Like many people who grew up with their eyes glued to their TV screens and monitors, in my youth, I used to think that playing video games for a living was the best job in the world. Little did I know that getting to the point where you can earn decent money playing video games takes a tremendous amount of work and sacrifice, and there’s a good chance you’ll fail even if you give it your all. I spent a good chunk of my early 20s trying to become aStarcraft 2pro player and failed miserably, so I happen to speak from experience when I say that.
I was never too into competitive games, and while I did play a lot of the big ones, I rarely took them seriously. Starcraft 2 was the only exception. UnlikeDota 2, PUBG, or most of the other competitive titles I’ve dabbled in over the years, Starcraft 2 isn’t a team-based game. It’s just you going up against random opponents while trying to make your way up the ladder. I found that to be more appealing than playing in a team.
It’s very easy—and very tempting—to blame others when you’re doing poorly in a team-based game, but you may’t do that if you don’t have any teammates. When you’re losing a 1v1 match of Starcraft 2, the only person you can blame is yourself. There’s a lot of pressure that comes with that, but also a lot of incentive to get better. After all, there’s no one to carry you to victory here.
Between 2010 and 2012, I invested more time than I probably should have into Starcraft 2, to the detriment of everything else in my life. When I wasn’t playing, I was watching others play it on YouTube or Justin.tv. That’s the site that would later become Twitch, for all you youngsters out there. When I wasn’t doing that, I was looking up SC2-themed song parodies and remixes, adding to my constantly growing collection of Protoss wallpapers, or watching replays of lost matches to figure out how to improve my strategies. Between 2010 and 2012 I lived and breathed Starcraft 2.
I couldn’t have known this at the time, but Starcraft 2 was a very special game with a very special community. I’m intentionally using the past tense here despite the fact that the game is still around and about seven people are still playing it. Now, I could go on a lengthy rant about how Blizzard’s greed and arrogance gradually ruined the game and destroyed its competitive scene, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point. Starcraft 2 was the studio’s first major self-inflicted wound, but it certainly wouldn’t be its last. So instead of talking about how terrible Blizzard is at supporting and understanding its own games, let’s talk about gaming communities, shall we?
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It’s no secret that competitive games tend to breed toxic gaming communities. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a competitive game that doesn’t have one. This is in spite of Blizzard’s and other companies’ misguided efforts to remove toxic elements via mass bans, censorship, and public shaming in order to make their games look like bastions of friendliness and positivity. Historically, this heavy-handed and often draconic attempt at coercing gamers into being kind and friendly against their will has not yielded positive results. That’s because usually the problem isn’t the gamers, it’s the games.
Competitive games are challenging and frustrating by their very nature. While concepts like friendly competition and sportsmanship may be common among professional sports (and indeed eSports) players, they’re not very common among average Joes who spend most of their free time playingLeague of LegendsorOverwatch 2.
The average person is a sore loser, and that goes double for gamers. Plenty of friendships have been ruined over innocent gamers likeMario Kart, so expecting people to virtually shake hands and say GG after every game ofCS:GOis not only unrealistic, it’s plain silly. Especially when these expectations come from the people making these games; the same people who implement complex MMR algorithms designed to keep the average player’s win rating at only around 50%. In other words, losing about half the matches you play is inevitable.
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The reason why I’m bringing up all of this is because Starcraft 2 had many of the classic traits that breed toxic gaming communities. Stressful and frustrating? Yes, very much so. Difficulty level? MakesDark Soulslook like Kirby’s Dream Land. New balance issues after every patch? Naturally. Bad MMR system that constantly forces you to play against people way out of your league? You know it! Poor/inexistent communication between developers and players? This is Blizzard we’re talking about, so that goes without saying.
And yet, despite all of this, Starcraft 2’s community was, for the most part, anything but toxic. I can’t speak for the current state of it, because the game is dead to me now, but back in the early 2010s, the community was amazing. Much like Templars bound by the Khala, everyone in the community was bound by an inexhaustible love for the game and the struggle of ladder grinding. There was a lot of respect and admiration for people who managed to reach the upper leagues. Meanwhile, those stuck in the lower leagues comforted each other in a self-deprecating manner while vowing to one day get out of Bronze. BM’ing was rare enough that people who did it instantly became notorious and were held up as negative examples—not by developers or games journalists, but by the community.
“When I’m Grandmaster, I will play faster. They’ll call me Bonjwa just like my name was Flash.”
Those lyrics probably sound like nonsense to most people, but they instantly invoke nostalgia and tears of joy in anyone who played Starcraft 2 during its golden age. One of the things that made the SC2 community unique was the incredible sense of camaraderie that formed around it. The SC2 family included not just the players, both casuals and pros, but also casters, content creators, streamers, artists, cosplayers, and more. Andit didfeel like one big happy family.
From legendary content creators and casters like Tasteless & Artosis, Husky, Day9, LAGTV, and the late TotalBiscuit to artists like Temp0, Underline Entertainment, and Veela, they all played a role in shaping the Starcraft 2 community into something truly special. Viva La Dirt League, the best gaming comedy sketch team around, also started out by making Starcraft 2 song parodies. It pains me to say that gaming-related song parodies have become a lost art in the meantime and are becoming rarer these days, primarily due to copyright concerns I would imagine. Understandable, but it’s still sad to see.
Although I was never able to fulfill my dream of becoming a Starcraft 2 pro player, I don’t regret the time I dedicated to that pursuit. It was the first time in my life I actually tried to achieve a big goal and, in a roundabout way, that failure made me want to try my hand at writing instead. Writing about video games for a living isn’t as glamorous as playing them, but it is more sustainable, and it gives me the opportunity to share stories like this with others. So I guess it all worked out just fine in the end.
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