The Extremes of Internet Gaming In South Korea

Rick Zeman writes "CNN has an expose showing that in South Korea, the world's most wired country, Internet gaming breeds two extremes: elite 'athletes' who earn fame and six figures, and addicts who literally play until they die and tells the stories of players on both sides of that real-life divide. From the article: 'The first thing you notice about the professional video game players are their fingers — spindly creatures that seem to flail about at their own will, banging at the computer keyboard with such frequency and ferocity that to visit their live-in training centers in South Korea is to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks.'"

Comments

Deaths? Typical journalist story

[DNS-and-BIND]

What we see here is a typical product of journalism, circa 2012. Either you play video games or you die trying. How many people actually died playing games in South Korea? Just look at the writer's pathetic point of view. It's like he's never heard of video games before. "He was a conqueror -- a general who controlled sci-fi armies and determined the fate of civilization." What the FUCK? We're still hearing this garbage? This is the same crap that journalists wrote about Galaga in 1982. "One is a dead ringer for Dr. Bunsen, Beaker's sidekick on "The Muppet Show." WTF? Beaker is Dr. Bunsen's sidekick. How can we trust anyone who doesn't even bother to get basic pop culture facts right? What does that say about the rest of the "facts" in this article...about pop culture? After setting up a base in the northeast corner of the map, "MarineKing sent foot soldiers to root out his opponent's headquarters -- a glowing blue pyramid spitting out blue termites -- and blew the whole thing up before the 10-minute mark." Here we have a serious, accredited journalist - who writes for CNN - and he doesn't even know the difference between Terrans and Protoss? Come ON! Would an editor send a reporter to cover an event where he doesn't even know the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Between socialists and fascists? Between OWS and jackbooted thugs? But, as soon as the weird, incomprehensible world of "those scary video games" is entered, the reporter needs to advertise his outsider status - where in other topics being an outsider is considered a badge of ignorance and provincialism.

Over lunch his dad, who has become well-versed enough in "StarCraft" strategy to engage in lengthy conversations about troop movements, attack formations and character choices, tried to help MarineKing with his strategy against MVP.

Putting Starcraft in scare quotes? WTF? Who does that? And mixed case? It's just plain Starcraft. Yeah, I know, Blizzard calls it StarCraft, but again the reporter is advertising his outsider status. "I'm not one of these video game freakazoids," he seems to be saying. "I'm just here to report and confirm what geeks the rest of us already know that they are. They are The Other, and worthy of "

The entire article purports to show us the extremes...that's called yellow journalism, eh? And yet for all its bluster, it mentions but two deaths. How many people died in Chicago this last weekend?

It's totally obvious that this "journalist" had his article written before he even got off the plane in Seoul Incheon (renowned as being one of the world's most sleep-friendly airports, and true to its reputation). He treats his subjects as if they were among the groups CNN treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (for example: devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans).