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StarCraft II Gamer Receives US Pro-Athlete Visa
dotarray writes "The world's first professional StarCraft II gamer has been granted a five-year pro athlete visa for the United States, making Kim 'viOLet' Dong Hwan the first of his kind. viOLet was one of the first gamers to apply for the P-1A visa when they were introduced in July. The new paperwork doesn't mean that he can live permanently in the U.S., but it does mean he'll be treated like other (more traditional) athletes, able to easily enter the country temporarily to participate in tournaments."
So, is Doritoes going to start putting professional gamers on their bags like Wheaties does with ball players on theor cereal? Are we goning to be seeing fat kids with Cokes and Doritoes yelling, "I'm in training! I have t eat this way!"
It's a trap!
No sig today...
Why do I remember this being common in the esports scene.
Why?
Genuinely curious. Does this sort of thing apply to chess, poker, and other "less-traditional sports"?
This needs the giant foot icon.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Avoid, avoid, avoid. What can you expect in USA:
- get shot
- being imprisoned
- become slave
- minimum wage worker
Some people just never learn tricks of regimes or go ahead and live your "American Nightmare"
Can a professional Angry Birds player (plays every afternoon with his colleagues) apply for a P-1A Visa?
Because many competitive tournament visitors are atheletes, the State Department website designer chose to follow the vernacular to call it an "athletic visa". The US immigration code from the Immigration and Nationization Act of 1965 refers to "alien athletes, artists, and entertainers, and their spouses and children." The Starcraft gamer was issued a "P1" visa according to TFA which applies to "individual or team athletes, or members of an entertainment group (P-1B) that are internationally recognized. A maximum of 25,000 P visas are issued annually."[wikipedia] The whole article plays on a reader-friendly title for a government a web page. .
In other words, P1 is the same for Gary Kasparov or Jet Li. It's designed to keep USA employers from issuing "track and field" competitions to pick grapes, without impeding Hollywood or Olympic events.
Gently reply
People envy him?
I find video games boring (unchallenging), nauseating, and lonely.
There's nothing like meeting people in person - chatting online doesn't cut it - and participating in a physical activity: tennis, soccer, softball, etc .... contributes to one's overall well-being on many levels: emotional, physical, health and social.
In shape? Thin doesn't mean he's in shape. And it's pretty sad when one's weight is used as a single benchmark for fitness. He could be thin because he's a chain smoker, lives off of caffeine, cancer, .....
And yes most video game players ARE overweight. It's one of the MAJOR causes of obesity in our US society.
Envy, indeed.
My personal opinion is that gaming can in fact be a sport, Much as foreign chess players can secure this type of visa when playing in america, im sure pundits will laud this as a spurious visa ($criticism=Obama->new($issue)). Yet taking a moment to play Starcraft II on its normal setting one arrives at a determined sense of exactly how challenging this game can be. A real opponent competing in a tournament can, and does, easily outmatch the AI for the game even on its most brutal setting. Anything more than normal is enough to send the commenter to therapy.
Being an american though, I cant help but draw a contrast between the E3 visa and profesisonal sports visas in the context of traditionalist argument. the E3 applies to skilled labour, yet if you were to give one to a roofing contractor who spends 12 hours a day shingling a home or 9 hours fitting pipe in a rural texas ranch home it would draw the same criticism. is for this type of criticism the e3 prohibits "seasonal" labour like homebuilding. Although the class 3 visa is extended to foreign profesisonals it in no way reflects the tenacity and challenge faced by labour in a decidedly lower social and capital class. it also neglects to inform the reader that most 'seasonal' labor is in fact performed in regions with no discernable season such as new mexico, texas, or arizona. Much like the Starcraft gamer has his sports caste, so does the immigrant laborer have his employment caste.
Good people go to bed earlier.
His name implies he is a national from South Korea. South Korean nationals are part of the visa waiver program and can stay in the US for up to 90 days without a visa. Why waste this visa on him?
Diving a car is a risk factor for obesity; professional race drivers are not obese.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well its a great news for all the athletes as they need to get training about fitness and other activities with this it will help them out for better performance. As some sports are related to states and not other countries. The best part of this thing is traveling around the state meet new players get better advices.
Video games like Tetris and StarCraft are proprietary. This means one entity has the state-backed power to prevent any particular person from playing a sport. It's not like being "banned from baseball" where a player can join another league, as the game's publisher has the power to shut a league down by asserting the publisher's exclusive right to perform the game publicly. These companies also have veto power over implementations of a "sport". It's as if The Tennis Company could sue a city for putting up an unlicensed tennis court in a public park. So I don't see how a proprietary activity deserves international recognition in the same way as, say, something free like Chess or Go.
World Wildlife Fund? Panda wrestling? Get the F out.
