StarCraft Cheating Scandal Rocks Korea
dotarray writes with this snippet: "The largest scandal in e-sports history is currently unfolding in Korea, with revelations that a number of current pro gamers are involved with match setups and illegal betting. While the gamers are unnamed at this point, the story is said to touch many A-list StarCraft celebrities, including sAviOr, Ja Mae Yoon, one of the best-known and most successful players of all time."
Seriously, I was expecting something like a bot ring or involvement in a virus that spread via the game.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
My world has fallen to pieces!
It is nice to be part of a demographic that couldn't give a rat's ass about the whole thing, including MMOs and the surrounding scene.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
His first name is Jae Yoon, and his surname is Ma. Typically written in Korean with the surname first, as Ma Jae Yoon. Ja Mae Yoon is wrong.
In Korea, video gaming is a professional sport. These guys they mention are bigger celebrities to Koreans than, say, LeBron James is to Americans. You think I'm joking or exaggerating, but I assure you I am not.
Actually yes, in Korea they do have the tabloids cover them. Some even date actresses. Everybody knows of Boxer, Savior and Bisu. Everybody.
Starcraft is korea's national sport. they're most definately celebrities
I played Starcraft for a while, and I was very impressed with how balanced the gameplay was and how thought out the interface was. Blizzard did a great job making that game.
But it really stifles the creativity of the player by restricting actions to a very specific set of pre-programmed actions. You *must* farm for Vespene gas. you *must* collect crystals. There is little room for true creativity and adventuring. Today's FPS games are actually getting better at allowing this kind of freedom.
But to really get the most out of a game, you have to use your imagination. There's nothing more challenging than interacting with your friends and working out puzzles with nothing more than paper, dice, and pewter figurines. Dungeons and Dragons (and other clones of it) is the ultimate game because it removes artificially created limits and depends completely on how much you are invested in it.
If people are cheating and rigging game competitions, it's only because there is something to rig. Try cheating in D&D and you'll find that you only cheat yourself.
BadAnalogyGuy (aka Black Leaf)
As part of Korea's human rights laws, it is illegal to release criminals' names - they can only be implied - which means that as the police have now gotten involved, we may never be officially told who was involved in this drama.
You can't know criminals' names in Korea? Kind of weird.
Qxe4
Some people will do anything to get even more money. Its also possible that some of the Starcraft players are seeing a dead end of their time playing gaming professionally. As in they might not be that great at most RTS games, but amazing at Starcraft. And with Starcraft 2 coming along closer and closer, it might be the writing on the wall for Starcraft 1's viability. Cash out while they can and all?
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Actually, if I was betting on the outcome of a contest between two people, I would sure as hell care if they were fixing the outcome and I wouldn't say I am stupid.
Oh, I get it, you just wanted a first post and had nothing better to post than racism. Guess who looks stupid now?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
apparently someone used show me the money too many times...
Probably because his name is typically written in Hangul?
Speaking as a non-American... who the f**k is Lebron James???
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
For starters, try googling it in Korean?
Hello, and welcome to the world! Despite what the crappy Disney ride says, the world is a big place, where many people speak any languages and, shockingly, use different characters for writing.
A couple posts (e.g. the top one on this page) dispute it's at that degree of popularity:
bjornkavist:
PanzerDragoon:
Ma Jae-Yoon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Jae-Yoon
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Ma+Jae-Yoon
Speaking as a non-American... who the f**k is Lebron James???
Who knows. I haven't heard of him either. Best guess based on this story: He probably plays Warcraft instead of Starcraft.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I feel so betrayed. This must be how Tassadar felt when Aldaris arrested him upon his return after discovering the key to slaying the Overmind. It is as though I am Kerrigan abandoned by Acturus Mengsk to be captured by the Zergs. Today I am Jim Raynor, a warrior cut loose from his own people.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Gretzky? Wasn't he the guy who played on the LA Kings?
The CB App. What's your 20?
The pics in http://images.google.com/images?q=%EB%A7%88%EC%9E%AC%EC%9C%A4 are more representative of his status.
mainly because you're a tool. Here is what a search of him in Korea looks like:
http://search.naver.com/search.naver?sm=tab_hty&where=nexearch&query=%B8%B6%C0%E7%C0%B1&x=0&y=0
news sites, images, magazine covers, videos, etc
As someone who occasionally follows the SC happenings in Korea, I can attest to the fact that this is a huge story there. The fame of these players really is comparable to that of football or basketball stars in the states.
More to the point, there is real talent, years of honing your skill, and real fans involved here. That's what makes this match fixing a real deal. That's too bad, this young sport deserves better.
Is Chess a sport? What about Go?
If you said yes to both of those questions, why not any other game of strategy/tactics?
That's it, you're going on my foe list... :)
If you were betting on the outcome of a football game, I'd say that you were stupid.
I really like watching commentaries on SC games. I started watching them a few weeks ago and I'm HOOKED.
