Monday night in South Korea: a match is taking place in the national Starcraft league. About 200 fans are crowded into an e-sports stadium in a central Seoul shopping mall. Almost all of them are female.
Aged from mid teens to mid 20s, many of these fans have brought flowers, cuddly toys and boxes of Dunkin' Donuts to give to their favourite stars. They shriek and cheer when the two teams walk on stage. In South Korea, pro gaming has attained the status of rock and roll.
Dry ice. Noise. Flashing lights. The stage looks like it's set for a heavy metal gig. Sci-fi style pods are situated on either side of it, where the pro gamers will sit and play. The backdrop is a giant screen.
Advertisement:
Although not designed to be a spectator sport, this is what Starcraft has become in Korea. Backstage, a make-up artist got the pro gamers ready, styling their hair and applying eyeliner and foundation. They are all young men in their late teens and early 20s, their uniforms slick and futuristic - white sports suits covered in advertising logos, like a Formula One driver's jumpsuit.
Each team has six players and there are five games per match - four games of one vs one and one game of two vs two. There is a TV camera on a crane: the match is being filmed live for broadcast on one of the country's three dedicated gaming channels. When the contest finally begins, there are also three pundits on stage, commentating on the gaming action loudly and excitedly in Korean.
For the 300 pro Starcraft players in South Korea, nights like this are the high points of their trade. This is the one time when they are face-to-face with their adoring public - when they can truly feel the adulation. (And receive their favourite doughnuts.)
Most of the time, however, life as a pro-gamer is anything but glamorous. You can tell this from their faces.
They barely show emotion - even when they win. To succeed at Starcraft you can never allow yourself to lose focus. You must devote almost all your waking hours to practice; you need to become a game-playing machine.
In the nine years since Starcraft was launched, Blizzard's RTS game has been adopted by the Koreans as a national way of life. Helped on by the country's early adoption of broadband, and the preference for PC games over consoles, Starcraft is now a multimillion pound industry - no other game comes close in popularity.
"The major sports in Korea are baseball, soccer, basketball - and now e-sports," says Sean Oh, who runs the Starcraft team CJ Entus. "It's a rapidly growing industry."
There are eleven professional Starcraft teams in South Korea. Each of them is owned by a large national conglomerate, which pays the players' wages, food and accommodation. CJ Entus is funded to the tune of (US)$20 million by the Korean food and photo company CJ.
The best players may be national stars, yet they live almost like slaves. All the pro gamers live in team houses where they have little freedom to do anything but practise. CJ Entus has two houses - one for their best players, and one for the hopefuls.
I visited the A-team house, which is in a residential street in northern Seoul. Fourteen pro gamers live here, together with their team coach.
It's half frat house, half sweatshop. Upstairs are the dorms. The team's top two players, Ma Jae Yoon (handle sAviOr) and Seo Ji Hoon (handle XellOs) share a room that's not much bigger than two single beds. The others are crammed into bunks in two other rooms.
Ma, aged 21, is currently South Korea's number one Starcraft player and, according to Sean Oh, a millionaire. You wouldn't be able to glean this from looking at his bedroom. It looks like any teenage boy's room - with lots of cuddly toys given by fans. The only luxury he allows himself is a Cartier gold necklace and bracelet.
Downstairs is the 'training room'. Here the gamers practise Starcraft 13 hours a day. They try to go to the gym in the mornings to use other muscles than their fingers, but apart from that they do little else but eat, sleep and practise. They do this six or seven days a week, and only get one month's holiday a year. When I ask Ma what he can spend his money on, he replies: "I would like to have a good car and a fancy girlfriend. But unfortunately I don't have time to do these things, my schedule is always full."
Frustratingly, even though the players are sex symbols, they cannot take advantage of their status. "If they have a girlfriend, they text message all the time, they can't concentrate on practising," says Sean. "So we recommend not to have a girlfriend until they retire."
For eight months last year, Krysztof Nalepka, a 19-year-old Pole, was the only foreigner in the Korean Starcraft league. His insights into the lifestyle are revealing: "I was very lonely... I had to practise 13 hours a day, with only Sundays off, so it was really hard work." He eventually gave up, because it was too tough.
"There are thousands of Koreans who want to be pro gamers," says Krysztof. "A huge number of players wanting to be the best. So you have to give 100 percent." During the day, four 'coaches' would patrol the team to make sure they were not surfing the net or chatting on Messenger.
Krysztof was on a small salary, just $500 a month (although lodging and food were provided at the team house). Only the top few earn a lot - salaries of up to $200,000 and extra for advertising and prizes. Most pro gamers survive on almost nothing, kept going only by dreams of stardom and their love of the game.
