Time: 05:03:41 CET 20:03:41 PST 23:03:41 EST 12:03:41 Seoul 11:03:41 Beijing
NEWS
The rise and rise of Korean e-sports
Sam "shagrath" McCafferty unravels the mystery behind the rise of eSports in Korea. Focusing primarily on the social and economical issues that led to South Korea's proverbial big bang, Starcraft.
By Sam 'shagrath' McCafferty
Jul 12, 2008 23:29
Sam "shagrath" McCafferty unravels the mystery behind the rise of eSports in Korea. Focusing primarily on the social and economical issues that led to South Korea's proverbial big bang, Starcraft.
If you ever find yourself in South Korea and feel like striking up a conversation with someone try dropping a name like Yo-Hwan (BoxeR), Jae-Yoon (sAviOr) or Jang (Moon).
Three names that in the West would get you a blank stare but in Asia would earn you an approving nod from a hip young teen or a threshold breaching shriek from a female fan.
The size of the fan base and their enthusiasm for e-sports is just two of many differences between Asia and the West that keep places like South Korea far ahead of the curve when it comes to electronic sports. These differences are often subject to intense questioning but very rarely do these questions result in a satisfying answer.
To e-sport enthusiasts South Korea is perceived to be the land of milk and honey. South Korea has everything the West could possibly want for itself, such as around the clock television specializing in e-sports, six figure contracts for the hottest stars, lucrative corporate sponsorships for the premier teams and of course gaggles of devoted fans.
The few television shows on our continents that do specialize in competitive gaming tend to revolve around gimmicks and hooks designed specifically to pull in the not-so-competitive gamer. The big money contracts we dish out are usually few and far between and more often than not end up in the hands of a South Korean anyway. To top it all off our community is littered with fly-by-night sponsorship deals that are about as transparent as a lump of lead and just as valuable.
It can be difficult pinpointing exactly what it is South Korea, and now China, have that we don’t – besides an aptitude for math and an insatiable hunger for redundant technological advances. The reason Asia’s “something special” is so difficult to single out is that it was more than just one or two events that propelled South Korea onto center stage.
Impeccable timing had as much to do with e-sports’ success in the far East as anything else. An economic downturn is the perfect time to promote entertainment activities that won’t break the piggy bank.
Starcraft hit South Korean televisions and PC’s more or less simultaneously, Spring of 1998. During that time the South Korean economy was slap bang in the middle of a swan dive into despair as a result of bad loans. The majority of Korean banks were in poor financial shape and even the Korea First Bank had collapsed. When concerning cash, the urge to splurge quickly dissipated along with Korean big business leaving the television to take point as one of the few diversions that wouldn’t raid your wallet.
Television stations were feeling the squeeze of the collapsing economy just as much as the next industry in South Korea. Making programing cost-effective was priority number one and Starcraft filled that requirement beautifully.
Watching television at home was all well and good but the youth of today, as they do, like to venture outside and meet with friends on occasion. An economic crunch meant Mum’s purse strings were tightened and now even the Korean youth had to find cost effective ways to entertain themselves. Fortunately for Starcraft it had just as much to offer in way of entertainment on the PC as it did on the T.V.
Internet cafe’s, or PC bangs as they’re called in South Korea, were cheap, affordable and a pretty cool hangout spot for Korean youth. While fast food and cinema tickets would set you back at least a couple of bucks the PC bang would cost you as little as $1 USD for an hour of game time. Compare that to the $6 USD you’ll spend on an hour in a British gaming cafe and is it any surprise kids in Korea choose to utilize the service more than any other nation?
PC bangs may have contributed to Starcrafts success but Starcraft also contributed to the success of the PC bang industry. In 1998 there were 3,000 PC bangs operational in South Korea but by 1999 that number had increased to 15,150 largely a result of Startcraft’s demand. By 1999 South Korea had reached a population of roughly 46million residents, Blizzard claim that over 1million copies of Starcraft had been moved in South Korea in 1999 alone, that’s one copy of Starcraft for every 46 citizens.
Starcrafts versatility as a computer game and television property helped fan the flames of what South Korea now calls its national pastime. PC bangs made the game accessible to anyone looking for a fun game to play while OnMedia gave Korean youth something to aspire to, role models to look up to and a brand new sport all their own. In an economy with little spare cash Starcraft gave South Korea what they wanted at a price they could afford.
