The Extremes of Internet Gaming In South Korea 152
Rick Zeman writes "CNN has an expose showing that in South Korea, the world's most wired country, Internet gaming breeds two extremes: elite 'athletes' who earn fame and six figures, and addicts who literally play until they die and tells the stories of players on both sides of that real-life divide. From the article: 'The first thing you notice about the professional video game players are their fingers — spindly creatures that seem to flail about at their own will, banging at the computer keyboard with such frequency and ferocity that to visit their live-in training centers in South Korea is to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks.'"
Typical of their culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly, and how many pianists out of all those who dedicate themselves make 6 figure incomes.
Wanting your child to be the best, or for your child to want to make their parents proud is only a natural need for a parent/child relationship.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly, and how many pianists out of all those who dedicate themselves make 6 figure incomes.
Wanting your child to be the best, or for your child to want to make their parents proud is only a natural need for a parent/child relationship.
To honor your parents (and ancestors) is a rather deep rooted thing in East and South Asian cultures. Parents need to define what is and isn't honoring - being a slave to online gaming is hardly something to aspire to.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, and how many pianists out of all those who dedicate themselves make 6 figure incomes.
Wanting your child to be the best, or for your child to want to make their parents proud is only a natural need for a parent/child relationship.
To honor your parents (and ancestors) is a rather deep rooted thing in East and South Asian cultures. Parents need to define what is and isn't honoring - being a slave to online gaming is hardly something to aspire to.
Bold claim. What's your reasoning?
Re: (Score:1)
Bold claim. What's your reasoning?
I see what you did there!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not! I can stop anytime I want.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like you're getting tired of me pwning your noob ass in Battlefield 3. Don't worry, I'll start using lube next round.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly, and how many pianists out of all those who dedicate themselves make 6 figure incomes.
Probably a few orders of magnitude more than the number of Starcraft players making 6 figure incomes.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Hell, most of them make 10 finger incomes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Become a world class pianist and you can still be one when you're 60.
Learn StarCraft as a teen, and you won't be doing that when you're 60.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There's actually a lot of study going into RTS games like starcraft right now and whether or not it trains a person to be a better multitasker, whether or not it builds general skills like being able to count a large number of objects on a screen in less than a second (Most people fail for numbers > 7) and a number of other general skills that make a player better at these kinds of games.
Not surprisingly, the best SC2 players right now were SC Brood War and Warcraft 3 players. While yes, SC2 will have a
Re: (Score:2)
First, they play SC, they are not athletes.
Second, retired professional athletes like Bolt will have made a lot of money and will be able to retire. Even if they hadn't they would make money from endorsements, they could become coaches etc.
Who the hell would be stupid enough to want a celebrity endorsement from some wide-as-he-is-tall SC addict who can't find the time to wash? Who would pay (or be able to stand being in the same room as) such a person?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:4, Funny)
We don't really know that for certain yet. The original starcraft doesn't have the same DRM restrictions infecting modern games. It is entirely possible the original starcraft will be around in 50 more years even if the drm laden later blizzard titles crumble to dust.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing that, at very least, the pianist would get a more... pleasant... description of his likely-equally-active freakish horror fingers.
"The first thing you notice about the professional video game players are their fingers -- spindly creatures that seem to flail about at their own will, banging at the computer keyboard with such frequency and ferocity that to visit their live-in training centers in South Korea is to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks."
Seriously guys? Are you going to mention their horrid, bulbous, glassy eyes, or their vile inhuman mandibles next?
Re: (Score:3)
no, the underarm B.O.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Want to talk about some crazy fingers, watch a banjo player. Bela Fleck is considered one of the world's premier banjo players, spanning genres as diverse as traditional bluegrass, jazz, classical, and pop. As a kid, he practiced 8+ hours a day, every day. He attended New York City's High School of Music and Art. FFS, his parents named him Béla Anton Leo Fleck, after composers Béla Bartók, Anton Dvorak, and Leo Janáek.
Re: (Score:2)
"To impress his father, he wanted to be the world's best."
Swap out gaming with piano and would the media be so concerned?
Funny you should ask.
I've known a few South Koreans socially, and many of them had a very odd relationship with music. They had achieved great technical proficiency at an early age and they had had the stereotypical "dragon lady" mothers who forced them to practice and to take part in high-pressure competitive events. Here's how technically-obsessed their training had been: one of them commented that she "would have been laughed at" if she had played a Mozart piano sonata in public, since these works were
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad analogy. The piano is an instrument that has been around for centuries and one that you can measure yourself by players of past/future generations, we are talking about being the best at manipulating a computer program that won't be around in five years.
