STARCRAFT IS A VIDEO GAME THAT SAYS MORE ABOUT OUR SOCIETY'S CULTURE than some of our own history books ever could. It is true that we can find similarities between the servers of Battle.net and the world itself. In this video game we all find a universe that as the same variables has a modern society, the variables include many things, but more universally to server, game race, and game design. Allowing for a game to become more than just a hobby, letting it mold into a new world for which we are allowed to explore. And hopefully, this realm will find its way into StarCraft II.
“There is and always will be, laid back Europe whose friendships and conversations that leads to a better understanding of the game, and a more mature approach to the whole realm of teams, gaming, and online friendships.”SERVERS COULD BE SEEN AS CONTINENTS THAT MAKE UP THE GLOBE, any random gamer will tell you certain things about different servers, but in my opinion, each one has a unique personality: There is and always will be, laid back Europe whose friendships and conversations that leads to a better understanding of the game, and a more mature approach to the whole realm of teams, gaming, and online friendships. While I am logged on Europe, not only do I find (as an American) a different approach to teams and the game in general, but a desire to discover skill and techniques to help in my gaming. In my later years of StarCraft I found myself enjoying Europe rather than my actual beginning server, U.S. East.
THEN THERE IS ASIA, AND IN SOME CASES CHANNELS IN THE U.S: WEST SERVER. The isolation of players, not only by a communication barrier, felt by the Western Hemisphere and of the European counterpart, but a tariff on equal trade of skills and knowledge on the beloved realm of StarCraft. This isolation leads to a mythical experience of the Asian channels and servers that loom above us (although some greater players have made a smooth transition to these societies, I still to this day couldn’t understand how to adapt to that society) as a ceiling of skill that we desperately jump to and try to let are collective fingertips scrap up against every once in a great while.
AND SO SADLY THERE IS THE U.S. EAST, a roguish rebellion of manners and professionalism with a myriad of personalities. This complex of diversity in not only skill but aggressive behavior, that I have indeed fell accustomed to, shows us not only to game but to dominate with ferocity and tenacity that bubbles over from the stew of the game into the U.S. East channels. However, as much as I can insult and nit-pick my own beloved server, I still enjoy the conversations, the horrible teams I was once a part of, and I don’t think any other server could match it in just plain fun.
“I always loved Terran for the complexity and utter perfection one must demonstrate in order to salvage a win. Terran’s units allow for the strangest battles that are not limited to a major clash, but through tactics, lead, and strategies that have to be perfected in order to compete with the other races.”SO AS WE ARE DIVIDED BY LOCATION, COUNTRIES, and servers that we play on for reasons such as lagging tendencies and a language barrier. However, we find ourselves connected by are three races: Protoss, Zerg, and Terran.
Even tendencies of the real world are found inside these peculiar, but vastly different races. I was a Terran player (and when StarCraft II comes out I will be a T user again) and I always loved Terran for the complexity and utter perfection one must demonstrate in order to salvage a win. Terran’s units allow for the strangest battles that are not limited to a major clash, but through tactics, lead, and strategies that have to be perfected in order to compete with the other races.
IN TERRAN VERSUS PROTOSS, NOT ONLY DO I HAVE TO HARASS WITH VULTURES AND DROPSHIPS, (as some other races also do) I have to construct a push using abilities like mines, then having to channel as much as the units into the range of my siege tanks, while placing turrets to stop observers and shuttles. Terran versus Terran included, is not just a straight attack and conquer it is a see-saw of momentum and land position. These two matchups mostly (as Terran versus Zerg is a whole different animal) creates a sense of perfection and micro mechanics that people with a great sense of control, confidence, patience, and beautiful fluidity with in-game movements are able to achieve a mastery of the Terran race.
IT IS ON MY OPINION, THAT PROTOSS WAS ALWAYS THE MOST BASIC, but from after years of really listening to gamers talk about their situations I have found that their basic tendencies is indeed, their greatest weakness, and in this makes the Protoss just as equally as complex, as the other two races. For Protoss is not basic, I have found great difficulty to play a race that requires such macro-mechanics that I am not able to compete with. I still, to this day, don’t understand timing for Protoss attacks in any of the Protoss matchups, nor do I understand how using the units collectively in monstrous battles. I have felt from the Protoss players I have met, that their greatest strength’s were their own individual timing and scope of attacks. As every race takes patience, I have found that Protoss is one of the most tedious to play with, and I respect my fellow StarCraft players who can master it.
