Will Korea Ever Get Enough of Starcraft?
For those who have been in Korea for a while and have spent time in a PC cafe the thing you will notice right away is how Koreans are fascinated and addicted to online games. Young Koreans will sit in dark and smoky internet cafes for hours playing their games and stopping only momentarily to order ramen noodles from the cafe clerk to eat or to take a drag from a cigarette. The one game they play the most in particular is Starcraft. Why this game is so popular continues to allude me because I have played the game before and it is a fun game but not fun enough to play for 24 hours at a time. There are many newer games that are much better real time strategy games (RTS) than Starcraft.
For whatever reason no other game seems to resound with Koreans quite like Starcraft. They even have professional Starcraft leagues here, with top players receiving salaries similar to baseball players. On my Korean cable TV service, I receive two 24 hour online games channels that features Starcraft games 70% of the time. Starcraft has become as much of a cultural trait of Korea as kimchi.
The Korea Times has an interesting take on the Starcraft phenomenom. The paper believes Starcraft may be so popular due to Korea’s capitalist culture:
A new book, “When Games Talks to You (Keimi Marul Kolool Ttae),” claims that no computer game has exerted such an impact on people as the online game, which mirrors aspects of contemporary culture.
“If you want to win the game, you need to mobilize the game’s resources and units as effectively as possible. That is the same with the logics of capitalism,” writes the author, professor Park Sang-u of Yonsei University, better known as the nation’s first game commentator. “The principle of `maximum profits from minimum capital and labor’ is perfectly realized in `Starcraft.’ Just as capitalism turns out to be the most suitable regime in the history so far, real-time strategy games like `Starcraft’ dominate the game market,” he writes.
“It was `Starcraft’ that salaried workers, who have been strangers to online games, are adapting most easily to among computer games,” Park writes.
Another recently published book, “Computer Game and the Culture,” provides a more academic observance of the game, saying it is “epoch-making.”
According to book, the real-time game introduces many inventive factors, such as the online Battle Net service, metamorphosis of battle units, a horizontal interface window and so on, which have now become the norm in the market.
The authors point out its speedy movement of units and relatively short game duration as major traits appealing to quick-tempered Koreans.
The idea of the capitalist culture causing people to play Starcraft never occurred to me. However, short games that are appealing to quick tempered Koreans I found interesting because that seems like such a stereotype being thrown out there about Koreans. But incidents like the outrage and protests over the latest “Great Dokto Crisis of March 2005” only serves to feed these stereotypes. I just don’t buy that Starcraft is so popular because of “quick tempered Koreans.” Does anyone else got any better theories why Koreans are so addicted to Starcraft?
i beg to differ.
as a former pro player…
i must admit, that there is no game like star craft…
so i must say its incorrect for you to say, there are better RTS.
at much, perhaps other great games, which cant be compared to SC
ciao
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