Heat Up the Weekend with Starcraft 2
Written by Sean “Blazek” Emes, Edited by Jordan “Doomhammer” Kahn
Since its release in 2010, Starcraft 2 has become the most well-known and rapidly growing competitive game in history; it has essentially become the face of e-sports, and for good reason. Starcraft 2 has sold well over 3 million copies worldwide and continues to grow the world of e-sports every year. It is a large part of what has made Major League Gaming (MLG) gain an astounding 225% growth in visitors during the 2011 season, and plays a major role in most large events scheduled for 2012.
But how could one game have done all this in just under two years? Well, two major factors played into what built Starcraft 2 into what it is. The first was building off the success of its predecessor, Starcraft: Brood War. While Brood War was a much more difficult game to play, it was seen as a fairly balanced game that used three races, as opposed to the two races used by most strategy games of the time. The game picked up momentum in Korea and became an enormous cultural phenomenon, which eventually spread throughout the world.
Barcraft: probably the coolest thing in competitive gaming to date.
The second aspect of what has led to Starcraft 2‘s success is the ease of learning. It has been well over 10 years since the release of Starcraft: Brood War and technology has greatly improved since then. With that in mind, Starcraft 2 was designed as a far easier game to learn and play. This had the inclusive effect of lowering the skill level required for entry, which allowed a much larger audience to learn and enjoy the game, while making the high level play fiercely competitive.
As we enter the 2012 Season for e-sports, the first major event is taking a slightly different approach than what we have seen in the past. MLG is hosting their Winter Arena event with 32 of the world’s top Starcraft 2 players, and the only spectatorship available is through an online pay-per-view stream. While different than the regular tournament setup, most events are limited in terms of online viewing, since most of the action is happening live and the stream can
only show one small piece of the action at a time. For the winter arena all the matches will be streamed, meaning less downtime and more time watching your favorite players.
Check out the MLG livestream demo HERE.
The Winter Arena allows the spectators at home to treat it much more like being at an event with the ability to jump from game to game, or watch multiple games at the same time. You also get the added bonus of being able to watch the high quality steams from the comfort of home with no people blocking your view. You can even see how it will look next weekend on the demo page setup by MLG, which allows you to play with 5 streams, choose your quality, organize the arrangement, and much more.
Not only will you be able to watch all the awesome Starcraft 2 action from home, you’ll also be supporting MLG gaming in a way that will encourage them to continue to provide awesome gaming content.
But wait, you don’t know anything about competitive Starcraft? That’s ok, we can teach you! During that weekend vVv Gaming will be hosting a gathering on our mumble channel (mumble is like Skype, only for more people at a time and with less latency), where you can have a chance to meet some of our top Starcraft players who will be explaining Starcraft to anyone and everyone. So if you’ve never had that friend who said, “Come on, let’s watch this Starcraft match, I’ll explain what’s going on,” now is your chance to have that friend!
What are you waiting for? This is the first big Starcraft 2 event of the year, MLG is doing it for you in style and you’ve got people to help you enjoy it! Use this link to sign-up for the action and enjoy the show!