Speaking of youth. E-sports in South Korea benefited greatly from having launched the concept using the latest and greatest game at the time. Starcraft was the new thing to do in South Korea and as a result it received instant cool status with little or no direct effort necessary.
Gaming in the West was just as fashionable but the key difference there was that competitive gaming is something of a different animal compared to regular gaming. Having an intense interest in gaming, or PC gaming to be more specific, was slapped with a nerd-esque stigma by Westerners that to this day still stunts progress.
The perception of professional gaming being for nerds is a stigma that will require a herculean effort for the West to overcome but it’s something South Korea never had to waste time or resources dealing with.
The widespread availability of console gaming in the West made sure we had time for little else. Here’s just a short list of some of the games released in 1998, the same year as Starcraft. How many of these titles had you played before you even knew Starcraft or e-sports existed?
Metal Gear Solid (6million copies sold), Resident Evil 2 (5million copies sold), Gran Turismo (11million copies sold), Tekken 3 (4.5million copies sold), Xenogears (1.2million copies sold), Spyro the Dragon (3.2million copies sold) and Crash Bandicoot: Warped (5.16million copies sold).
By April of 1999 PlayStation alone had sold over 54million units worldwide. Korea’s 1million copies of Starcraft were just a drop in the bucket compared to the 430million units of PlayStation software sold by the same time.
While South Korea was busy building an industry and reviving an economy using Starcraft as its base Europe, America and Japan were all quite content with their little gray box.
Another puzzling question would be how the majority of the worlds gaming market became infatuated with control pads and memory cards while South Korea was seemingly immune to the seductive charms of Sony, Nintendo and Sega.
Korean economy aside, there was in fact another reason Korea side stepped console gaming altogether and that’s Japan. Korea’s relationship with the land of the rising sun remains strained to this day as a result of good old Japanese imperialism.
The occupation of Korea by Japan created a rift between the two countries which they never managed to put behind them. This resulted in Japanese goods being either completely omitted from the Korean market place or carrying a price tag with more digits than a Korean phone number.
Japan produced most of the Sony PlayStation software and hardware back then and the result of that was serious PlayStation deficiency for South Korea.
South Korea being the progressive nation that they are were amongst the first to initiate widespread broadband access. Government initiatives during the financial crisis were all about reviving the busted economy and widely available broadband access was seen as a stepping stone toward that goal.
In a rare case of progress brought on by government interference, a huge section of the country was equipped with the essentials to hook up an entire city with highspeed broadband. The government actually went so far as to offer Internet training programs to certain groups likely to be left behind in the digital revolution, senior citizens for example, the program was later made available to anyone who needed it.
The importance of the service to the health of Korean economics was stressed and the people responded. The result ranged from over a billion dollars in online shopping annually to a flood of games that took advantage of high broadband penetration rates by offering online multiplayer experiences. Online capabilities now being an aspect of gaming that has become mandatory, should a publisher expect their title to taste success in South Korea.
Unfortunately for South Korea it’s not all cultural phenomenons and booming industry, South Korean game culture has seemingly backfired on the consumer by shutting out all Western competition.
Instead the magazines are packed cover to cover with Korean produced MMO’s which means poor sales for any game not an MMO and not produced within Korea. The reluctance of magazine publishers and television producers to include Western content in their publications has seriously affected the quality of Korean produced games.
The South Korean games market is now flooded with sub-par MMO’s that are rarely released outside of Korea and are rife with bugs and quality control issues.
Consumer choice in South Korea has hit rock bottom. Importing titles with large mark-ups has become common place should you wish to experience something different.
Having an industry reluctant to let outsiders compete means most game developers wouldn’t touch the South Korean market with your investment capital. Western game developers quite literally fear the Korean market.
Korean computer graphics are now miles behind what has now become standard in the West, which could be a significant reason for Starcraft’s staying power. It’s much more difficult to turn people onto Starcraft when it looks almost comically old to a pair of European eyes.
The 2004 StarCraft league finals managed to draw a crowd of around 100,000 spectators with millions tuning in at home, spectators still continue to pour in by the tens of thousands.
