On a cold, chilly night in Seoul, thousands flocked to an auditorium to witness this once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Several thousands more watched via live stream. As the event drew to a close, the audience drowned the auditorium with their cheers and deafening applause.

The big draw? StarCraft II. The December tournament brought cyber contestants to battle it out on the popular PC game.

Korea hosted the first StarCraft I World Cyber Games tournament in 1999, drawing participants from across the globe. The eventual winner, French-Canadian Guillaume Patry, said back then that “the future of video gaming would be in Korea.” His words would be prophetic years later.

E-gaming, also known as e-sports, is relatively unknown to the general public but is followed zealously by gamers and tech savvy people. Prize money often goes up to hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars. Notable events ― GOMTV GSL (StarCraft), the World Cyber Games (various games), and E.V.O (fighting games) ― are backed by corporate sponsors.

In Korea, e-gaming has gone a step further. It is a legitimate career. Top players are said to make up to $500,000 in yearly salary. Sponsors from gaming and tech companies usually come knocking on their doors with hefty contracts. Players also boost their income by endorsing products and getting TV exposure. They are not ashamed of telling their parents that they make a great living, playing video games.

Such e-gaming success in Korea is what brought Dan Stemkoski, who goes by the moniker “Artosis” online, and his friend Nick “Tasteless” Plott from the eastern U.S. to Seoul in 2007. Their goal? To promote e-sports to the rest of the world.

To them, moving to Korea was a no-brainer. “Nick and I were both professional gamers in the U.S. for years in StarCraft I. The dream for any StarCraft I player is to go to Korea, so we followed this dream however possible,” Stemkoski said.

The two, nevertheless, chose not be professional gamers anymore, but to be ambassadors to e-sports instead.

As recent as 2007, StarCraft did not have professional English broadcasters that could accurately talk about a game in real-time.

The best broadcasters were all Korean, and for fans of e-sports living overseas, there was no easy way to access televised StartCraft matches or commentary. They would have to log onto Korean gaming sites or visit specialized sites, both of which made it a hassle to keep up with e-sports.

As it stood, e-sports was still a niche, and these obstacles made it hard for it to expand to other countries. Stemkoski and Plott, as e-sports casters, vowed to change that.

And that they did. In just five years, Stemkoski, Plott and the e-sports community brought StarCraft to the world. “The West finally caught on,” says Stemkoski.

Much of the groundwork for StarCraft’s success in Korea came in the late 1990s. Back then, there was an embargo on console-based games from Japan, due to icy Korea-Japan relations. Koreans turned to StarCraft for their gaming pastime. Twenty years later, e-gaming competitors flock to Seoul to compete and launch their careers, especially if their chosen game is StarCraft. They have no choice.

Korea is the only country that a gamer can become a professional with a steady salary.

Participants compete in many genres, from first-person shooters, fighting games and real-time strategy. Like their sports brethren, e-sports participants play in leagues, professional teams are created and their games are broadcast live. Players practice an average of eight to 20 hours a day. Like athletes, they work on everything from fundamentals to the little details. 

(Yonhap News)