Earlier this morning, Lee Yun-Yeol (NaDa) and Jang Jae Ho (Moon) played the bestest, most awesomest Starcraft II game of all-time.  Too bad nobody saw it.

Starcraft II: Where I Can’t Tell What’s Going On, They May Be Playing Super Metroid Happens

Yup.  Someone put the kibosh on a Moon/NaDa live stream.  Minus two minutes of cameraphone footage that might as well been scrambled porn, no footage of the matches has surfaced.  As the contestants fought to a 1-1 draw, I grabbed my Moon plush doll and cried myself to sleep.  When I awoke to Google for the culprit, I found a curious tidbit: Sans NaDa, KESPA (the Korean E-Sport Association) barred other Starcraft talent from competing in the night’s exhibition matches.

(Remember eighteen months ago, when the Starcraft fan base threw a hissy-fit over multiple-building selection?  And they used Korean pro gamers as their star witness?  And I explained that people would be opposed to a core game mechanic that threatens their ability to play video games for money?  Yup.  Nothing’s changed!)

Let’s speculate: Professional Starcraft, no matter how trivial in the course of human events, is a business.  In the event Starcraft II sparks a boom for e-sports in the Western World, KESPA will become the gaming equivalent of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  For those of you who don’t follow the UFC’s business practices, Dana White is the perfect asshole to run that company.  In video game news, the company told potential UFC fighters that if they signed on for EA’s mixed martial arts game, they would never work for the company.  Not long before, Jon Fitch was fired by the UFC (though subsequently rehired) because he would not grant the company lifetime rights to use his likeness in the company’s future games.

The UFC is the company at the head of a boom with room for more than one competitor.  They are a business that touts boxing as a “dying sport” and proceeds to pay their main-event talent far less than main-event boxers earn. To date, there has been no mention of forming a union for the fighters.  On the other side, KESPA is an organization that makes its meal ticket from Starcraft.  In the event that Starcraft II is the e-sports revolution, there will be room for more than one competitor.  KESPA oversees a salary structure where B-Team players are lucky to earn 30,000 dollars a year.  The gamers do not have a union, either.  And when I hear this organization prohibited its talent from playing Starcraft II exhibition matches, what would you like me to think?

You would be insane to believe KESPA is looking at Starcraft II and would not go underhanded in order to preserve their product.  Salaries are stable and their market share is good.  Do you think they want to fight a bidding war with Major League Gaming and threaten the stability of a scene the South Koreans have a monopoly on?

Yeah, I’m running a lot of speculation through the filter.  But at best, we just had the first dream match of Starcraft II’s young future played without a single camera rolling.  And when you can’t get a straight story on the surrounding events, and you want to convince me that this is the competitive game of the future, this isn’t a good start.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 7:07 pm and is filed under E-Sports, Marketing, Perception, Starcraft, Starcraft II, UFC (series). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.