The piano has only been around for centuries because someone started mastering it when it hadn't been around for centuries.
Re: (Score:1)
Piano was mastered as a harpsichord before it was invented. There were probably simpler key-based plinkers or harp mechanics prior to that.
Somebody didn't just say one day, let's tip a harp on its side and whack it with lil' hammers like a xylophone.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:4, Insightful)
Chess, Go, and Poker have world championships as well; why should those games receive more respect than Starcraft?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Four big differences between SC and SC2:
1. DRM. You won't be able to play SC when Blizz goes bust.
2. You can't be banned from playing SC.
3. SC has LAN play.
4. SC was innovative, SC2 is just SC with a pretty face.
SC will still be played when SC2 is dead and forgotten.
Re: (Score:2)
Starcraft 1 (Brood War) has already been around for almost 15 years, and is still played professionally in South Korea.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... up to a point.
There are skills involved in competitive Starcraft play that will be transferable to other games. If you were a world-class Starcraft player at the point when Starcraft 2 was released and you decided to move to the new platform, then you'd be at a pretty big advantage compared to somebody like me, who played Starcraft for a few months at release, for the campaign and a bit of LAN multiplayer then moved onto other things.
I've known a few people over the years who have gotten deeply into the hardcore competitive gaming scene (though I've never had the talent, time or inclination to go that way myself). They are an incredibly conservative bunch of people when it comes to their games. These are not people who will pick up the latest releases and mess around with them for fun. They have their game, they play it, and they do not want it to change. They might speculate about when the sequel is coming out, but unless it's nothing more than a direct graphical uplift of the original, then it's highly possible that they'll angrily reject a sequel when it does appear.
I remember when Quake 3 appeared. Here was a game that had been designed by id for - and with the co-operation of - players from the hardcore QuakeWorld and Quake 2 scenes. And yet I also remember that, at release, most of the hardcore community from those games refused to make the transition for as long as possible (or in some cases, ever). I've always got the feeling that id were a bit bruised by Quake 3's reception - certainly, it was the last time they put multiplayer at the heart of their game design.
Why the ultra-conservatism? In part, it's driven by ego and a desire to protect their position. These people are among a tiny elite in a game and their self-esteem and (if they've gone professional) their income depends on remaining part of that scene. Change - particularly transition to a new game - represents a risk to that. What if they fall behind the curve?
But there's also a broader point, which gets to the difference between professional video gaming and more traditional games and sports. Now, some sports do evolve over time - but they do so slowly. In some extreme cases such as Chess and Go, while the tactics people use at the top levels have evolved, the rules of the games themselves have been constant for centuries. Video games, on the other hand, are a fast evolving medium. Technological advances don't just mean better graphics - they make it practical to realise entirely new types of game. And at the same time, games are developed to make a profit, so they will evolve to chase whatever the marketing men believe is the new big-selling trend (currently modern military shooters with objective-based competitive multiplayer).
I suspect that what will happen in the end is that a couple of defined "standard" professional-level video games will emerge, with largely fixed game mechanics. Quite plausibly, this will mean one core RTS, one core FPS and one core MOBA. These will receive occasional graphical uplifts to reflect technological advances, but gameplay mechanics, balance etc will become much more locked than they are now. So if, hypothetically, Starcraft should become that RTS "standard", the hitpoints of a Zergling would basically become set more or less in stone, perhaps being reviewed in 20 years time. Meanwhile, "normal" commercial games development will separate further away from these games, continuing more or less as it is at the moment. So Blizzard might put out Starcrafts 3, 4 and 5, with new storyline, units and balance changes, but with no expectation of these becoming the new hardcore professional standard.
Is any of the above an argument that there is any worth in becoming a professional gamer, other than the money you can make from it during the fairly brief window where you can stay at the top? Absolutely not. But then, I'd say that the same goes for professional sports.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't recall any of your /. posts, but I love this one. I'm setting you to fan immediately. More to my point, people from the Quake generation, as I was from the Doom generation, always talk about their prowess at gaming....but they always seem to leave out modern titles. I would agree with you 100% that MW3, MW2 or CoD games ARENT the same as Quake, as they arent the same as Doom, but why havent gamers in our generation evolved (I know that answer actually: job, kids, wife, bills)? We always talk abou
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bad analogy. The piano is an instrument that has been around for centuries and one that you can measure yourself by players of past/future generations, we are talking about being the best at manipulating a computer program that won't be around in five years.
