For all you gamers out there, this will be your favorite post!  Today I’m going to talk about Starcraft, or sutakureputu (스타크래프트), which is the way Koreans pronounce it.  I’m a little scared writing about Starcraft. The die hard fans of Starcraft might all rush to hunt me down if I fail to be accurate about the game.  So before I write any further, please forgive me for any discrepancies!  I’ve never played Starcraft (gasp!) but I do know about the important legacy it has created in South Korea and abroad.  (Which is what this post is about).

For those of you who are normal, (just kidding) and don’t know anything about Starcraft, it’s a video game played by multiple players.  From what my friends tell me, Starcraft is a strategy game where players try to battle a different race of aliens on various levels of difficulty.  If I understood this correctly, it means that you have to ‘think’ really hard, with the possibility that you might be killed on a virtual setting.  This is not my idea of fun!  My ideal computer game is where I try to line up as many gems in a row before the timer runs out.

Not including myself, it seems that many people are addicted to Starcraft.  I know of people who have failed a semester because of Starcraft.  I’ve even heard of a man who lost his home because he couldn’t put the game down to go to work!  A friend described to me that the desire to “level up” or pass to the next level makes it difficult to stop playing the game.  I’ve always considered drugs and alcohol to be something we need to be careful towards, but maybe we should be on the lookout for Starcraft as well!

The positive thing about Starcraft is that it has made some people very rich.  Of course, the creators of the game are rich, but I’m not talking about the inventors of the game.  I’m talking about the players who have competed in Starcraft competitions and are now celebrities in South Korea.  For example, Im Yo Hwan (임요환) is a multi-millionaire.  He gets commercial endorsements in addition to the money that he earns by winning competitions.  On top of that, he’s barely in his twenties!  (I’m so kicking myself for not playing more video games when I was younger!)

Here’s a video on Starcraft and what goes on in the competition.  Hope I’m not creating any monsters here by showing this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47GLuOd3QVk