The largest soccer stadiums in the world are hard pressed to draw a crowd that large. The World e-Sports Games in Hangzhou, China managed to draw “Over 2.3 million people” to their video stream for the finals, obliterating China’s then current records for Internet viewing.
The West clearly has a lot of catching up to do however, is it possible to replicate these results when titles capable of pulling in audiences of this magnitude are constantly overlooked by European and American companies?
The Championship Gaming Series has decided RTS wouldn’t interest American audiences, the CPL held very few Warcraft III tournaments during their several year reign, the WSVG had decided to drop Warcraft III for their final season and now even the ESL has replaced Warcraft III with World of Warcraft for the Extreme Masters event.
So the question to end all questions would be can Europe, America or even Japan mirror the success South Korea has had and China is starting to see?
With petrol prices at an all time high, Americans enjoying their own swan dive into recession, rising food and energy prices, sub-prime mortgage crisis’s and trillion dollar wars the West is looking more and more every day like South Korea circa 1998. Starcraft II is slated for release sometime in the near future, broadband penetration is at an all time high and the seeds of an online gaming culture having already been planted.
Maybe the West is finally ready to stop playing games and enter the e-sports revolution.
Three names that in the West would get you a blank stare but in Asia would earn you an approving nod from a hip young teen or a threshold breaching shriek from a female fan.
The size of the fan base and their enthusiasm for e-sports is just two of many differences between Asia and the West that keep places like South Korea far ahead of the curve when it comes to electronic sports. These differences are often subject to intense questioning but very rarely do these questions result in a satisfying answer.
To e-sport enthusiasts South Korea is perceived to be the land of milk and honey. South Korea has everything the West could possibly want for itself, such as around the clock television specializing in e-sports, six figure contracts for the hottest stars, lucrative corporate sponsorships for the premier teams and of course gaggles of devoted fans.
"To top it all off our community is littered with fly-by-night sponsorship deals that are about as transparent as a lump of lead and just as valuable."
Fans who would go so far as to ditch school to go see their favourite players compete. Europe and America do their best to emulate the proverbial promised land but we often find ourselves coming up short.The few television shows on our continents that do specialize in competitive gaming tend to revolve around gimmicks and hooks designed specifically to pull in the not-so-competitive gamer. The big money contracts we dish out are usually few and far between and more often than not end up in the hands of a South Korean anyway. To top it all off our community is littered with fly-by-night sponsorship deals that are about as transparent as a lump of lead and just as valuable.
It can be difficult pinpointing exactly what it is South Korea, and now China, have that we don’t – besides an aptitude for math and an insatiable hunger for redundant technological advances. The reason Asia’s “something special” is so difficult to single out is that it was more than just one or two events that propelled South Korea onto center stage.Impeccable timing had as much to do with e-sports’ success in the far East as anything else. An economic downturn is the perfect time to promote entertainment activities that won’t break the piggy bank.
Starcraft hit South Korean televisions and PC’s more or less simultaneously, Spring of 1998. During that time the South Korean economy was slap bang in the middle of a swan dive into despair as a result of bad loans. The majority of Korean banks were in poor financial shape and even the Korea First Bank had collapsed. When concerning cash, the urge to splurge quickly dissipated along with Korean big business leaving the television to take point as one of the few diversions that wouldn’t raid your wallet.
"The game managed to finesse its way onto television screens not because it was was the cultural fad of the year but because it was cheap to produce."
Starcraft at this point was beginning to grip the nation. The game managed to finesse its way onto television screens not because it was was the cultural fad of the year but because it was cheap to produce. Television stations were feeling the squeeze of the collapsing economy just as much as the next industry in South Korea. Making programing cost-effective was priority number one and Starcraft filled that requirement beautifully.
Watching television at home was all well and good but the youth of today, as they do, like to venture outside and meet with friends on occasion. An economic crunch meant Mum’s purse strings were tightened and now even the Korean youth had to find cost effective ways to entertain themselves. Fortunately for Starcraft it had just as much to offer in way of entertainment on the PC as it did on the T.V.