This is a blizzard game. They have ridiculously long (for computer games) playable lifespans, and have basically single-handedly established professional (rather than just competitive) RTS gaming as a viable full-time profession. Blizzard RTS's only start dying out when they get replaced by the next Blizzard RTS with similar mechanics, and many who are successful at StarCraft II were also very good at its predecessors StarCraft:Brood Wars and WarCraft III.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:4, Funny)
This is a blizzard game. They have ridiculously long (for computer games) playable lifespans
You obviously have not played Diablo 3...
Re: (Score:2)
It's never the single player. D3 is going to last longer than D2 if they know how to milk it thanks to the built-in marketplace and economy.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:4, Insightful)
So, didn't bother to read TFA, eh?
In South Korea, these games mean BIG money. High-end corporate sponsorships, huge live audiences, nationally televised competitions... Every bit as serious (take that as a positive or negative, as you wish) as professional athletes in the US - Who also won't keep playing into their 60s, as another poster pointed out.
And y'know, if I could make over 100k a year playing video games - I'd drop my 9-to-5 in a frickin' heartbeat. "Meaningful" work? Hey, if you think getting accounting system A to talk to POS system B has any deeply satisfying "meaning" to it after 20 years, I have a few seats left I can sell you, to watch the paint dry on my patio.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the money involved isn't that big in Korea.... Overall, the "foreign" scene in SC2 has more money involved, which is why so many SC2 pros have resisted KESPA style rules that would prevent them from going abroad.
Some NA and Euro tournaments have prize sums for qualifiers, or 3rd spot in a main tournament, that compare to 1st place in GSL, Korea's premier SC2 league. Hell, Dreamhack Valencia, which is just a small in-between tournament/qualifier for Dreamhack Winter, has a 1st place prize equal to
Re: (Score:2)
And y'know, if I could make over 100k a year playing video games - I'd drop my 9-to-5 in a frickin' heartbeat. "Meaningful" work? Hey, if you think getting accounting system A to talk to POS system B has any deeply satisfying "meaning" to it after 20 years, I have a few seats left I can sell you, to watch the paint dry on my patio.
As fun as that might be, you won't want to do that unless you are talking enough money to set you up for retirement as well. "Normal" careers that pay over 100K are not that few and far between for people with computer skills, and you can work those into your 60's. Now if these gamers were making a million or something a year, then yeah, that would be awesome. You'd be able to retire on what you made without having to ever get another job, or you could be satisfied with a lower-paying, but much more sati
Re: (Score:3)
You can't swim or play basketball competitively and get paid enough to last your entire life, but that doesn't mean that people don't still take those as their career early on and still end up doing quite well and being happy after it ends. And most professional sports players are super-stars in the majors getting paid millions.
You can't live your entire life only thinking about what happens after you job ends.
Re:Typical of their culture (Score:4, Interesting)
But in E-Sports, the 150K figure is for the very best. The very best are making less than a bench warmer in the NFL. Being the very best means practicing in your team house for 10-12 hours per day. Many top Starcraft players have needed surgery for RSI injuries.So even if you're the best in the world, you're going to get 10 years at best. You think 150K a year is a lot, but after your career is over what do you do? What skills do you have? All you can do is play a video game. You're hostage to it. Former top players have gone on to become coaches, and this is the only real progression left. If you are near the middle or bottom of the pack, your situation is even worse since you have less money.
This is not a long term career like traditional professional sports is.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that if you are a player in say, the NFL, you will make a ton of money, and after 8-12 years retire and draw a pension from the NFL. Bench warmers make 150K+ a year, so if you're even halfway decent you will be making good money.
What fraction of high school football players go on to play in college? What fraction of those get into the NFL? What fraction of those manage to last the years necessary to draw a decent pension? A $14,500 average pension rate doesn't seem very viable to me.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_pension_for_an_NFL_player [answers.com]
Similar figures exist for baseball, basketball, and hockey - though I think hockey and baseball have more developed minor league systems to make it possible to earn a (perhaps margi
Re: (Score:1)
Have a look at the crowd paying to watch people play StarCraft II at DreamHack Winter 2011 [youtube.com] (Jump 1 minute in if you don't want to watch the game.)
