So upon reading the title of this article you’ll probably be expecting one of the normal contenders in the life stealing line up; World of Warcraft being the top of the pile and other MMOs coming in behind. So is it any of these? Nope, despite having dabbled in and enjoyed several MMOs, including WoW I’ve never felt the urge to rearrange my plans to spend hours a day grinding, raiding or whatever. My personal poison is in fact Starcraft 2, specifically it’s unbelievably intense multiplayer.
It all began in the beta. I’d never played an RTS against another person but hell this was SC2 and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to play it as much as possible, since the Beta was multiplayer only, that’s what I was going to do. Eventually I got lucky, I got my beta key and like a small child at Christmas I excitedly downloaded all the necessary bits from Blizzard. Before I knew it I was queuing what was unbeknownst to me the defining feature of many months to come, a 1v1 SC2 ladder match. It went horribly. I was nervous, shaking and got completely steamrolled. Deterred, I muttered to myself ‘fuck that guy’ and tried again with similar results. At this point my mood was somewhat diminished but I resolved to try at least one more game before calling it quits for the day. The third game was amazing, actually let’s put some perspective on this. To anyone who remotely knows the game it was awful, both myself and my opponent were terrible but in an equally terrible way that when I pulled off the win I felt like it was amazing.
Invigorated by my victory I celebrated with a fist pump, a ‘hell yeah’ to myself and jumped strait into the next game, and it was perhaps this game that taught me more about SC2 than any of the other countless games I’ve played since. This game was close, back and forth down to the wire close between my Protoss pieces and my opponents Terran. There were points when either of us could have taken it but eventually I was defeated. The big thing was that I didn’t care. This was untraveled territory for me as losing is one of the things I hate the most in the universe but here I was, sitting at my desk looking at the menu telling me I’d lost and I was smiling. At this point I made use of the replay function and checked my game in detail, slowing down, pausing, seeing everything my opponent and I did to see where I went wrong.
Having completed my analysis the next few hours disappeared and before I knew it I had 4 wins and 11 losses. Yeah I sucked but I was incredibly happy even with that, I figured that 30% was an alright win/loss ratio for a multiplayer RTS virgin. As time went on I made some friends I could practice with and my skill level slowly improved. I became aware of various YouTube channels which featured shout casting on ultra high level SC2 games. Soon after that I discovered the Day[9] Daily, a web show in which Sean ‘Day[9}’ Plott analyses in incredible detail high level replays in a fun and entertaining way which, most importantly, actually helps you get better at the game.
My friends and I continued to play, travelled from Oxford to London for the midnight launch and proceeded to play Starcraft 2 every day until about November when they abandoned me to Cataclysm and I decided I should probably take a break. As it stands now I’ve hardly played in three months and have gone from being ‘not too bad’ right back to ‘holy crap I suck at this game’. The thing is, even though I wasn’t playing, I was still watching the Dailies, staying up to watch live streams of tournaments around the world and thinking about how I could steal strategies from the pros and try to implement them myself.
So what did I learn from all this? For starters that Starcraft 2 is the best game I’ve ever played, a game I play for so many hours whilst frequently getting beaten at, yet holds my love and attention in spite of it is a rare find indeed. Not to say I enjoy the losing aspect, there have been occasions when I’ve raged pretty hard, but the game is fun even if I happen to lose - I’ve simply become appreciative of it regardless of the outcome (most of the time). It’s also the only game I have ever encountered that has had me seeking out online sources like those mentioned previously and all of it combined has made Starcraft 2 a part of my everyday life, and here’s the best part, it has in no way affected the standard of my life like the media would have us believe. Here in England there was a TV programme which looked at video games being addictive, in fact I was interviewed by the presenter whilst at the aforementioned midnight launch. Alas I wasn’t broadcast, I can only assume my opinion was too balanced to suit their aims, but the point stands that you can immerse yourself in a game as much as I have with Starcraft 2 and still carry on as you always have. Thank you Blizzard for taking the time to produce this master piece of a video game. I’ve heard there’s even a single player mode, I’ve seen the tab on the menu screen as well so I’m inclined to believe it’s true, despite my never having clicked it in the 7 months I’ve had the game!
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