Internet cafe’s, or PC bangs as they’re called in South Korea, were cheap, affordable and a pretty cool hangout spot for Korean youth. While fast food and cinema tickets would set you back at least a couple of bucks the PC bang would cost you as little as $1 USD for an hour of game time. Compare that to the $6 USD you’ll spend on an hour in a British gaming cafe and is it any surprise kids in Korea choose to utilize the service more than any other nation?PC bangs may have contributed to Starcrafts success but Starcraft also contributed to the success of the PC bang industry. In 1998 there were 3,000 PC bangs operational in South Korea but by 1999 that number had increased to 15,150 largely a result of Startcraft’s demand. By 1999 South Korea had reached a population of roughly 46million residents, Blizzard claim that over 1million copies of Starcraft had been moved in South Korea in 1999 alone, that’s one copy of Starcraft for every 46 citizens.
"Blizzard claim that over 1million copies of Starcraft had been moved in South Korea in 1999 alone, that’s one copy of Starcraft for every 46 citizens. "
That number alone should impress but thanks to the booming PC bang industry Starcraft was available to anyone, anywhere at a very reasonable price. As a result as many as 500,000 Koreans were logging on to Battle.net at any given time.Starcrafts versatility as a computer game and television property helped fan the flames of what South Korea now calls its national pastime. PC bangs made the game accessible to anyone looking for a fun game to play while OnMedia gave Korean youth something to aspire to, role models to look up to and a brand new sport all their own. In an economy with little spare cash Starcraft gave South Korea what they wanted at a price they could afford.
Speaking of youth. E-sports in South Korea benefited greatly from having launched the concept using the latest and greatest game at the time. Starcraft was the new thing to do in South Korea and as a result it received instant cool status with little or no direct effort necessary. Gaming in the West was just as fashionable but the key difference there was that competitive gaming is something of a different animal compared to regular gaming. Having an intense interest in gaming, or PC gaming to be more specific, was slapped with a nerd-esque stigma by Westerners that to this day still stunts progress.
The perception of professional gaming being for nerds is a stigma that will require a herculean effort for the West to overcome but it’s something South Korea never had to waste time or resources dealing with.
"The perception of professional gaming being for nerds is a stigma that will require a herculean effort for the West to overcome "
So while Korea was raiding the sofa for spare change to hit the PC bang what was Europe, America and Japan doing that made them immune to the Starcraft virus? Shopping for PlayStation, N64 and to a lesser degree a few Dreamcasts, is what we were doing. The widespread availability of console gaming in the West made sure we had time for little else. Here’s just a short list of some of the games released in 1998, the same year as Starcraft. How many of these titles had you played before you even knew Starcraft or e-sports existed?
Metal Gear Solid (6million copies sold), Resident Evil 2 (5million copies sold), Gran Turismo (11million copies sold), Tekken 3 (4.5million copies sold), Xenogears (1.2million copies sold), Spyro the Dragon (3.2million copies sold) and Crash Bandicoot: Warped (5.16million copies sold).
By April of 1999 PlayStation alone had sold over 54million units worldwide. Korea’s 1million copies of Starcraft were just a drop in the bucket compared to the 430million units of PlayStation software sold by the same time.
While South Korea was busy building an industry and reviving an economy using Starcraft as its base Europe, America and Japan were all quite content with their little gray box.Another puzzling question would be how the majority of the worlds gaming market became infatuated with control pads and memory cards while South Korea was seemingly immune to the seductive charms of Sony, Nintendo and Sega.
Korean economy aside, there was in fact another reason Korea side stepped console gaming altogether and that’s Japan. Korea’s relationship with the land of the rising sun remains strained to this day as a result of good old Japanese imperialism.
The occupation of Korea by Japan created a rift between the two countries which they never managed to put behind them. This resulted in Japanese goods being either completely omitted from the Korean market place or carrying a price tag with more digits than a Korean phone number.
Japan produced most of the Sony PlayStation software and hardware back then and the result of that was serious PlayStation deficiency for South Korea.
"it helped define South Korea’s entire approach to gaming “If I can’t play it online, get it away from me”."
Aside from the lack of something, it was also the presence of a certain technology that helped Starcraft invade Korea, but more than that it helped define South Korea’s entire approach to gaming “If I can’t play it online, get it away from me”.South Korea being the progressive nation that they are were amongst the first to initiate widespread broadband access. Government initiatives during the financial crisis were all about reviving the busted economy and widely available broadband access was seen as a stepping stone toward that goal.