For an event in the U.S. you can take a look at the MLG crowd. [youtube.com]
None of them are as large as the Korean Air OSL Finals [youtube.com]
Show me one piano concert with an audience at even half that size.
Re: (Score:2)
In regards to Dreamhack Winter, that's only a partial crowd, the one in the main stage hall, there are other halls rooms where it's shown too, on huge screens.
what happens when the games fade? (Score:1)
These kids start playing StarCraft when they are 5 or 6 years old, practising 18 hours a day, 7 days a week to be pro players when they are 18. But StarCraft won't last forever. It seems like they're investing their formative years learning a skill that is transient. And, how many of them will be pro players when they are 40? None, I'm going to say, so they still need another career.
Something seems unwise about taking it to this extreme. Nothing wrong with gaming or getting good at games, but anything
It's Called Entertainment (Score:5, Interesting)
From a utilitarian standpoint, I don't see a whole lot of different between these entertainers and the entertainers in this story. They are sacrificing everything and taking one risky gamble to do what they love for a little chunk of change that only the 0.01% enjoy. Why does society apply stigmas to people trying to do what they love? If you're going to rip on pro-gamers about job security, get ready to rip on pro-entertainers. Comedian jokes get old much faster than Starcraft I. A professional football players body lasts far shorter than the run of Starcraft I. Music seems to only enjoy popularity for about two weeks considering what you hear on popular radio stations. Hell, Olympic gymnasts are left with hip problems if their career lasts too long. Everything fades, even computer languages. If that's not true of your field, you're in a dead and boring field anyway. Even framing houses has become a different ballgame since I did it as a kid.
Instead of lecturing them about transient skills, you'd be better off pointing off that putting all your eggs in this basket means that their is a very high chance you're going to live the life of the starving artist. There's a small percentage you could rake in massive endorsements and if they do, they should take a page from broke athletes and musicians who squandered that money the instant they got it. Save that money. Save it. Spend money like you're making $50k a year instead of a million a year because that income is fleeting.
People playing themselves to death is no different than that stupid high school athlete shooting up steroids in the locker room. Both are terrible actions that should be criticized but there is a point where you just have to let people do what they want if they truly love what they do.
Having your life taking over with something like becoming a scientist or learning everything there is to know about repairing internal combustion engines will last you for your whole life, probably.
Are you really saying that the useful science today is the same useful science that came out when Starcraft I came out? Everyone has to keep learning to stay relevant. Even entertainers. Or they grow old and become has-beens, the same applies to Starcraft players.
Re: (Score:2)
South Korea is a non-multicultural, uniracial nation - an unforgivable sin in this day and age.
lol what?
Korean population is homogenous because they didn't import slaves from Africa. This is an unforgivable sin?
Another factor (probably the biggest one) is that East Asian dynasties have been relatively stable through the millenia and wars of conquest have been very few, compared to the Western world. The largest infusion of non-Korean blood into their population came from the Mongol invasion during the Ghengis Khan era. However Koreans are about as different from Mongols genetically as Norwegians
Re: (Score:2)
England didn't import slaves either -in fact we were the first to oppose the trade. And yet we're rapidly, and with the collusion of successive Governments, turning into a mongrel nation of no culture.
Re: (Score:2)
Having lived there for six years, I do. And while you or I may disagree with his assessment, he's correct about it being "non-multicultural".
Re: (Score:1)
Re:what happens when the games fade? (Score:5, Insightful)
how is that different from majority of sports? Do you think these teen gymnasts you see on TV have any tangible skill on hand once they reach age of 18-20?
Have you ever played hoops or football and wanted to be good at it? Do you earn millions as a sports star now?
Besides starcraft is not as flimsy career path as you think it is. RTS genre shares a lot of common on the metagame level (micro/macromanagement, combat tactics) and the best players can see through that. They can switch to another game and be competent players almost right off the bat, with training they are able to reach top levels of performance.
Once their reflexes detoriate they can move to coaching and train next generation of players and this happens a lot in korean starcraft league. They also can try their hand at casting and use their experience and insight to draw the spectators into the game.
Granted, only the best of the best have shot at the followup career, but it's the same with any other sport discipline where a significant level of physical prowess is required. Once you are too old, you are too old. Either you are famous enough to live off the fame, or you are not and you need real job.
