Starcraft, A Killer Game
Starcraft isn't the sickness, the entire rest of my life, no, the world is the sickness, because it gets in the way of my Starcraft. Anyone who plays Starcraft, and anyone married to them, knows what I mean.
I have written poems about Starcraft, I have shown up late to dinner parties, late and angry because I lost a game of Starcraft online. I have battled Korean children 14 time zones away until the sun went down and then watched it come up again, it's dawn rays searing my red eyes and making my head pound.
Starcraft is the finest, the best video game ever made. I finally quit playing that game, but only after I had basically turned my life into a terran bunker surrounded by zerglings with not a single firebat by my side.
Why did I, do I, love that game so much? Well, let me count the ways:
1. Real Time Strategy (RTS). Video games, like porn, meet very specific kinks for the people who play them. I like real time strategy, where my opponent and I are actually making our moves simultaneously. Imagine playing a game like chess which is turn based, but instead of taking turns…you and your opponent move at the same time. That's real time strategy. When your pieces meet on the field of battle, they fight amongst themselves and a combination of offensive statistics, defensive statistics, terrain, and other modifiers, including chance, decides the outcome.
This is a whole style of play that was not possible before computers. The closest I can come to imagining a pre-computer version is actual war, where units with various equipment are fielded against each other by generals acting at the same time. But, war is hell. Come to think of it, Starcraft is hell too.
2. Player vs. Player. In Starcraft, you can play on Battlenet, where you are matched up online with opponents. Your wins and losses are recorded for all to see. It is really intense playing against people from around the world, and you see strategies of play spring up and evolve like memes among the rich, fertile ground of global competitive play. For example, the early zerg strategy known as a five pool, which was when a zerg player would start making offensive units very early in the game was a huge influence on play.
It was a risky strategy, because the cost of making those early fighting units meant that the player would be behind the curve in unit production later. Basically, if you're a zerg and you go five pool, you'd better win or you're dead. If you strike at the king, you must kill the king.
That brings me to my next point of what makes Starcraft so fantastic.
3. Game Balance. There three separate races that someone can play, Zerg-many weak but cheap units, Protoss-expensive but strong units, and Terran-a mix of both types. They make the game endlessly fascinating. There are strategies and counters to each race, but each race's strengths and weaknesses are perfectly balanced. A problem with many RTS games is that, like chess, they just have one kind of army. Or they lack balance, so that you can just pump out one kind of unit and win with that tactic.
The beautiful balance of Starcraft means that if you hoard one kind of unit, say, hydralisks if you're zerg, then your opponent can destroy you with an effective counter, say dark templar if they are protoss. The dark templar are very weak, but they do incredible damage and they are invisible to hydras. If the Zerg player doesn't have an overlord nearby to view the dark templar, he will be wiped out by a force that cost a fraction of his hydra horde. In other words, every strategy has a cheap counter strategy. The game favors not brawn, but brains.
4. Cooperative Play. My favorite way to play Starcraft was with a friend against other teams of two online. This is called 2v2, and for me it was the most exciting. Our wins depended on us helping each other, almost reading each other minds, as we took on pairs from around the world. What made it great was that the other teams we played also often had thousands of wins to their credit, so we enjoyed a very advanced level of play.
Sometimes my partner and I would get into this sweet spot where we knew exactly what each of us was going to do in a given game, and we would play these intense games, usually lasting about 20-30 minutes each, where we would barely beat very skilled players while the rest of the world just fell away. It was the zone, flow, oblivion, whatever you want to call it. My wife had other words for it.
5. Art. The design of the game was perfect. Every time you click on a unit, say, a firebat-a guy with a flamethrower, he'd say "somebody need a light?" and when you clicked again, "Let's burn." It was the perfect mix of macho and camp that never got old. I clicked those units hundreds of thousands of times during the years that I played Starcraft and I never tired of their one liners. It was a pitch-perfect tone to strike and Blizzard, the game's designers, really nailed it.
At the peak of my obsession, I would play until two in the morning with my friend, and then we'd talk for hours at work the next day going over our games and strategies, and coming up with ideas to do next time. My mind spun out strategies and ideas all day and I couldn't wait to try them online that night.
In the US, that level of geekery is not really acceptable. There weren't too many people I could talk about it with. As I grew into my 30s, I would play kids who were 12 online, and they'd be totally skeeved if I told them I was twice their age. It was like a grown man jumping into the sandbox to dig holes with the toddlers. Creepy, not cool.
But in Korea, the promised land, things were markedly different. That country embraced Starcraft. Remember that zerg strategy I mentioned? They sang about it in a love song over there. A handsome man sang, "It was a zergling rush" in a video, and his gorgeous girlfriend sang, "You should have built bunkers" back to him.
The Koreans have several professional Starcraft leagues. The matches, shown on giant screens, fill stadiums over there. They have announcers, and the players are national heroes. They wear jumpsuits like racecar drivers when they compete. Oh why couldn't we have done that in the US? They have gaming cafes in Korea where proprietors are sometimes caught putting speed into the water to keep the players up and playing longer.
One poor guy actually dropped dead after playing for hours. My friend and I shuddered at the news. We knew exactly how that guy felt: the thrill of playing for hours, no food, no rest, playing, playing, playing. He probably got into an intense game, making his best moves, his mind calculating resources, unit strengths, terrain, maps, strategies at lighting speed…clicking his mouse 20 times a second, sending armies across the board, coming close to losing, coming back! And then, suddenly, his opponent does something, something so obvious! Why didn't he see it coming, lurkers dropped into his supply line! Of course, or an air attack on his overlords…why didn't he prepare? His best-laid plans, destroyed before his eyes.
Desperate, he counter attacks, but it's useless. He sends good troops after bad, his expansion is destroyed, then his base.
Remember the voices of each unit, those zingers they let fly when you send them to battle? Well, each unit has its own scream when it dies, it's own way to let you know that you, their creator, their general, their God, has failed them. Your base burns. The thunder of tanks sounds. "Nuclear launch detected." And then it's over.
Your opponent types the two most humiliating letters in the English language: "GG" It means, "good game" it means, "you lost" it means, "so long sucker." It makes you feel like you're really going to die sometimes. That must how this poor kid in Korea, hopped up on speed sneaked into his water, must have felt. And then the poor bastard really did die.
That is Starcraft. It's wonderful, it's impossible. I played for years, and then my wife finally put it to me. The game goes, or she goes. And so the game went. It was an easy decision to make, but it was hard to do. I still crave the game. Next year, after a decade of waiting, Starcraft 2 is coming out. My wife and I are already fighting about it.
My Starcraft Poem:
I took a risk with an early expansion
Your five-pool rush was an ugly surprise
My bunkers held up ‘cause my micro was handsome
I’m starting to build to your midgame demise
My siege flies toward the ledge above your minerals
My wife knocks on the door asking for attention
Your tech to lukers was totally predictable
Tanks slaughter your drones and the game’s losing tension
“GG” flashes across your screen
I queue more tanks in a spending spree
You say “GG” but it’s not what you mean
Your guardians surprise me and you win with glee
My wife knocks again and now she is mad
I’m rocking back and forth and feeling the shame
I’ll be tired tomorrow and I’ll also smell bad
‘Cause I’m making again for one more game
