The thriving Brood War leagues in Korea were actually overseen by the Korean Government - the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s new branch, the Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA). It was events behind-the-scenes that would ultimately limit StarCraft II’s potential.īlizzard could well have used a ‘build order’ - the term for the sequencing of which units to build in a game of StarCraft - of their own when StarCraft II was approaching release. In a world where it enjoyed unparalleled success as a game, stream entertainment, and a spectator sport, it seems hard to imagine that anything could go wrong for Blizzard’s platinum child of a product. By 2014, Twitch would represent the fourth-largest source of peak internet traffic in the United States, thanks in part to the popularity of StarCraft II. Blizzard enjoyed seeing their games atop Twitch’s most-watched list, and would formally partner with them for the newly minted World Championship Series (WCS) in 2013. As the most popular game and esport in the world by almost all metrics, Twitch took off by allowing fans to watch pro players any time the wanted, and by giving pros another revenue stream. Twitch officially launched in June of 2011, and the service relied heavily on StarCraft II to gain an audience. While there were growing pains and lessons learned along the way, Korea’s adoption of the first ‘ Orcs in Space’ was ultimately the first step in their incredible international success in competitive gaming.Īlongside its popularity and financial success, SC2 also helped elevate the profile of a little-known video streaming platform called. StarCraft and its expansion Brood War arrived in Korea at a time where the infrastructure development required to catapult online gaming to mainstream success was blossoming. As the successor to the then most cherished competitive field of all time, SC2 had big shoes to fill - and, for a while, it did. Poised to capitalize on that momentum and usher in a new era of competitive real-time strategy, StarCraft II launched in 2010 to universal critical acclaim. Released in 1998, the original StarCraft developed an unprecedented following in South Korea, where, for over a decade, complex leagues with ever-burgeoning prize pools increased the game’s profile and popularity. When the history books of esports are written, they will refer with reverence to the Roman Empire of gaming that was StarCraft.

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