Re: (Score:2)
Chess and Go champions (Score:2)
What will really be interesting to see is an RTS that is played for centuries, even as computers and computer software become more advanced.
Re:"timeless" as Chess (Score:2)
Actually, Chess is in a bit of conceptual identity trouble. The power that computers have over modern chess has begun to encroach the game. We're in a Silver Age now because new young players can ramp up faster, but just around that corner comes the point that it's beginning to dry up.
Anand said in a lecture recently that Garry Kasparov made his name as an Openings analyst, and together with his teams created novelties that could last for months before they were finally beaten. Now, in the computer age, at
Re: (Score:2)
/s/Starcraft/Football/
At least if you get crazy good at Starcraft and the Starcraft bubble dies, you can probably translate some of those skills into Starcraft 2, or some other RTS. At 40, what are you going to do if you spent your whole youthhood as a football star? (Alright, probably retire on your giant piles of cash, but then, you could probably say the same thing about Korean Starcraft stars, too.)
They are true zealots (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Ya. ePeens.
Buckli pri keyboards? (Score:1)
Once I a people from Singapore or omei ðe like organii to place a big order i Unicomp, manufacturer of IBM’s Model M buckli pri keyboards. Ðe reference to ‘their fingers -- spindly creatures that seem to flail about at their own will, banging at the computer keyboard with such frequency and ferocity that to visit their live-in training centers in South Korea is to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks’ reminded me of Model Ms.
Addiction (Score:1)
Gaming addiction? "Addictive personality"?! Damnit, this article pissed me off so much I dropped my cigarette in my bourbon and now I can't find my cocaine. I hope they're happy with themselves.
"blah" as atheletes (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't get this. If you want to call what you do a "sport", as in a structure competition or whatever gets to be a sport these days, OK then. But I thought "athlete" still implied some sort of extreme physical activity. Becoming dehydrated or mentally exhausted with a lightning quick mousing hand doesn't exactly qualify in my book.
Re: (Score:1)
That would disqualify a lot of Olympic competitors as athletes. It is often implied but for a lot of events, like oh say anything involving a gun and not moving from the same spot, it does not. We should just drop the whole is a gamer an athlete question because it all depends on your preconceived definition of what an athlete is that is not well defined enough to answer this question.
They are talent and competitors, they do something that few others can do, they trained that skill, and people want to wa
Re: (Score:3)
You must not shoot much. Holding a high ready takes strength and endurance, as does controlling recoil while maintaining precision. And depending on the gun, a day at the range can be feel like getting punched in the chest a thousand times.
Re:"blah" as atheletes (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, you mean to discount things like drag racing, or skeet shooting, or maybe golf?
Re: (Score:2)
I'll discount golf as a sport all day long. :D
Re: (Score:3)
There's a distinction between sports with athletes and sports with players. Athlete implies some physical prowess beyond hand-eye coordination and dexterity. That's what I took from the GP and something I agree with. NASCAR was teased years back when they started calling drivers athletes, even though drivers tend to keep themselves in very good shape.
If I start a professional sun flower seed spitting league, I'd be playing a sport but I'd hardly consider myself an athlete.
Re: (Score:3)
But I thought "athlete" still implied some sort of extreme physical activity.
Then look at this. [youtube.com] The things he does with his hands are extreme. They try different things to improve their hand speed, like punching sand, etc. Quick hands aren't something you're born with, it takes a lot of training and stamina. Getting to that level takes a lot of work, and your hands WILL be exhausted.
Re: (Score:2)
I still don't get this. If you want to call what you do a "sport", as in a structure competition or whatever gets to be a sport these days, OK then. But I thought "athlete" still implied some sort of extreme physical activity. Becoming dehydrated or mentally exhausted with a lightning quick mousing hand doesn't exactly qualify in my book.
Golf, the most notorious of the multi-million dollar non-sports.
Re: (Score:2)
Tiger Woods actually fractured his leg playing golf. Sure, anyone can play golf or soccer for that matter casually, but when you get to the professional level it is completely different.
Training Centers (Score:2)
"to visit their live-in training centers in South Korea is to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks."
So the secret to successful professional gaming is continually listening to NPR's Car Talk?
Maddening clicks and clacks? (Score:2)
Motivation (Score:2)
Seems to me that these kids need something to do, they are actually into accomplishing something (playing for the higher score I guess), it's just that their motivation is screwed up.
Of-course many people have addictive personalities, if it weren't for the games, they might have been into addictive drugs, but again, they need something to do.
