A life of Starcraft

The Game Room
1

I hope this doesn’t come too close to being a shameless plug (it’s not for me, I swear!)

A college friend of mine, known as Day[9] in the Starcraft community, has been running a series of webcasts where he gives commentary and analysis on professional Starcraft games (and more recently has moved over to Starcraft 2). For his one hundredth cast about a week ago, he deviated from his usual format and instead recounted his life as a competitive gamer, starting in Spring 1998 when Starcraft was released, through the early days when he was still new to the game, through his first entries in tournaments, up to representing the US in the World Cyber Games, and to the present day. It’s definitely about Starcraft, and if you’re not familiar with the game there will be some parts that will go over your head, but it also ends up being about the importance of family, accomplishing your goals, and dedicating your life to something you’re passionate about. If you’re at all interested in Starcraft, what it’s like to be a competitive gamer, or just want to hear a good story, I really recommend it. It’s nothing more than a two-hour long video of him speaking into his webcam with no editing, but believe me when I say he’s a very good and engrossing storyteller. It might not come through as much in this video because this one is pretty serious, but I can also say without exaggeration he’s the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life.

So hopefully this video will be entertaining and inspiring to some–I definitely thought it was. Here’s the link: http://blip.tv/file/3486428

2

He does seem mildly amusing, and I play SC and WC3 heavily back in the day, I couldn’t get past 3 minutes without getting bored. Accept this bump as consolation.

3

I didn’t really play at all, but I watched about 90% of it. It was entertaining and inspiring in a way. He seems like a cool guy to know. Thanks for the link.

4

I really enjoyed that, thank you.
As a Starcraft fan, hearing about how his game evolved from silly custom games to single strategy all-in rushes, to flexible strategies and into a macro game was really cool. My favorite part was him describing his games against a player who was cheating with map hacks. I thought it was really interesting that having an opponent who could see any of his gimmicks made him realize that excellent Starcraft wasn’t about how you can trick your opponent, but how you can overwhelm him with “Solid timing and crisp execution.” So true.

5

I listened to the entire…damn…thing.

It was slow to start but by the end I was loving it. I was never a pro player like the guy but SC was still one of those games I played for nearly a decade and loved to death.

I’m in the SC2 Beta now and all those old feelings are rushing back. I can’t wait until 7.27.