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Everything that grew around it. PC bangs and the world inside them, GG and the zerg rush and nuclear launch detected, custom maps and tower defence, the archivists and creators who kept the game alive, and the long argument about what StarCraft did to gaming everywhere else.
Part of StarCraft
63 moments in this segment.
- - KBS 1999: the dawn of Korean esports, game fans united by StarCraft. KBS current-affairs programme originally broadcast 4 February 1999 on the PC game-room craze, featuring Kim Do-hyung, Battle.net star Choi Jin-woo and Korea's first pro gamer Shin Joo-young.
- - KBS 1999: inside a StarCraft masters tournament with SSamJang Lee Ki-seok. KBS programme originally broadcast 21 August 1999 following Korea's early StarCraft stars, including SSamJang Lee Ki-seok, at a national tournament.
- - KBS 2003: BoxeR, the Emperor of Terran and pioneer of esports. Compilation of KBS broadcasts from 2003 featuring Lim Yo-hwan, including an August 2003 interview and a segment measuring his in-game reflexes.
- - KBS 2004-2007: BoxeR as esports itself. Second KBS compilation of Lim Yo-hwan's television appearances between 2004 and 2007, including the 2004 Game Power People feature and a 2006 Power Interview.
- - National Geographic at the World Cyber Games 2005. National Geographic documentary covering the World Cyber Games 2005 in Singapore, where over 800 players from 67 countries competed and 39,000 spectators attended.
- - CNN reports on competitive gaming in South Korea. CNN news segment introducing an international audience to South Korea's professional StarCraft scene.
- - The UC Berkeley StarCraft class, lecture one. Opening lecture of the student-run UC Berkeley course on StarCraft theory, a widely reported instance of the game entering a university curriculum.
- - StarCraft's Walk of Game star. The StarCraft star on the Walk of Game at the Metreon in San Francisco, photographed in 2009.
- - Korean StarCraft television commercial: the Hydralisk companion. Korean television advertisement for StarCraft featuring a Hydralisk as a household companion, an example of the game's mainstream commercial presence in Korea.
- - Korean pro gamers demonstrate APM (from 'The Hax Life'). Clip from the documentary 'The Hax Life' showing Korean professional players demonstrating actions-per-minute; the video became a widely circulated introduction to APM culture.
- - Day[9] Daily #100: My Life of StarCraft. The most famous episode of Sean 'Day[9]' Plott's daily show, a personal account of growing up inside StarCraft that became a defining artefact of the community.
- - tvN documentary: BoxeR's Wings, part one. tvN special documentary on Lim Yo-hwan, broadcast 27 November 2010, following the return of the player known in Korea as the Emperor of esports.
- - BarCraft Stockholm for DreamHack Valencia. A BarCraft viewing party for DreamHack Valencia 2011 held at The Crib in Stockholm, where StarCraft II broadcasts were shown in a bar.
- - A BarCraft crowd in Stockholm. Spectators at the BarCraft Stockholm viewing party for DreamHack Valencia 2011.
- - BarCraft in Munich. A BarCraft StarCraft II viewing event in Munich, photographed in February 2012.
- - StarCraft at Japan Expo 2012. A StarCraft area at the 13th Japan Expo, held at the Parc des Expositions in Villepinte near Paris in July 2012.
- - Autograph booth, MLG Fall 2012. StarCraft II players Flash, Hyvaa and Soulkey signing at the autograph booth during the 2012 MLG Fall Championship.
- - Five great StarCraft custom maps: an introduction to UMS. A tour of favourite Brood War Use Map Settings creations for people who never entered the UMS scene, with mentions of Basketball, Snowball Wars and Helm's Deep.
- - Berkeley's Collegiate StarLeague team. The UC Berkeley Collegiate StarLeague StarCraft team at the CSL Grand Finals in February 2013.
- - Happy Birthday StarCraft: fifteen years of messages from the community. Blizzard compilation of birthday videos recorded by StarCraft players worldwide and by Blizzard staff for the game's fifteenth anniversary.
- - Red Bull: the story of StarCraft. Episode of Red Bull's This Is eSports series examining why fans care about StarCraft's story, filmed alongside a professional tournament.
- - Sons of StarCraft: how Tasteless and Artosis became the voice of the game. Documentary on the risks and sacrifices Nick 'Tasteless' Plott and Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski took moving to Korea to become the game's English-language casting duo.
- - StarCraft II at PlayIT Budapest. A StarCraft II station at the PlayIT Show in Budapest, 2015. The camera clock is misset; the description dates the event to 2015.
- - Conan O'Brien visits a Seoul PC bang. Conan on TBS segment in which the host plays StarCraft and Sudden Attack at a Seoul gaming cafe, a mainstream American TV treatment of PC bang culture.
- - Wall Street Journal: StarCraft, South Korea's unofficial national sport. WSJ news segment on StarCraft's status in South Korea and on AI researchers eyeing the game as the next man-versus-machine challenge.
- - Blizzard Korea's StarCraft documentary: 'The Story That Won't GG'. Official Blizzard Korea documentary marking StarCraft Remastered, gathering voices from 19 years of the game's life in Korea and reflecting on its economic and cultural meaning.
- - StarCraft: Story of GG. Official Blizzard documentary on how a passion that swept South Korea in the late 1990s spread worldwide and coined the language of competitive gaming.
- - StarCraft at Gamescom 2017. The StarCraft area at Gamescom 2017 in Cologne, in the year StarCraft: Remastered was released.
- - StarCraft Is Life: the 20th anniversary celebration. Blizzard's anniversary film gathering players worldwide, from community diehards who established the scene to its next generation, on what StarCraft has meant to them.
- - Before this was a thing: how StarCraft was made. Red Bull animated short in which Blizzard developers Brian Sousa and Bob Fitch describe StarCraft's development quirks and its rise into a premier esport.
- - The history of StarCraft. Researched history of the game from Blizzard's origins as Silicon & Synapse through StarCraft's development and release.
- - StarCraft Remastered speedrun at Summer Games Done Quick 2019. KingDime's 50:39 StarCraft Remastered run performed live at SGDQ 2019, with couch commentary; a record of StarCraft's place in the speedrunning community.
- - BarCraft Szeged. The BarCraft venue in Szeged, Hungary, photographed in November 2019.
- - The student who beat his master: BoxeR's tears. Clip from the KBS special 'The Gamer', broadcast 22 December 2019, on Choi Yeon-sung defeating his mentor Lim Yo-hwan and the moment it became.
- - KBS 'The Gamer': StarCraft's 20th anniversary, from PC bangs to BoxeR and Faker. KBS special documentary broadcast 22 December 2019 tracing Korean gaming from the IMF-era PC bang boom through Lim Yo-hwan and Faker.
- - The Korean StarCraft 'documentary' fan series, seasons one to three. Compilation of a Korean fan-made mock-documentary series treating StarCraft units as natural history, covering the Drone, Dragoon, Marine, Mutalisk, Corsair, Wraith, Ultralisk and Carrier.
- - What Korean PC bangs looked like twenty years ago. KLAB report built from KBS archive footage of late-1990s and early-2000s PC bangs, complete with CRT monitors and an ashtray at every seat.
- - Can StarCraft esports ever make a comeback?. Akshon Media piece on how StarCraft went from one of the world's biggest esports to a niche scene, and what a revival would require.
- - How StarCraft Changed An Entire Country. IGN Compete report on StarCraft's role in the explosive growth of Korean PC bangs after the game's 1998 launch and the esports industry that followed.
- - Artosis leaves Korea: the end of an era for the foreign scene. Tasteless explains why his casting partner Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski left Korea after more than a decade, closing a chapter of the foreign community's presence in Seoul.
- - The modern PC bang: dinner for two with a side of StarCraft. Korea JoongAng Daily report on how PC bangs evolved into food-serving social venues, with StarCraft still on the screens.
- - Artosis recalls his first day in Korea. Personal account of arriving in Korea to pursue StarCraft, one of the founding stories of the foreigner community that embedded itself in the Korean scene.
- - The origins of the Zerg Rush meme. Short explainer tracing how the zerg rush went from an in-game tactic to one of the internet's most durable gaming memes.
- - When a tournament tried to stop the greatest gamer of all time. Akshon documentary on tournament organisers manipulating conditions against a dominant StarCraft player, and what it revealed about the era's competitive structures.
- - What did a 1990s Korean PC bang look like?. KBS Archive compilation of period footage showing first-generation PC bangs and the StarCraft craze that followed the 1997 IMF crisis and the government's IT push.
- - Can you beat StarCraft without losing a single unit?. Challenge-play documentary attempting the original StarCraft campaign without a single unit loss, a signature form of the game's modern challenge community.
- - StarCraft was never meant to be played the way Koreans played it. Video essay arguing that Korean competitive play diverged completely from Blizzard's design intentions for the game.
- - From champion to criminal: the story of Life. Documentary on Lee 'Life' Seung-hyun, the StarCraft II world champion convicted of match-fixing, and the scandal that followed.
- - Daegu MBC: 'StarCraft or Lineage?' inside a 1999 PC bang. Local news retrospective on Korean PC bangs spreading from the late 1990s, driven by people who lost their jobs in the IMF crisis and opened cafes.
- - State of Play: the StarCraft documentary about Korea's pro-gaming stadiums. Feature documentary following professional StarCraft players in South Korea, where thousands fill stadiums in Seoul to watch Proleague. Features Lee Jae Dong and other pros.
- - Tasteless on Brood War versus StarCraft II and the collapse of Blizzard esports. Long interview with Nick 'Tasteless' Plott recorded in Korea, covering the two games, Blizzard's esports restructuring and what came next.
- - StarCraft graffiti in Tel Aviv. StarCraft-themed graffiti on Lavanda Street in Tel Aviv, photographed in November 2023.
- - StarCraft history: the first televised esports match. Tasteless reconstructs the earliest televised professional StarCraft match, a founding moment for esports broadcasting.
- - The gamer who fought an entire nation: Serral breaks Korea's monopoly. Akshon Media documentary on Serral, the first non-Korean to win the StarCraft II World Championship Series, and what that meant for the foreign scene.
- - Racing the StarCraft speedrun ace. GiantGrantGames documents a head-to-head race against one of StarCraft's top campaign speedrunners, framing the challenge-play community around the original game.
- - uThermal on anxiety, balance and the greatest-of-all-time debate. Long StarCraft Historian interview with the Dutch professional Marc 'uThermal' Schlappi covering his career, the sport's pressures and the GOAT argument.
- - The economy of Korea's Brood War pro scene. Analysis of prize money and salaries in the modern Korean Brood War scene, estimating that Korean proleagues alone exceed two million dollars in annual earnings, excluding ASL and showmatches.
- - Grrrr... on progaming before 2000 and the first TV broadcasts. Long interview with Grrrr..., the only foreigner ever to win an OSL, who became a celebrity in Korea and appeared on Korean reality television. Covers the pre-2000 era of pro gaming.
- - Garimto on winning the OSL twice and the esports match-fixing scandal. Interview with Garimto, one of the first progamers, who won the OSL in 2000 and 2001, later became a commentator and returned to play before retiring in 2007.
- - How South Korea Made a StarCraft God. Long-form video essay on how South Korea's PC bang boom and broadcast leagues turned StarCraft players into national celebrities.
- - What happened to StarCraft?. Analysis of how a franchise that helped create global esports declined, covering StarCraft II's trajectory and Blizzard's changing priorities.
- - Artosis on StarCraft's greatest casting era. Esports Awards Origins podcast interview with Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski about casting StarCraft in Korea and the era he covered.
- - How a video game scandal destroyed a national esports league. Long-form documentary on the match-fixing scandal that brought down Korea's StarCraft professional league.