But seriously, would you consider MMA a sport? It's essentially professional wrestling without all the fakeness.
Can't this country produce quality game players of it's own?
Who would have thought America would have fallen so far that our couch potatoes are getting replaced by imports.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
League of Legends was actually the first game to have a pro issued a sports visa. To quote a friend "They're recognised as athletes for visa purposes because they come into the country and compete and then leave again so as far as immigration is concerned that's the one that fits them best. Unfortunately the vast majority of posters are too stupid to understand that and the topic turns to shit." source http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=421180
viOLet has been one of my very favorite SC2 players for a long time. He decided one day to just pick up and leave Korea to experience the foreign scene (Starcraft being so dominated by Koreans, that no matter your perspective, 'foreign' means 'not Korean'). Learned English, joined a foreign team, moved to America, and is a very classy guy. And for it, experienced so much trouble that is the American visa fiasco. I was thrilled to find out his visa troubles were over for the immediate future; he had to forfeit a lot of tournaments he easily qualified for, throughout all of 2013, and hopefully with this all settled I can finally see my favorite player stomp ass like he could've been doing all year.
I think some people do it under the table for other sports this person did it the legal way.
I know some other people who do stuff international and they really don't get visas for it.
He just tested positive for Red Bul,l taurine, Monster Energy drink, and NoDoz. Banned.
with only people in the usa being able to play.
After he went to Russia to play a match?
United States of Soviet America? I like the way that soundz!
Now he just needs to whore himself out to Red Bull and he'll be set for life! It's the American dream!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Monster should be more his thing if you ask him. He has taken Red Bull money though for a 5th-8th place. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Red_Bull_Battlegrounds:_Austin
His name is Dong Hwan.... I would have expected at least one Don Juan joke.... I'm disappoint.
heh
if they do anything that pisses off the community they'll end up losing users to rival games and lose money
What (legal) alternative was there when The Tetris Company made the infinite spin feature of Tetris Worlds official despite reviewers' claims that "it actually breaks Tetris"? That's as if basketball players had to switch to netball or team handball, or if American football players had to switch to rugby. Not all skills transfer.
Furthermore, while traditional games and sports are public domain, the entities that organize the events are not very different from your standard corporation. Anyone that can potentially do or say something that can potentially go against their or their partner's interests can be put out of the game.
Black players kicked out of Major League Baseball started parallel Negro League. Had the National League and American League been able to assert actual exclusive rights over baseball, there might not have been a Negro league or any other independent professional baseball promotions. Heck, there might not have even been an American League.
n/t
Starcraft is every fake-nerd's nightmare. An actual means of proving intellectual aptitude that you can't bullshit around.
bring your ivy league degree, your masters thesis, your rich parents, your friends in high places, your new BMW, your fourth house in the bahamas, your heavily-diversified portfolio, and see how much they don't matter in SC2
I know there are work visas, tourist visas and visa credit card (www.visa.com). Never heard of P-1A visa before.
We all know that playing Starcraft shouldn't be considered a sport... but who puts forth a rubric for judging what's what? I do, that's who!
**Sport** (Rugby, Tennis, etc.)
--Competitive (against an opponent)
--Directly oppositional (opponent attempts to prevent one's success)
--Non-subjective scoring (ball through a hoop, player passes line, etc. Disagreeing with the referee doesn't imply subjectivity)
--Requires excellent physical condition to achieve excellence in the sport
**Race** (NASCAR, Horse Racing, Marathon)
--Competitive
--Oppositional (opponent performs at the same time and may or may not actively attempt to prevent one's success)
--Non-subjective timing
--May or may not be a test of human strength/speed. Could be a test of human control over another being or machine (auto racing).
**Competition** (Gymnastics, Dance)
--Competitive
--Can have subjective scoring
**Game** (Board and video games, Golf, etc)
--Competitive
--No particular physical requirements to achieve success
--No subjective scoring
**Endeavor** (Ex. Setting records, Mountain climbing without time limits)
--Not necessarily competitive
--Goals may vary (points, time, etc.)
This article tells about playing games and the relation to to the brain's capacity. I saw a documentary about younger people (25 year old if I remember right) that their brain showed more activity (more active neuropathways) then an older person (30 or something similar).
I just can't find the other documentary
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
do you think a pianist requires physical control? do you think an expert pianist has more physical control than an amateur?
lot of people even say the koreans are dominating sc2 because of their superior physical control - in the business, we call it "mechanics"
No, he was wanted by the State Department for going to Yugoslavia during the war in the 1990's when all travel by US citizens was banned. He played a rematch of his famous match with Boris Spassky. He sought asylum in Japan, then was granted full citizenship in Iceland, and was still wanted at the time of his death in 2008.
with only people in the usa being able to play.
That's what the rest of us were wondering about the World Series in baseball before Montreal and Toronto got teams.