Blog #1

When I asked myself "What am I passionate about?" not much came to mind. Growing up I never really had a hobby or activity that I was truly passionate about. However, I did play a lot of sports. It was in middle school that I first discovered lacrosse. I fell in love with it and have been playing it since. With the next season approaching I figured that it would be a great opportunity for me to spend some time outside of practice to improve. I am passionate about lacrosse but I have been very busy and there isn' much that I could  accomplish in 7 weeks. So with this idea off the table I had nothing. On the night before our brainstorming was due I came up with the perfect idea. Why not combine the reason I procrastinate and the project itself? VIDEO GAMES! And I knew the perfect game to play. Starcraft.

 It is my nerdious past time. When I'm not eating or sleeping I'm immersing myself in the game. Sadly not a lot of people are familiar with this game. Starcraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 1998.  It is set in a fictitious timeline during Earth's 25th century and is based upon three races fighting for control of the galaxy. The first race is called the Terrans, humans exiled from earth. The second race is called the Zerg. They are insect like creatures that can swarm entire planets. The final race is called the Protoss. They are humanoid aliens with advanced technologies and psionic abilities. These three races make up one of the greatest video game franchises of all time. In a typical game two players start off on opposite sides of a map. The object of the game is to kill your opponent. Throughout the course of a game players have to build infrastructure, manage an economy, and take control of massive armies.

Starcraft is praised as one of the best and most important video games of all time. It raised the bar for developing rts games and sold millions of copies world wide. Despite it's popularity on a global scale, SC is not popular in the United States. It is extremely popular in South Korea where players and team s participate and compete in tournaments, earn sponsorships, and even can be seen on televised events. In 2009 the GSL tournament held in South Korea packed the stands. In 2005 the Starcraft Champions packed 120,00 people into a stadium. It had 40,000 more people attend then the Superbowl.

In order to play at that high of ranking you need the mastery of a chess grandmaster and the precision and coordination of a master cellist. This video shows a player called Jaedong while playing. APM stands for actions per minute which includes every key you press and every mouse click you make.  In this game Jaedong's APM reaches 500 during the height of battle and averages around 300. Thats crazy, he is pressing about 5-8 keys every second. This is one of the factors that makes Starcraft such a great game. It takes more skill and coordination to play than almost any game.

The Starcraft storyline has expanded through several novels, and authorized expansion packs. And after 12 years the second installment was released. Blizzard is even releasing a new expansion next week (they announced the release about a year ago). Stacraft is an awesome game and I enjoy playing every second of it.

Goals:
Step 1: evaluate playing: Having spent a large amount of time playing Starcraft already, I will need to use the first block of time to play the game, and begin evaluating my own knowledge. The first step to improving my skills is to establish a baseline. All of my further progress will be measured against my initial stats.

Step 2: read about starcraft, and about traditional war strategy: Many people play the game and make up the community. Within this community ideas spread, new players can meet, and trends form. In this step I will research current trends in battle strategies in order to improve my gameplay.

Step 3: Compare new information to starcraft tactics: In Starcraft you are acting as a general. Reading works and researching tactics developed by history's greatest generals can help me gain a new understanding of war. 

Step 4: detail a battle plan: Apply tactics and ideas developed by great generals like Sun Tzu. After studying various historical military geniuses I will design and apply their strategies and create my own battle plans for the game. 

Step 5: implement plan: I will have to test my plan by playing. Hopefully using new tactics will improve my gameplay. 

Step 6: measure success: Contribute to the community and advance in rank.

In the Starcraft community each player is ranked. Each player is divided into the seven different leagues based on skill level. Each league is then split into pools of 100 people. It is in these groups of 100 people you compete for first. At the end of each season the top players are promoted and the worst are demoted (not a lot). The highest league is called Grandmaster. This league consists of the top 200 players in each region (North American, Europe, Asia, etc). My goal is to advance as far as I can in this ladder system. I will use my rank to demonstrate my progress.

End Goal: Aside from ranking up I plan on achieving one more goal. In this final step I plan to give back to the community. As I said before, Starcraft is a community. Within this community players share ideas. I plan on using tactics developed by history's greatest general and applying it to the game. My hope is to develop a battle strategy that is new. Perhaps other players can eventually benefit. In the end I will be giving back to the community to help other players expand their knowledge of the game.