StarCraft was never meant to be played the way Koreans played

NARRATOR: At 37 degrees to the north, and 128 degrees to the east, you will find the heartbeat of the world’s oldest premier esport. And on this day, October 11th, 2020, something unheard of in the game’s 20 year-old history is about to unfold. Starting from now until the  end of his tournament run, the greatest gamer of all-time,  StarCraft’s undisputed G.O.A.T., has decided to compete at the highest level  using Brood War’s hidden fourth race: Random. TASTELESS: free is going to be the fir

st player to face off against a Random opponent, in, I believe, it's about 19 or 20 years, here. ARTOSIS: (LAUGHS) In a Starleague, yeah, you're right. - Yes, in a Starleague. (LAUGHS) In a Starleague, yeah, you're right. I believe the last player to play Random was ChRh. - (CHUCKLES) Uh, that was a long time ago, he switched to Terran. (FADING OUT) We're gonna go to Shakuras Temple, it starts now - FlaSh versus free! NARRATOR: Long before the world could fathom a mainstream  appeal for com

petitive gaming, Korean Brood War was the first to show widespread fanaticism for an industry that would soon become a global, multi-billion dollar phenomenon. It's hard to image that over 10 years ago, League of Legends would host its first world championship event in 2011 with a prize pool of one-hundred thousand dollars. And it’s even harder to imagine that, a decade prior, StarCraft had already achieved that,  and more, with professional leagues, corporate sponsorships, and nationally tel

evised tournaments. Korean Brood War is the granddaddy of modern esports. It may not have been the first game where you could go pro, but it was the first game where going pro actually meant something, where being a progamer looked and felt like a big deal. If you were a Korean citizen in the 2000s, you knew about professional Brood War, and you had seen it live on TV while flipping through the channels. After all, StarCraft had brought in an audience to the tune of millions. Only a few year

s after StarCraft’s release in 1998, you could find one legally-purchased copy of  the game for every 20 Koreans. So, for many, StarCraft became a rite of passage. As one researcher wrote in 2002 while studying Korean gaming culture, "And so begins the 3 year-old boy's initiation into the world of StarCraft." All of this is to say that Brood War was, and still is, a contemporary cornerstone of Korea’s pop culture history; it is, literally, the inflection point of Korea’s transition into the di

gital era. And if you were to construct StarCraft’s Mount Rushmore today, you could have many long, drawn-out debates about who deserves to be commemorated in the second, third, and fourth slots of the monument. But for the first position, without a doubt, there is one player whose inclusion would be decidedly unanimous: Lee Young-Ho (이영호), or as most know him, FlaSh. Because if Korean Brood War is the granddaddy  of modern esports, FlaSh is its son. UPBEAT TECHNO MUSIC SOME BRITISH GUY: Sout

h Korea is often thought  of as an ancient land, (FADING OUT) but when it comes to modern  technology, this is a very wide world. NARRATOR: 70 years ago, South Korea lagged far behind  the rest of the modern world. After 35 years of Japanese colonial rule, the country had finally  reached independence in 1945 with the end of World War II, only to find itself torn in half by global power struggles. Entering the early 1960s, the country’s economy was weaker than the likes of Haiti, Ethiopia, and Y

emen, with over 40% of the country suffering from absolute poverty. But from the 1960s through the 1980s, South Korea experienced rapid, oftentimes described as "miraculous," amounts of growth. Ready to compete in the global economy, Korean politicians decided that the country’s next strategic move would be to  become the future of a newly computerized world. So, at the start of the ‘90s, a set of policies  known collectively as Jeong Bo Hwa (정보화), or “digitization,” were put into place  to cons

truct Korea’s new digital highway, the Korea Information Infrastructure. Soon, South Korea became one of the most  well-networked countries in the world, but it wouldn’t be until the 1997 Asian Financial  Crisis that internet access would finally reach the masses. After many businesses suddenly collapsed, Korean entrepreneurs began to seek out a low-cost, low-effort way to bounce  back, and they found their answer in the form of the PC bang (PC방) - or what you  most likely know it as, the intern

et cafe. From 1997 to 1999, the number of PC bang in Korea  grew from an estimated 100 locations to over 13,000. And very quickly, young Koreans, armed  with an affordable internet option, started to become netizens at faster rates than any other  country in the world. Just like the government had hoped, computing literacy had skyrocketed. But residents of the PC bang were motivated to adopt the internet for a reason the Korean government had never anticipated, a reason that would be the conseq