I looked up the labour laws in South Korea, here is something to note [ilo.org]
Article 62 (Minimum Age and Employment Permit)
(1)A person under the age of 15 shall not be employed as a worker. However, this shall not apply to a person with a employment permit issued by the Minister of Labour.
(2)The employment permit referred to in paragraph (1) may be issued at the request of the person himself only by designating the type of occupation in which he is engaged, provided that such employment will not impede compulsory education.
Article 63 (Prohibition of Employment)
Female wokers and those who are under 18 shall not be employed for any work detrimental to morality or health. The prohibited type of work shall be determined by the Presidential Decree.
Article 64 (Minor Certificate)
For each minor worker under 18, an employer shall keep at each workplace a copy of the census register testifying to his age and a written consent of his parent or guardian.
(and there is more there).
Also they have a minimum wage law there as well [yonhapnews.co.kr], it's over 4 bucks per
Re: (Score:1)
Oh, and by the way, check this out [wikipedia.org]:
South Korea was the first country in the world to provide high-speed internet access to every primary, junior, and high school.
- well, as per usual the government creates the problem! You get more of what you subsidise and less of what you tax, so they get more Internet addicts because they are subsidising Internet access from primary school and on.
Re:Motivation (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me that these kids need something to do
Agreed. I get the same feeling every time I see a bunch of kids taking turns using a wooden stick to swat at a small leather sphere. Really, don't these kids have anything better to do with their time?
Re: (Score:1)
and this is a story about baseball now, not about a bunch of teenagers that are depressed out of their lives, spending 14-19 hours playing videogames they are hooked on in a country that subsidises Internet access to all schools and preschools? Ha, I didn't see that coming.
Re: (Score:2)
A wise choice, seeing how it's the workers who produce the wealth, and businessmen merely manage it (at best; usually they just loot it).
Re: (Score:1)
A wise choice, seeing how it's the workers who produce the wealth, and businessmen merely manage it (at best; usually they just loot it).
- ignorant comment.
Get a bunch of workers into one location and nobody who wants to run a business with them, no investment capital, no tools provided by the investment capital, no direction, no idea what to do, see how that turns out for you.
What a great opportunity: instead of getting an education you get to be an unpaid child laborer.
- did I say anything about forcing people out of schools and into jobs? Or are you under impression that parents are interested only in exploiting their children, and thus they cannot be trusted and their children cannot be trusted, but the government can?
I think you're confusing artists and businessmen. Artists experiment to figure out what interests them, businessmen try to maximize some variable (such as profits or test scores). An entrepreneur who prioritizes based on what happens to interest him is not going to be in business for very long.
- you hav
Re: (Score:2)
Funny how you take a story about gaming in S. Korea and turn it into your hobby horse.
Re: (Score:1)
Except it is not a story about 'gaming' in South Korea, it is a story about addictions fuelled by government subsidies that ensure that the kids in primary, junior and high schools have Internet access.
It is a story about addictions, and this very story talks about how government is searching for the 'cure' completely oblivious that it is the cause of the disease. The root cause of this is subsidies on the one hand that channel kids into the Internet addictions and on the other hand it is about laws and re
Re: (Score:2)
Except it is not a story about 'gaming' in South Korea, it is a story about addictions fuelled by government subsidies that ensure that the kids in primary, junior and high schools have Internet access.
Only in your deluded mind do you think that kids having access to the Internet is worth a rant that starts with "addictions fuelled by government subsidies".
Re: (Score:1)
Only in your empty head things happen without cause. How is it, living with a belief that everything happens independently and regardless of any preceding events? Must be a surprise, every time.
Re: (Score:2)
Only in your empty head things happen without cause.
That's not what I said. I said, "Only in your deluded mind do you think that kids having access to the Internet is worth a rant that starts with "addictions fuelled by government subsidies"."
What if the free market had brought about the Internet to kids all on its own? Are you going to go into a rant about the evils of the free market? And what about benefits from having the Internet, such as having easy access to information? You act like the government was giving kids alcohol.
Street Countdown (Score:2)
Visions of "professional" gamers make me think of that episode from IT Crowd where Moss starts playing "street countdown", it's a bunch of people taking a game WAY too seriously, yet somehow it actually is legitimate...
Prime: "First rule of Street Countdown. Is that you really must try and tell as many people as possible about it. It's a rather fun game and the more people you tell about it the better."
As a musician (Score:3)
Six Figure Income? (Score:2)
Internet gaming breeds two extremes: elite "athletes" who earn fame and six figures
Considering that 100,000 Won is only about $88, I feel sorry for these guys.
Deaths? Typical journalist story (Score:5, Insightful)
Over lunch his dad, who has become well-versed enough in "StarCraft" strategy to engage in lengthy conversations about troop movements, attack formations and character choices, tried to help MarineKing with his strategy against MVP.
Putting Starcraft in scare quotes? WTF? Who does that? And mixed case? It's just plain Starcraft. Yeah, I know, Blizzard calls it StarCraft, but again the reporter is advertising his outsider status. "I'm not one of these video game freakazoids," he seems to be saying. "I'm just here to report and confirm what geeks the rest of us already know that they are. They are The Other, and worthy of "
The entire article purports to show us the extremes...that's called yellow journalism, eh? And yet for all its bluster, it mentions but two deaths. How many people died in Chicago this last weekend?
It's totally obvious that this "journalist" had his article written before he even got off the plane in Seoul Incheon (renowned as being one of the world's most sleep-friendly airports, and true to its reputation). He treats his subjects as if they were among the groups CNN treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (for example: devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans).
Re: (Score:2)
Either you play video games or you die trying.
No, the mesage from the article isn't that simple. It mentions those extremes, yes, and the headline in typical fashion plays it up, but the article offers mutliple viewpoints.
But, as soon as the weird, incomprehensible world of "those scary video games" is entered, the reporter needs to advertise his outsider status - where in other topics being an outsider is considered a badge of ignorance and provincialism.
It's a "stranger in a strange land" perspective, and there's nothing wrong with it as a story format, especially considering the audience he's writing to is not going to be familiar with Starcraft or gaming in S. Korea.
Putting Starcraft in scare quotes? WTF?
It's part of standard style guides to use quotes for titles of things like book, movies, and in this case, a video ga
Our girl athletes will kick their butts (Score:2)
addicts who literally play until they die
spindly creatures that seem to flail about at their own will, banging at the computer keyboard with such frequency and ferocity ... to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks.
(Insert nationalism) I would put odds on our average domestic US female facebook addict when opposing a Korean star crafter any day.
I'm not sure what the zerg rush equivalent is called in farmville but even an elite .kr player would have no idea what hit them were they to compete against our ladies.
20 million kids are eaten every second (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice think-of-the-kids scare piece, it'll play well with Tammy Teaparty. But couldn't he at least have worked in some sinister Ender's Game reference and asked how America's cyber-soldiery will fare on the battlefield against these little yellow freak-children? (Note: All Korea is North Korea to Tammy Teaparty).
Typical media hyperbole bullshit. (Score:1)
If they instead were musicans then this story would instead be about their talent and dedication. But since it has to do with games then its cast in a negative light using a lot of forbidding adjetives and grim setting.
Typing too much != Strategy (Score:2)
Typing all that much, because like games that way. Is possible to balance games where less clicking is desirable, but koreans get expert in "micro", controlling the units directly to impose tactical on how the units play.
Enjoyment? (Score:1)
Do they even enjoy the game(s) any more?
Foreign Correspondent (Score:1)
Re:The truth is plain to see, folks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The truth is plain to see, folks (Score:5, Funny)
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/north_south_korea [theoatmeal.com]
Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
There have been no more than in other sorts of competition. There was the big match-fixing scandal (see the liquipedia article [teamliquid.net]), and a couple of more minor things more recently that have been punished harshly, but, well, baseball's seen lots of this nonsense, too.
As for evidence that matches are actually rigged (with the winner decided in advance), well -- do you have any evidence that this is widespread? Actually, a good bit of evidence that it's not is that despite many of them trying, very few foreigners
Re: (Score:2)
The Koreans don't WANT a vastly expanded audience... In statements both by KESPA and GOM officials, they want to grow the INTERNAL Korean scene. In fact, that's one of the aspects behind KESPA's creation for Starcraft I.... A nice, homogenous little Korean scene, with the majority of foreign influence in the form of teams kept out. For foreigners to take part, they had to undergo a lot of bueraucracy just to be allowed to take part in the qualifiers.
Re: (Score:2)
Quite an interesting story, especially amount of struggle between MK and his parents.
Seconded; this is one FA that's worth the read.
Re: (Score:1)