Koreans

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/shubn/status/222271840352075776

So, Koreans won at SF4, KoF13 & SFxT at EVO 2012. Where mah Japanese players at? #Koreapocalypse #evo2k

Would anyone like to guess why Koreans are so good at videogames? The answer will be in my StarCraft review. (Hint: It helps if you've been to Korea.)

[Mac]

It seems to me that they play games with a discipline and tenacity which in the West people would reserve only for the major professional sports -- basketball, football. In Korea StarCraft is a professional sport, and they treat it as such. Gamers are athletes in a sense that maybe seems bizarre to Westerners.

Also, there's a general consensus that only StarCraft really matters, that that's the real proving ground. And once everybody's playing the same game, the hardest of the hardcore against each other, sooner or later they're going to leave everybody else behind.


Edit: But is an e-sport really a sport? And does it matter if people perceive it to be a sport if it isn't, in fact, athletic? Do actions-per-second constitute mental athleticism?

Anyways, this is where I put up the bat-signal for icy. Looking forward to the review - and many, many thanks for the website.

[icycalm]

Edit: But is an e-sport really a sport? And does it matter if people perceive it to be a sport if it isn't, in fact, athletic? Do actions-per-second constitute mental athleticism?

I was going to bash you for posting the first two paragraphs without reading my book, but apparently your copy arrived in the meantime, and then you added the sly edit -- as if I am stupid, as if it wouldn't be clear as day to me what happened. So you read the book and then come here and edit in those rhetorical questions as if they just occurred to you! Meh. Standing up for your negligence or stupidity is infinitely higher than sly muddling. Not to mention that slyness, as I said, is personally insulting to me, as if I am too stupid to see through it. Which is why you are now banned from posting in the forum.

[icycalm]

And by the way, for those who haven't read the essay yet, his rhetorical questions are all answered in it, on top of which it also explains why his "mental athleticism" is a contradictio in adjecto.

[zinger]

I lived with three Koreans for a month this summer. One thing that definitely struck me was their obsession with internet connection. One of them kept complaining over how annoying it was not being able to connect anywhere (via Wi-Fi) on the street (as you apparently can in South Korea), and another one of them kept reaching for her iPhone even during conversations to check Facebook etc. when at home. Can't say for sure about the third one's internet habits but he rented like five movies a week.

I also remember seeing documentaries about Koreans' health issues related to internet obsession. And wasn't there some dude who died from exhaustion while he was playing PS2 or whatever at a media cafe somewhere in South Korea about ten years ago? An entire people spending such a large portion of their lives in virtual worlds (in other words, with virtual worlds being an essential part of their culture) should have a positive effect on their knowledge of those worlds as well as their ability to manipulate them.