by Jay Shin (Deputy Manager / International e-Sports Federation)
I am sure that everyone related to e-Sports is aware of Korean professional gamer, ‘Boxer’. At the beginning era of Starcraft League in Korea, Terran was regarded as the weakest and hardest tribe to play. However, ‘Boxer’, who acquired the honorable name of ‘Emperor of Terran’, have won numerous prizes and titles at diverse tournament events as performing various strategies, in spite of selecting ‘Terran’ as his main tribe. Since then, ‘Boxer’ led the popularization of e-Sports in Korea with wide popularity; the base of his power would not be possible without the support of game media ? Ongamenet and other medias.
One of the preconditions for success of pro sports is an emergence of star players and the marketing through them.
For example, NBA concentrated on promotion and exposure of star player since its development so that NBA established high growth as well as huge marketing effect and social sensation.
In early 2000, when there was even no such concept of e- Sports, Korean game broadcasting media, Ongamenet which hosted ‘Starleague’ discovered the potential of the evolution of game to pro sports.
Ongamenet started to create story line between ‘Boxer’ and other outstanding players. One of the typical examples was the match between ‘Boxer’ and ‘Yellow’. After that, their match started to be called ‘LymJinLoc’ which all e-Sports fans looked forward to watching.
Also, numerous amateur players began to have dreams to make themselves pro gamers watching the treatment as professional occupation. The success of starleague created another e-Sports broadcaster and pushed Korean enterprises to have interests in this new culture Recently, most of the early star players have retired or being paving the way for coaching staff. Although the new generation succeeds them, the atmosphere of e-Sports field is not so active comparing to last time.
I think that this is because of current situation that it is hard for Korea e-Sports to cultivate star players with other minor reasons.