In a rare case of progress brought on by government interference, a huge section of the country was equipped with the essentials to hook up an entire city with highspeed broadband. The government actually went so far as to offer Internet training programs to certain groups likely to be left behind in the digital revolution, senior citizens for example, the program was later made available to anyone who needed it. The importance of the service to the health of Korean economics was stressed and the people responded. The result ranged from over a billion dollars in online shopping annually to a flood of games that took advantage of high broadband penetration rates by offering online multiplayer experiences. Online capabilities now being an aspect of gaming that has become mandatory, should a publisher expect their title to taste success in South Korea.
Unfortunately for South Korea it’s not all cultural phenomenons and booming industry, South Korean game culture has seemingly backfired on the consumer by shutting out all Western competition.
"The South Korean games market is now flooded with sub-par MMO’s that are rarely released outside of Korea and are rife with bugs and quality control issues."
Game news publications, that are widely available in South Korea, tend to stick to covering only the Korean produced games given they are the ones who pay the advertising fees. As a result Western titles that aren’t World of Warcraft or a World of Warcraft expansion pack find themselves without any exposure. Instead the magazines are packed cover to cover with Korean produced MMO’s which means poor sales for any game not an MMO and not produced within Korea. The reluctance of magazine publishers and television producers to include Western content in their publications has seriously affected the quality of Korean produced games.
The South Korean games market is now flooded with sub-par MMO’s that are rarely released outside of Korea and are rife with bugs and quality control issues.
Consumer choice in South Korea has hit rock bottom. Importing titles with large mark-ups has become common place should you wish to experience something different. Having an industry reluctant to let outsiders compete means most game developers wouldn’t touch the South Korean market with your investment capital. Western game developers quite literally fear the Korean market.
Korean computer graphics are now miles behind what has now become standard in the West, which could be a significant reason for Starcraft’s staying power. It’s much more difficult to turn people onto Starcraft when it looks almost comically old to a pair of European eyes.
"It’s much more difficult to turn people onto Starcraft when it looks almost comically old to a pair of European eyes."
In spite of this Starcraft and Warcraft III remain incredibly popular with Korean and Chinese audiences to sometimes record breaking proportions. The 2004 StarCraft league finals managed to draw a crowd of around 100,000 spectators with millions tuning in at home, spectators still continue to pour in by the tens of thousands.
The largest soccer stadiums in the world are hard pressed to draw a crowd that large. The World e-Sports Games in Hangzhou, China managed to draw “Over 2.3 million people” to their video stream for the finals, obliterating China’s then current records for Internet viewing.
The West clearly has a lot of catching up to do however, is it possible to replicate these results when titles capable of pulling in audiences of this magnitude are constantly overlooked by European and American companies? The Championship Gaming Series has decided RTS wouldn’t interest American audiences, the CPL held very few Warcraft III tournaments during their several year reign, the WSVG had decided to drop Warcraft III for their final season and now even the ESL has replaced Warcraft III with World of Warcraft for the Extreme Masters event.
"Gotfrag’s World of Warcraft streams may be pulling in 800,000 viewers, but it’s not 2.3million. It’s not sporting numbers."
Gotfrag’s World of Warcraft streams may be pulling in 800,000 viewers, but it’s not 2.3million. It’s not sporting numbers.So the question to end all questions would be can Europe, America or even Japan mirror the success South Korea has had and China is starting to see?
With petrol prices at an all time high, Americans enjoying their own swan dive into recession, rising food and energy prices, sub-prime mortgage crisis’s and trillion dollar wars the West is looking more and more every day like South Korea circa 1998. Starcraft II is slated for release sometime in the near future, broadband penetration is at an all time high and the seeds of an online gaming culture having already been planted.
Maybe the West is finally ready to stop playing games and enter the e-sports revolution.
RELATED NEWS
90 comments
Loading comments...
Most read last month
Most discussed last month
P.S. And the text about the nerds. You are considered a nerd not because you play a lot of games but because you are not a social person thanks to those games.
EDIT: Oh, and I like how the author skipped the cases of young children dying when playing non-stop for 20+ hours. How about that issue?
Do you really believe that they fall by the dozens each day because of gaming over there? There are a few cases where people died yeah, but those are the people who don't know any boundaries and should not be represented as the cases that define eSports and the consequenses of it in Asia. There is no "issue" here, it's just a case of milions of people doing a certain activity and a few of them mess up, as is the case with everything in life.
It's like saying "Yeah people get shot down in the USA at their highschools, going to school is bad for you".
It is an extreme example. You can also say that eating is bad because there are people who eat so much that they can't move and die in their houses being inable to move
But the other things I mentioned still are the case (imo) why Europe won't be like Korea in terms of e-sports. The cultures are also a LOT different. That's why in Europe the guy who plays throughout the day just to become "progamer" will never be treated well and will be considered nerd. Because when (if) he meets a real girl, he will wet his pants. Or will he speak with her about his passion for games? Please.
Everyone likes to pick one minimalist reason for things to make it simpler in their own mind, but realistically these things are a lot more complicated.
If you go by Olympic medal tally, since these are sports which 202 or w/e countries in the world actively compete in, South Korea was 9th, ahead of the UK, which isn't too bad for a country that's like the size of your city and whose citizens apparently just sit around all day playing video games. What more do you want from them, to win World Cup or Olympics in football? Not mentioning the number of European nations that haven't won nor are pwn at video games.
Btw., Sim4o-ToGa, if you think about your own comment for more than a second, and have a look at the average height of Koreans, your question: "Anyone heard for great basketball, volleyball, handball, athlete or any other kind of sportsmen from Korea?" Basically answers itself.
The oftener I read this, the more stupid it gets.
...
41. Bulgaria 1 G, 1 S, 3 B
Do I need say more?
well done recherche - hardly ever the case, but this is almost professional
however I think not that europe is in a esports crisis or has been overtaken by anyone
its just that there is a different focus here and in a globalized world a 100k € investment in europe is simply not the same thing as in china or korea, because everything is relative and spending 100k€ in europe buys you far less exposure than somewhere in asia unless its some well developed part like Singapore
I just finished reading the TIME magazine issue from 2 weeks ago, the main article(s) were about sports in different countries of the world.
Ofc they made an article about South Korea and it's gaming industry and it was almost identical to this article. From the economical crisis that let to the eSports to the 2.3 million people watching the WEG stream. It also featured some bits about Grubby, Sase, Lyn and Moon.
Shagrath put some other things in there which make it a great article nevertheless but it's still too much copied to call it eSports-award worthy.
The reason you're able to draw similarities between the two is because we're more or less treading the same ground, of course you're going to find similar aspects to them. Keep looking and I guarantee you'll find articles from years ago (as far back as 2003 I found) that also look strikingly similar to the one you're discussing, are you going to accuse TIME magazine of theft as well?
Most of these other articles have to include content that informs readers of much more basic e-sports concepts, something I didn't have to worry about, so there's more detail in this than you'll find anywhere else.
The similarities between this and the article on TIME are scarce at best, but we were covering similar topics and I'm not going to cut content just because TIME magazine happened to have written something similar.
You'll have to forgive me if I sound awfully defensive but you've just accused a writer of plagiarism, there's really nothing you could have said that would have offended me more than you just did, and you did it without actually double checking.
That this is a coincidence?
I'm not blaming you for anything though, you used some sources, that's it. Maybe you should have quoted them though. Some people might be interested to know about that TIME article.
this is bull shit. Do you think gtx280 and hd4870 only available in western country?
No wonder why europeans so suck at gaming with that high standard eye?
PS. no decent games from dumb european... they suck at playing and now what
they dont know how to design in 3d and c++ ??? Thanks for sharing your high Western point of view lol.. to me you are just a typical dumb european like rest of other WESTERN part
I always thought typical Korean MMORPGs nowdays heavily emphasized graphics instead of other aspects to appeal Koreans and their high standards of graphics, and 'whites', as you kindly discriminated, had less emphasis on graphics.
I guess 'whites' had greater emphasis on graphics and that's why Ultima Online and Starcraft, games that "... looks almost comically old to a pair of European eyes.", got some love from 'whites'. That's why AoC, which received an amazing graphics score on mmorpg.com, could not catch up to WoW, which, relatively speaking, "... looks almost comically old to a pair of European eyes."
Since 'whites' have better standards in graphics, that is why WoW, which runs on my 5 year old computer, had such a great success.
I'm sorry if you thought you had some good points. You only showed your ignorance.
I wonder why.
Maybe it's because your article is a POS.