Now I'm not a great RTS player. And I've never enjoyed watching sports on TV - basketball, football (English or otherwise) or even the way overhyped olympics - I just never cared.
But Starcraft is something I can somehow relate to. Especially Starcraft 2. myself, not being a good player, I see all sorts of strange tricks I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Micromanagement tipping the results of battles in ways I wouldn't have even imagined. All kinds of strange tricks involved - it's mind-blowing sometimes, and really... really exciting.
The other thing is the commentators are very useful. They call out the strategy, which really helped a not-so-good player like me. you get some insight into their thought processes.
I knew Koreans were into Starcraft, but I didn't know they were THAT into it. I feel kinda sad now. As I see it, it doesn't matter who wins at Starcraft, I just like watching the game and could never imagine placing bets on it.
o hai
Something about Korea's obsession with Starcraft reminds me of cargo cults.
Proleague rules got changed and some suspects got removed from their team's roster: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118849
Nope, I think you mistook me for someone else.
Maybe I am just that ancient, but is it a "sport" to sit in a chair pushing buttons? When I grew up, apparently in the stone age, sport was something that involved not just skill, but physical excellence; even body-building wasn't considered to be a sport, and you wouldn't use the word "athlete" about them either. No wonder the world is coming to an end...
Reminds me of a Woody Allen quote, "I was watching a ballet at City Center, and I'm not a ballet fan at all, but they were doing the dying swan, and there was a rumour, that some bookmakers had drifted into town from upstate New York, and that they had fixed the ballet. Apparently there was a lot of money bet on the swan to live."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What's Michael Jackson got to do with basketball?
Aaah Jordan! I wondered what Michael Jackson had to do with sport...
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Basketball is much more popular here than it ever was in the U.S.
Also, when I was visiting Japan, baseball was by far the most popular sport, played by just about every boy after school.
The world is a lot bigger than the U.S. and Europe.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
In the UK, we call it netball and it's played by girls. Basketball here is ranked below dominos in popularity.
You're confusing the concept of "news for nerds" with the concept of "news which is personally interesting to me". Nerds cover a wide spectrum of interests and nationalities. The development of these competitive tournaments in the field of gaming are certainly interesting to me on one level, even though I'm neither Korean nor into Starcraft - it's interesting to see where this is headed, and similarly interesting to see the parallels with sports (in terms of the fame of the players and even match fixing scandals now). I don't follow this too closely, I'm mildly interested, but other people follow this passionately, for that particular group of nerds, this is definitely "stuff that matters".
In my book, game shattering is even bigger than revolutionary.
If you're an old person, ask your robot to do it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seriously, if you don't know who Lebron is you either don't know what the fuck basketball is, are just making shit up, or are a borderline retard.
Despite your grossly misplaced arrogance, you left out the most popular option: D: none of the above.
You are making some erroneous assumptions with that proclamation:
I/we actually give a rat's ass about basketball, USA sports, or any sports....NOT!!!
(BTW, I know what basketball is-I even used to play a lot of it-but have NEVER watched it, but I did not know who/what a 'Lebron' was. I was also wondering what Michael Jackson [MJ] had to do with basketball!)
Maybe I am 'just making shit up, but if by not knowing who Lebron Whoever is makes me a borderline retard, I can assuredly take comfort in the fact that you are truly over the line, and outstanding in that field.
BTW, who(or what) is a 'Beckham'? Another basketball player?
This thread is getting more confusing than getting struck on the head with a football bat.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I've travelled to korea a few times and I love going to a pub (every second shop) and watching the starcraft channel. And the cheap beer. And the cheap, excellent food. And just general good times to be had by all.
Fascinating to watch competitive gaming. Mesmerising.
.
It kind of depends on how narrowly you interpret the term. The narrow definition seems to be a physical activity in which athletes participate, which would suggest that both chess and computer games are not sports. The very wide definition seems to be any recreational or fun activity, in which case they would be sports. I guess the truth is somewhere in between (playing Wii, for instance, is more strenuous than playing snooker), but actually it's just a lot easier to say "sport" than "competitive computer gaming", so I suspect the usage will stick.
Actually, netball requires more tactical thinking than basketball because you're not allowed to move with the ball at all, which makes it slightly more interesting to watch (aside from the fact that it's played by girls). Basketball is relatively common as an amateur sport, but in my experience tends to attract the hypercompetitive element who fail to realise that the point of playing a sport is to have fun.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah, see, telling a non-sports-loving, non-American nerd (me) that Lebron James is the basketball equivalent of Peyton Manning doesn't help, because then my next question inevitably is: Who the hell is Peyton Manning?
I suppose neither one of these guys has managed to have dozen mistresses at once, because I sure do know who Tiger Woods is.
I am not a vegetarian werewolf.