uence of this entire chain of events: young Koreans clamored to play StarCraft. (FAINT) BIRDS CHIRPING When Lee Young-Ho was in elementary school, he watched his older brother play StarCraft for the first time on their home computer. Intrigued by the game, he tried his hand at it, and so began his initiation into the world of StarCraft. Well, not quite. Shortly after Lee Young-Ho started to pick up the  game, his family decided to get rid of their home PC. And so for the next several  years, L

ee Young-Ho paid little mind to StarCraft. But one day, just like every other Korean  in the early 2000s, Lee Young-Ho stumbled upon a professional match being broadcast on TV. And this time around, something... clicked. WHIMSICAL MUSIC Not long after, Lee Young-Ho’s family decided  to buy a computer again. And immediately, like a moth to flame, Lee Young-Ho found  himself completely enamored with Brood War. From thereon out, every moment of every  day, Lee Young-Ho wanted to play StarCraft. He

would play late into the night  after getting home from cram school; he would run to the PC bang during lunch breaks to get  an extra game in; and when he couldn’t play, he would daydream about the game, running through as  many different scenarios as he could in his head. And he wasn’t just obsessed with the game, he was  also becoming incredibly skilled at a remarkable rate. Using the strategies he had learned from watching the pros, Lee Young-Ho quickly began to climb the online ladder. And

as he beat increasingly  powerful opponents, he started to make connections in the competitive scene, finding skilled practice  partners to play with and top-player clans to join - one of which he would later memorialize  as his chosen ID after it disbanded: FlaSh. And very quickly, FlaSh realized that he wanted to  stand shoulder to shoulder with the very players that he had seen on TV. And so, after having  only played StarCraft for a year-and-a-half, FlaSh decided to dive head-first into Sout

h  Korea’s arduous progamer pipeline. On the eve of his summer break, he convinced his parents to  let him travel to Seoul. There, at the epicenter of Korean progaming, FlaSh would begin his journey towards becoming StarCraft’s very best. But in order to get permission to go, he had  agreed to a stipulation with his parents: within a year, he would be drafted by a pro team. And if not, he would give up his dream, for good. COMPUTER HUMMING NARRATOR: StarCraft was never meant to be played the way

that Koreans played. It was never even meant  to be played in Korea, at all. In 1995, Blizzard Entertainment had just released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to widespread acclaim, with Warcraft II ready to launch later that year. Eager to expand their IP and solidify  their position as the real-time strategy powerhouse of the 1990s, Blizzard began development on a new franchise: StarCraft. StarCraft, like its predecessors, was  going to be a game fundamentally about war. Playing as one of three races

, Terran,  Protoss, or Zerg, you could harvest resources, develop infrastructure, and then build out  an army of units to attack or defend with. Every base and every army would have  its own strengths and weaknesses, and by using clever strategy, you could find  ways to outsmart and overtake your opponent. This is the game that Blizzard Entertainment  intended to make. And for the most part, they succeeded. But once the game was released  into the wild, it became apparent that StarCraft was even

more than Blizzard’s game  designers had ever anticipated. No one can tell you exactly when  StarCraft made its way over to the peninsula of East Asia, but once it did, it caught like wildfire. StarCraft had launched with a free, online  matchmaking service ready to be embraced by the Korean Information Infrastructure; the game was performant and could run on almost any machine; and, importantly, it  was available on PCs, not Japanese consoles. And even though Koreans had a medley of other PC 

games that they could choose from - as opposed to one that hadn’t even been localized to Korean, at all - StarCraft offered a depth and charm to it that was viscerally appealing. It was a game that always had something more for you to do, an expansive skill tree of small advantages  that you could work into your play, one-by-one. No matter how good you could get, there was  always so much more StarCraft to be played. And the Korean government was quick  to observe this enthusiasm. So, in the y

ear 2000, the Korean Ministry of  Culture, Sports, and Tourism established KeSPA, the Korean e-Sports Association. KeSPA  sanctioned professional leagues, issed and mandated progaming licenses, and upheld a strict competitive standard for professional play. From now on, progaming would be an  institutionalized, government-regulated profession in Korea. And so if you were a young,  aspiring gamer with a dream of becoming the best, there was now a path carved out for you to see if you had what it

takes. ASPIRATIONAL MUSIC Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing.