eSports - Birth and Rise of Modern Competitive Gaming
While competitive gaming didn't start with StarCraft or South Korea, eSports certainly did. eSports (e스포츠) was a term popularized, possibly coined by Korean Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism at the time, Park Jie Won(박지원) circa 1999-2000. What we now know as eSports would have never been possible if it weren't for the perfect storm of various historical, economic, social factors that converged at just the right time to make it possible for eSports to rise to prominence on the backs of RTS games, in particular Starcraft: Broodwar. In 1998, at time of Broodwar's release, ROK government had recently subsidized internet and IT infrastructure as a way to attempt to push the nation forward from a crippling blow to the economy from the International Monetary Fund crisis. This led to rise of PC Cafes (PC방) that took over most of pre-existing leisure spaces such as billiard clubs, arcades, etc. and made both internet and personal computing accessible to the mainstream audience. At the time, PC Cafes were an inexpensive outlet for a population of youth with low disposable income and time to kill. It provided access to internet, computer tasks, and most notably gaming - Starcraft in particular quickly became the go-to reason to visit such establishments. The phenomenon did not go unnoticed, with major businesses seeking marketing opportunities and in particular, major broadcasting channels (OnGameNet, MBC Games) picking up on the trend and starting to broadcast Starcraft competitions, with a panel of casters and commentators much like one that can be found in the traditional sports formats and hoisted its dedicated and skilled players to celebrity status. While the phenomenon was largely contained to South Korea, eSports built around Starcraft paved the way and served as a model for Starcraft 2 and many other competitive games to follow.