BUT WHAT I REALLY THINK IS ONE OF THE MOST PECULIAR TRAITS OF THE PROTOSS RACE IS THEIR DESIGN. I believe governments are making scientists trying to tap into physics like this race, such as warping and force field capabilities. It might be difficult to believe we could achieve these sorts of things, but in the fields of quantum physics we might some day unlock Pandora’s Box to create energy fields, a new type of medium that allows us to communicate and revolutionize are own technological advances of the twentieth century.
ZERG WAS ALWAYS A RACE I NEVER COULD FULLY UNDERSTAND; they felt to me a race separated from the other two. Their capabilities of expanding, ideas of nesting, and consuming worlds like the stereotypical alien species, on which this race was most convincingly built upon, we have found an outcast in the middle of are realm. Units that evolve, from a single biological build with splicing of genes, controlled from one lone cerebrate reminds me of the gene pooling of the recent worlds that include the designer babies, or the spare parts clones that should send shivers up the collected spines of the world. If StarCraft players can see this type of army being built, it is perfect for combat, and something I believe is a sought out goal of futuristic scientists in nations that are trying to out do each other on an imaginary battlefield of technology. In fact, I believe we are at the doorsteps of this type of army; it is not that hard to believe that we could clone an army like this in order to fight our own battles, or even to defend our own bases.
“One can conclude that we are already past the Terran stage of machine building, and assembly line, or conveyor belt production. It is up to the reader to decide if the world is going to turn to a consuming juggernaut that will suck out are planet to bits, and spawn people from genes, or why not even call them larva from hatcheries, or eggs in pea tree dishes.”SINCE BECOMING A FICTION WRITER, I HAVE FOUND THAT THE GREATEST TOOL A HUMAN BEING IS GIVEN IS THEIR OWN IMAGINATION; and as much as my thoughts could be conceived as radical, wrap your mind around it. We have cloned sheep, scientists have been asking to clone people for spare parts, corn is being taken to a new level of energy, some mother’s have actually thought about the idea of designer babies. Almost every first or second world country has, or can acquire the capabilities to, design and stock nuclear weapons.
Can you really say that are own governments would never do such a thing? In a world of free markets and the internet, when ideas are passed in a few blinks of an eye, when the United States are about to enter the age of Intellectual Property Rights that Alan Greenspan has so promptly forecasted. Can we really sit and say they would never entertain the thought?
ONE CAN CONCLUDE THAT WE ARE ALREADY PAST THE TERRAN STAGE OF MACHINE BUILDING, and assembly line, or conveyor belt production. It is up to the reader to decide if the world is going to turn to a consuming juggernaut that will suck out are planet to bits, and spawn people from genes, or why not even call them larva from hatcheries, or eggs in pea tree dishes. Asking whether or not constructing a game built on intergalactic warfare can show a futuristic advancement is absurd in some views.
OR IS IT? IF ONE IS TO DESIGN A GAME IN ANOTHER WORLD AND ANOTHER REALM, then it releases all attachments to this world. Letting it float and perpetuate to any crazy radical or seemingly impossible designs of armies and race. Then who do are beloved game designers have to answer to? The ideas are limitless, and that is the same with scientists who are given any tools, any amount of time to discover new weapons, new capabilities to lead are countries to the top. Designers are all considered one group of people, what allows them to design is to leave behind all ideas of civilization behind them. And that simple fact is what makes StarCraft a game that is addictive, and an actual realm.
OF COURSE STARCRAFT COULD BE BROUGHT INTO A WORLD VIEW, BUT ALSO THE INDIVIDUAL PART of it can be universal to the real world. What were you taught as a StarCraft gamer? The faster you made units, collected money, expanded, went up the tech tree, the better chance to win. If you stuck to universal tactics of battle, scouting, disrupting economies, setting up traps, and misleading; it creates a better chance of winning the bigger battle at the end. And more importantly if you were to get the most out of every unit, if you could kill five other units with one or two of your own units, you could again find success in any game you played.
“My greatest fear of StarCraft II, is that they make a video game; not a realm. It is in these universal traits that lead gamers to follow for years upon years, even to lead some to addiction, because in essence, battle.net could be seen as a cultural world that lies between games, servers, channels, and internet websites.”NOT ONLY WAS IT ABOUT THE IN-GAME TACTICS, BUT ABOUT THE OVERALL COMMANDER IN CHARGE OF THEM. I was taught that skill is a byproduct of the skill I would play against. If I only played against decent players, I could only become a decent Terran, if I played with experts, and people of greater skill, than and only than could I find a way to move up the ladder of the battle.net universe.
I WRITE THESE THINGS, BECAUSE THEY ARE UNIVERSAL IN ALL OF SOCIETY, this is the strength of are game. Everything I’ve learned from being a pretty good Terran (never really good, but more like C on PGT at my peak.) is universally used in the real world.
THE REASON FOR THE UNIVERSALITY IS THAT THE DESIGNERS SUBCONSCIOUSLY TOOK THE IDEA OF WARFARE, economy, culture, and put in their own recipe for a new realm. This leads to variables that create a game that works on levels beyond this essay, beyond South Korea, beyond the ones and zeroes that are programs allows us to see it. This game becomes an art form, it becomes a medium of invention, this allows for a society to invest hours of time, not only in gaming, but in clans, in Use Map Setting maps that consist of recreational games, movies, and even pornography! Channels can be seen as cities, one travels to op ToT) to try to grab games with some of the elite, but to learn, and socialize with the elite.
SOME EVEN TRY TO CREATE THEIR OWN FAMILY, THEIR OWN TEAM, a country that is an outlier from the overpopulated channels consisting of Ladder Challenges or clan x17- on U.S. East, U.S. West’s op hyo) Brood War Kor-Nexus, (these channels maybe outdated it’s been awhile) it leads for a feeling of journey, of adventure, and enterprise. This could be seen as an entrepreneurial escapade to create and reinvent a new oasis of gamers, and elite games.
“StarCraft II will either destroy us, or propel us to a new echelon of gaming that can be seen not only in Korea, but in Europe, the rest of Asia, and perhaps one day in America.”MY GREATEST FEAR OF STARCRAFT II, IS THAT THEY MAKE A VIDEO GAME; NOT A REALM. It is in these universal traits that lead gamers to follow for years upon years, even to lead some to addiction, because in essence, battle.net could be seen as a cultural world that lies between games, servers, channels, and internet websites. The universal fundamentals of Brood War are perhaps, what makes the game balance, what makes the game reinvent itself over and over again. From the days of the discovery of the Terran wall, the epic battles of NaDa and Yell0w and the seemingly weak Protoss. Even recently the re-emergence of the Protoss, and the collapse of the older Terran regimes, it is not these epic strategies or build orders, it’s a history of the ever-evolving culture of the game. When the game is taken to it’s peak we rediscover the world for what it is, all because designer’s were allowed to be unleashed from the chains of are own habitat, and allowed for once not to just to think outside the box, but outside the Earth, outside the stars, outside the space, outside are minds; please Blizzard, do not disappoint me with StarCraft II, a simple video game that looks pleasant to the eye, and offers new ways to talk, or new ladders to play on, but is only built on one level of design. The depth of StarCraft is what made it popular, the multiple levels of design, gaming, and the community of BW that created are own culture, that’s what makes are game an art form. That’s what makes are game a society disbanded from are own civilization. StarCraft II will either destroy us, or propel us to a new echelon of gaming that can be seen not only in Korea, but in Europe, the rest of Asia, and perhaps one day in America. Until that day is come, I will sit at my computer and write stories and essays with the universal skills I picked up from my most beloved game.
Please Blizzard from everyone in the Brood War community, do not disappoint.
- Josh "MaULiNG" Lukasik
