Entry 7: Pro Gaming

   I'm sure most of you are familiar with gaming. Pick up a controller or load a PC game and you know what I mean. But every now and then a game concoction of being developed well, supported and boasting the right credentials of being a competitive game can lead to games like Starcraft, a game in which countries like Korea has multiple television networks devoted to covering the game, the leagues and the contestants that play in the tournaments which can rewards with hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's right, hundos o' thousands. National Geographic has a special on this that you can watch here on YouTube:
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Part 5

   The ridiculously skilled and probably slightly psychotic players that come from all over the world to participate in these tournaments are revered as stars. It's like an American athlete without the absurd salary but instead of physically exerting yourself, your decision making, mental capacity and reaction time are pushed to their limits.

   For those of you unfamiliar with Starcraft, it's an RTS game or Real Time Strategy. The premise of the game is to construct an army consisting of buildings, attacking units and construction units by mining two resources, minerals (a kind of blue crystal) and vespane gas (a green gas you harvest from geysers) as your currency to pay for the costs of building and training your army. You can choose from the human Terrans, the insect like Zerg or the psyionic wielding advanced Protoss. Each race is vastly different from the others in looks, playing style and overall theme. In the single player game you can also dive into a rich backstory full of lore, heros and battles.

   Starcraft 2 has been under development for many years now and is hopefully going to be release sometime in 2009. I'm very excited about the sequal as Starcraft has been one of my favorite games of all time.