Art and ‘Craft
Introducing the Concordia StarCraft Community
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Twenty guys are lounging on couches in a dimly lit room, watching a match being replayed on a big screen at the front of the room.
To anybody peering in, it looks like the world’s geekiest professional hockey team reviewing tape of an opposing team. Onscreen, though, body checks and wrist shots have been replaced by explosions and gunfire. This ain’t no normal sports team. This is the Concordia StarCraft Community, a club dedicated entirely to the “e-sport” that has popped up around the legendary computer game.
For those not in the know, StarCraft and its recently released sequel are strategy games, which the members of CSC gleefully describe as “chess on crack.” You and your opponent construct bases, scout territory, build armies and eventually try to annihilate each other. It’s a game of patience—and practice. Lots of practice.
“When I don’t have an overwhelming amount of homework, I can play about four hours a day,” said Daniel Dahlberg, one of CSC’s vice-presidents. “Every single night, there’s at least 10 to 15 members [practicing online].”
Other members are equally committed. One recalled nights back in the caveman era of dial-up when he’d cover his modem with a blanket in the night to keep his parents from hearing the trademark cackling that would betray his all-night gaming sessions.
Though not yet a part of the growing collegiate StarCraft competitions due to a missed deadline, the CSC is gearing up to take on an adversary much more vile than the alien avatars they use in their clashes, as they prepare to battle McGill in a tournament during the first week of March.
But the point of the club transcends even that most intense of rivalries.
“It’s for Concordia, we are representing Concordia,” said CSC member Michael Cohen. “We want to give it a good name, but at the same time, we also want to [represent] StarCraft.”
StarCraft Gods
Here in Canada we pride ourselves on sports such as hockey or lacrosse. However, some countries put the same sort of national pride towards games such as StarCraft—South Korea, for instance.
“If you don’t know, here [in Canada] we have football or soccer. In South Korea, they have StarCraft,” said Dahlberg.
South Korea is a place spoken of in tones that are reminiscent of Muslims on their way to Mecca, Jews to Jerusalem, or Christians to Bethlehem. It is Nirvana, Valhalla and the Garden of Eden wrapped in one, a place where their skills attract supermodel girlfriends and six figure paychecks. It is a place where a club that Dahlberg grinningly describes as a “sausage fest” might attract genuine groupies. Some of the CSC gamers are so enamored that they’re planning on doing exchanges just to be able to watch some of the tournaments that get televised nationally in the country.
“These players are considered Gods,” said an enthusiastic Dahlberg. “If you walk on the street and see a hockey player, that’s the equivalent of being a StarCraft II player in South Korea.”
E-Sport or Art Form?
The glittery allure of fame has caused many to pick up a hockey stick or basketball. But it has also caused an equal amount to pick up a paintbrush or video camera or other means of artistic expression.
StarCraft is an e-sport, but is it an art form? There are few mediums where the creation and enjoyment of the work are so tied together. How a game is played is entirely dependent on the player.
So is it really such a stretch to call the boys of the CSC artists?
“It depends on whether you consider [something like] Wayne Gretzky doing what he did, his vision on the ice, some people consider that artful,” said Eric Leijon, a video game critic at the Mirror. “It could be possible for somebody to be so great at what they do that you stare in awe, but I don’t know if I would consider it an art form. It’s more of a skill.”Interactive Art
Ok, so they’re e-athletes, not artists. But it’s not unfair to say that a CSC practice session, where they watch championship matches and take notes on strategy, is a lot like being at an art gallery. They are immersed in an experience that combines aesthetics with strategy. Playing StarCraft is a lot like watching a movie that bred with a choose-your-own-adventure book.
“One thing that video games can do that other art forms can’t, is that the level of interactivity allows the player to go into a world they don’t live in, one that’s created by those who created the game,” said Leijon. “It can do things that movies try to do, but can’t.”StarCraft brings people together in an entirely different way than the movie-watching experience. When you watch a movie, you’re encouraged to sit still and shut up, lest you ruin it for others (Rocky Horror is an obvious exception). Playing StarCraft, contrary to the stereotype of the nerd alone at his computer, is actually an incredibly social activity.
“Playing StarCraft is a lot like watching a movie that bred with a choose-your-own-adventure book.”
“Most of the people who play online get on Skype so they can talk at the same time,” said Dahlberg. “I went out for a few beers with a couple of guys, too. It’s good for me because it was my first semester last semester, so I had people to socialize with.”
Leijon observed that global communities have popped up around games like StarCraft and Counter-Strike, which has taken that bonding feeling you got by playing your SNES or Sega with your best friends in your basement 15 years ago to an international level.
“[A game like StarCraft lets you] interact with eachother, trade stories and teach eachother how to play. There’s a sense of camaraderie.”
Noted social commentator/hipster svengali Chuck Klosterman once wrote that video games are unlike other art, in that no proper method of critiquing them has ever evolved. We know what the games look like, we know what the gameplay feels like, but we don’t know what the games mean.
Groups like the CSC might finally be giving us the answer. Games are about beautiful, intricate worlds and brain addling puzzles of strategy. But they’re also about something more—the same thing you see in rinks and fields around the country; the same feeling that comes over you when you feel a reaction from a player or artist of skill.
Behind the bitter competitiveness, when you’re sitting in that dark room watching marines and the zerg alien race riddle each other with bullets, it’s mostly about good times with your buddies.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 21, published February 1, 2011.
