighting units, and go smash the other guy while he does the same thing.  In addition to strategy, it takes a lot of finger speed and concentration to play the game well.  My younger brother would find great amusement watching me bounce around in my chair as I played.  I have tried to be more relaxed before, but every time I get into a close game, my competitive side takes over.  I tense my shoulders, my face gets closer to the screen, and my legs rapidly bounce like I am getting ready to sprint.  My wife knows to not tell me anything I should be remember while I am playing, because odds are I will either not remember or not hear her in the first place.

One thing that really draws me to Starcraft is the difficulty in playing it well (I don't actually play it well, relative to people good at the game, but compared to your average non-gamer I would seem unbeatable).  You have to put in endless repetitions to develop the muscle memory, game knowledge, and reaction speed needed to be a top player.  It is a little bit like tennis in that regard; if you want to be good there is simply no replacement for putting in massive amounts of time playing the game. Take a look at this video (just the first half) which gives a few brief shots of a pro's keyboard as he plays. 

You know how a really clean golf swing makes old guys all giddy? Same thing when a Starcraft player gets to see a pro's keyboard when he plays.  Actually that is just a guess, I have no idea if golfers get giddy about a clean swing.  But nerds definitely get giddy over NaDa (one of the best ever) playing Starcraft.

Another fantastic aspect of starcraft is that just about anybody can be good at it if they so desire.  In any sport there is a combination of practice and natural ability that leads to being good.  Lebron James is good at basketball because he spends a lot of time dribbling, shooting, passing... oh and he is a 6'8", 250 lb. statistical anomaly of a human being.  I could have spent my whole life practicing basketball and I would never be as good as James, or even as good as he was in high school.  I don't mean to suggest there is no natural skill required to be good at starcraft.  This is something commonly debated amongst gamers, actually.  Regardless of your opinion, pretty much everyone agrees that the genetics factor, so to speak, is far less important than your typical sport.

When I was first getting into Starcraft 1 (more accurately, Starcraft: Broodwar), I poked around online and discovered a thriving professional scene based almost entirely in Korea. The Koreans had individual and team leagues, team houses with coaches and maids and players who trained up to 12 hours a day.  There were occasional attempts by top foreigners (all non Koreans are called foreigners when talking about starcraft, interestingly) to break into the scene, but none of them found any lasting success.  Every year an event called WCG (World Cyber Games) matched up the top three qualifiers from every country who wanted to participate.  In Starcraft 1 Koreans took first every time.  Here is an interview question directed to one of the Korean participants in the 2010 WCG:
         Q: How strong were the foreigners compared to last year?
         A: The same, not much improvement. As long as I didn’t play too loosely, I could win easily.

In 2010 Starcraft 2 came out, which was hailed as the big chance for the rest of the world to finally catch up with the Koreans.  There were a number of factors that made it the perfect opportunity, I will list these in bullet points because I am a math guy and I really like bullet points for some reason.
  • Starcraft 2 is easier to play than Starcraft 1.  The blazing speed I talked about earlier is still needed to be good, but not quite as much as Starcraft 1.
  • Most of the top Starcraft 1 Korean players didn't switch to the new game, meaning a big chunk of Korean talent and sponsor money weren't a factor.
  • The excitement of the new game injected a lot of money (sponsors) into the scene, so foreign teams were able to start their own team houses, and even sent many of their top players to Korea to train against the best.
 And I could go on.  The above is hardly an exhaustive list. The point being that the advantages of the Korean professional scene dropped mightily with the release of starcraft 2, in my personal opinion there was almost no advantage, though it is impossible to say definitely.

You have probably already guessed where I am going with this.  The Koreans are still the best at Starcraft 2, and not by a little bit. In the most recent major tournament (MLG Spring Arena Anaheim, so this was played in the US) Koreans took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  They took 17 of the top 20 places overall.  The funny part?  It was considered a good tournament for foreigners.  Now, I am making it sounds worse than it really was (based on seeding and tournament structure it was easier for many of the Koreans to get a high finish, though those seeds were earned) still, it shows the massive disparity.  Overall, the gap has closed considerably, and top foreigners are able to beat the top Koreans from time to time, though not with any regularity.  Still, trust me when I say the Koreans are simply better.

This all brings me to the question, why are the Koreans so much better? For the purpose of time, I will rule out the possibility that Koreans are a genetically engineered video game super race designed by aliens to take over the world once everything is run by computers (though I am still mulling that one over).

My personal belief is that the answer is not found in inherent advantages in the scene or the competition or genetics, but that it actually goes all the way down to cultural values. 

This is a massive oversimplification, but here goes.  Korean culture values and cultivates hard work more than Western culture.  Based on my observation, Western Culture tends to take a "you either have it or you don't" approach.  If you are smart, you excel at school and get into a university, if you aren't, well there is community college and you will be just fine (no offense at all towards community college, I think that can be a great option, just illustrating a point).  In Korean and most Asian cultures, if you are smart you excel and get into a university, if you aren't, then you study your butt off and get into university.  Once again, massive oversimplification but I think most would agree with this point, at least to an extent.

This way of thinking translates into many parts of life.  Culture has a way of affecting almost every aspect of your life.  When it comes to starcraft, I think the Koreans just work harder than the foreigners, simple as that.  I talked earlier about how starcraft is such an involved and technical game that every bit of practice you put into it makes you better.  A foreign player might play 8 hours a day, 6 days a week and call it good.  After all you just worked more than a typical full time job, that is a lot of time put into the game, don't you think?  Yes, it is a heck of a lot of time.  Doesn't mean the Korean playing 10 hours a day 7 days a week won't wipe the floor with you.

The realization that good ol' hard work can be the driving factor of your success is both humbling and freeing.  I am an actuary, which is a profession where you take exams which you pass and get raises, promotions, new responsibilities, etc.  Or in my case I mostly take exams and fail them.  I find after a failed exam that it can be easy fall into the mindset of, "maybe I am just not smart enough for this."  Who knows,  maybe that is true.  Doesn't mean the guy with a similar IQ who studied twice as many hours won't pass the exam while you mope about not being smart enough.

It is humbling because you also have to accept that when you failed it was probably because you didn't put in the time and effort.  It is freeing, because so many obstacles that once looked impenetrable open up to you once you realize the limiting factor is usually your willpower rather than circumstances. 









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