Not Michael Jackson. He means Mick Jagger.
you walk and hit a ball. any old duffer can do that
is car racing a sport?
like you said, you sit down and push a buttons. now you've added a steering wheel
is poker a sport?
you fiddle with chips and cards. but those poker players are athletes of mental endurance, that's for sure
no, the simple fact is: a sport is anything you want to call a sport, a sport. and if enough people agree with you, it simply is the new truth
why? because there is no linguistic authority that allows people to use words in only proscribed ways. the people own the language, and the people decide what a word means any damn way they please, in aggregate, with no authority. this is simply the evolution of language: all words shift in meaning, constantly. the way you use certain words would be looked at aghast by people from 1960, 1910, 1860, etc. the world is not ending, language is simply evolving, as it always has, and always will
if enough people feel like the word "sports" is being dumbed down too much, a new word will evolve that will come to signify a sport of mighty physical endurance only, like football or cycling... if enough people deem that meaning important, and incorporate it into wide use
why don't you go and invent that derivative word now, or coopt an existing word close in meaning to a new meaning. it happens every day, all the time. go, get the ball rolling, pun intended
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>Capitalization and punctuation don't vary that much across languages
WTF ?!?!?! Seriously dude... WTF ?!?!??!
Let's just look at the small sampling of languages I can read (to a lesser or greater extent). And keep in mind three of these are all languages that share a COMMON Origin (Ancient West Germanic) and one is essentially a dialect of the another split of a mere 300 years ago. That makes this a pretty skewed sample. Choose any two languages randomly and the differences will get MUCH bigger.
German: All nouns are capitalized.
English: Capitals are used only for the names of Deities, Persons and the first word of a sentence.
Afrikaans: Similar to English... oh unless the sentence starts with the non-specific article... then the SECOND word starts with a capital.
Dutch: Same as English (the Afrikaans exception does not exist in Dutch).
Portuguese: Fucked if I know... after several years, I STILL don't understand all of it.
How about the Apostrophe:
Dutch: Apostrophe is used to indicate missing letters.
German: Same as Dutch.
Afrikaans: Apostrophe indicates missing letters - but it's only allowed to be used for this when those letters are deliberately left out for an EXCEPTIONAL reason (such as accenting a quote or poetic freedom) and in the spelling of the Afrikaans word 'n (yes the word is an apostrophe and an small n but pronounced "uh" - derived from the Dutch word for "one").
Portuguese: There is no apostrophe as we think of it, thoug the ' symbols is used in the spelling of some words.
English: Used to indicate missing letters in (specifically in contractions) and to indicate possession. Moreover the rules on how it does both the above get very convoluted (especially where the uses overlap, as in a posessive contraction) and leads to continuous confusion among English speakers about the fact that it's, its and its' are three completely different words with exactly the same pronunciation (apparently we can easily tell them apart from context when LISTENING but when reading we have to create a stupid cosmetic difference to see which is which).
Now those are small differences between languages of relatively common origins... if I start telling you how it works in African languages (I speak two) you simply wouldn't BELIEVE me, it has the following in common with the above: Sweet blue fuck all.
That's despite the fact that no African language has a written language of their own and adopted a modified version of the English alphabet and punctuation to be able to write -they still had to change almost every rule just to make sense because their entire gramatical structure is radically different.
It gets even more bizarre when you consider languages that have a history of writing, but radically different origins from English, such as the Slavic and Asian languages.
In English a word with no vowels is unpronouncable. In Russian... that's about 3/4 of the dictionary. In Polish, it's more like 4/5...
See... I'm actually a non-native English speaker, who has a degree in English literature. I can read Shakespeare with ease and joy, and both speak and write English quite a bit better than most Britons (let alone Americans) and I had Linguistics as a second major.
And if there is one thing you learn very quickly when you study multiple languages on a professional level - it's that languages are as radically different as the cultures that produce them, reflect those cultures and become an extension of those cultures.
What you say smacks back to the so-called romantic theory of linguistics. Which was a very Platonic theory that believed there is some perfect language we're all born with, and all human languages are imperfect attempts to implement it.
The romantic theory is interesting in that it was the very first theory to ever exist in Linguistics... but it's also not actually been considered to have any basis in fact or reality for over 200 years now... hell even the Russian Orthodox theory of Linguistics have at least SOME provable reality to it and THAT came from 1916.
Current linguistic theory as it applies to your statement can be summarized as follows: you're an idiot.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Wrong. Recidivism rates are much higher for people who are driven by a desire for money than they are for sexual offenders. Evidence from http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/ascii/rpr94.txt
"Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were --
robbers (70.2%)
burglars (74.0%)
larcenists (74.6%)
motor vehicle thieves (78.8%)
possessors/sellers of
stolen property (77.4%)
possessors/sellers of
illegal weapons (70.2%).
What these high-rate offenders have in common is that they were all in prison for what are generally thought of as crimes for money. By contrast, many of those with the lowest rearrest rates -- persons convicted of homicide (40.7%), rapists (46.0%), other sexual assaulters (41.4%), other violent offenders (51.7%), and those convicted of driving under the influence (51.5%) -- were in prison for crimes not generally motivated by desire for material gain."
Sexual offenders and pedophiles are a problem, but attempting to solve it with bad data won't work.