The significance of Starcraft Remastered in Korea

About a week ago, Blizzard Entertrainment pre-launched Starcraft Remastered in Korea with an event in Busan and also making it available in PC Rooms (Internet cafes) nationwide about two weeks before its international launch.  The pre-launch received widespread coverage in the tech media and mainstream press (see this article in The Korea Herald)

The release of a re-mastered version was inevitable, given the continuing popularity of the game and the significant technical advances in audio and graphics since its original release.  It was also highly appropriate given the interesting and significant role of this massive multiplayer online game in Korea's digital network revolution.  However, most of the media coverage to date, both technical and mainstream, has missed or glossed over the real historical significance of the game, which can be thought of in the following terms.
South Korea led the world in digitizing its networks, completing a fully-digital public switched telephone network by 1987 in what knowledgeable experts here call the "telecommunications revolution of the 1980s."  Consequently, in the early 1990s the country was a leader in the introduction of CDMA mobile service and broadband.  A company called Thrunet began offering broadband service via cable modem in 1998.

The introduction of broadband coincided with the release of Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment and contributed to both the growth of Internet Cafes (PC Bangs) in South Korea and the popularity of Starcraft among middle and high school students, as shown in the graphic (click for a full size view of the slide) I use in my classes and lectures.  Consequently, when Hanaro Telecom entered the market for broadband service, it aimed advertising for its ADSL service at parents, telling them that with Hanaro's service their children could play Starcraft at home, rather than coming home late from the PC Bang.  The campaign was so successful that the waiting list for Hanaro service reached 500,000 and stayed at that level for a long time.
There is more to this story but to summarize, consider the following.

• Digital broadband networks made massive multiplayer online games (MMOG) possible.
• In reciprocal fashion, the popularity of Starcraft contributed to the rapid spread of household broadband access in Korea.
• MMOGs, beginning with Starcraft were invented in Korea.  The nation had broadband and PC rooms (Internet cafes) years before other countries and its culture contributed to shaping the emergence of MMOGs and e-sports.
• Korea continues to play a major role, disproportionate to its population, in the evolution of online and mobile games, and e-sports more generally.

The role of Korean culture in shaping the success of Starcraft was described by Robert Breidenbecker, Vice President of Blizzard Entertainment, in a report published by The Korea Times as follows.

"The greater-than-expected success of the original "StarCraft" here made him believe the first mission in developing "StarCraft: Remastered" was to understand Korea.  It was about being at PC rooms and how people engage with the game, like going out together for some barbeque together, having a couple of bottles of soju and playing a match of StarCraft. That was something that the people at our office had never experienced. It was the core of the market."

Have computers met their match in Starcraft?

Jonathan Cheng, the Seoul based reporter for The Wall Street Journal, recently published a very interesting article that ties into interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence surrounding the highly publicized Go match between AlphaGo and Korea's top human player (see this earlier post).   As Cheng notes at the start of the article, "Humanity has fallen to artificial intelligence in checkers, chess, and, last month, Go, the complex ancient Chinese board game. But some of the world’s biggest nerds are confident that machines will meet their Waterloo on the pixelated battlefields of the computer strategy game StarCraft.
A key reason: Unlike machines, humans are good at lying." Later the article notes that "Demis Hassabis, creator of the artificial-intelligence program that defeated Go grandmaster Lee Se-dol in the recent closely watched match in Seoul, has long eyed StarCraft as a possible challenge for his AI company DeepMind, which Alphabet Inc.’s Google acquired two years ago."
The article mentions that Starcraft was developed in 1998.  It might have added that the game initially gained widespread popularity in South Korea, because its PC Rooms, in the late 1990s, afforded much faster broadband internet connections than most of the rest of the world had at that time.  Furthermore, Starcraft's popularity was an important factor in the rapid spread of household broadband connections (DSL and cable modem) around that time as Hanaro launched an advertising campaign aimed at parents, urging them to install broadband at home, so their children could play Starcraft there, and not come home late at night after playing at a PC Bang.

Starcraft Remastered: An Update

Blizzard Entertainments pre-launch release of Starcraft Remastered, the topic of my prior post,  has generated some controversy in Korea, with PC Room owners complaining to the Fair Trade Commission about the pricing.  According to a report in The Korea Times, Starcraft is regaining popularity with this new release.  (click on the graphic for a full-size version) The article notes that "The 19-year-old computer online strategy game "StarCraft" is recovering its popularity with the exclusive pre-launch of its upgraded version in Korea, according to industry sources, Tuesday. According to its developer and distributor Blizzard Entertainment, about 28,000 copies of a special "StarCraft: Remastered" package have been sold so far. The special package has been exclusively released in Korea."  The article quotes a source in Blizzard Entertainment as saying that "We have also released the game through all our partnered PC rooms since July 30, which numbers some 10,000 nationwide."  Note that this statement MAY NOT indicate that 10,000 PC rooms have accepted Blizzard's terms and are offering the remastered game.

 However, this comment prompted me to update the bar chart published in my previous post with data from the annual Korea Game Industry White Papers published by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA). (Click on the chart for a larger version)  This graphic depicts the "rise and fall" of PC Rooms in Korea between their introduction in 1998 and the end of 2015.  The fall or decline in PC Rooms was clearly affected by the arrival, beginning in 2010 (technically the end of 2009) of smartphones and the accompanying growth of mobile games, but there are other factors as well.  Overall the relationships among PC Rooms, MMOGs, the diffusion of broadband access and Korean culture, is a fascinating story.  I'm happy to share this much of it with you.

Deep Mind's Alpha Star defeats Starcraft Pros

It happened, and earlier than expected.  AlphaStar, the latest iteration of Alphabet's DeepMind last month defeated some of the world's best professional players of StarCraft.  As readers of this blog will know, (check out my earlier posts) this development holds particular significance in South Korea, where StarCraft became the world's first massively popular multiplayer online game and influenced the introduction of this nation's world-leading broadband networks.  Furthermore, the 2016 defeat of world champion Lee Se Dol by DeepMind's AlphaGo had sent shockwaves through Korea's public, industry and policymakers about the future of artificial intelligence (AI). 

Massive Multiplayer Online Games in Korea

South Korea was the first nation in the world where massive multiplayer online games (MMOG) became wildly popular, and the reason is fairly simple and straightforward.   South Korea built fast nationwide fiber-based broadband networks years before most other countries.  The point has been made over and over in this blog and in my new book with Dr. Oh Myung, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society (Routledge, 2011).  In the U.S., a 1994 by Vice-President Al Gore in which he argued for the need to build information superhighways, was heeded by South Korea, which implemented an ambitious Korea Information Infrastructure (KII) plan the following year.
The building of South Korea's broadband infrastructure and the spread of PC Bangs (Rooms) were necessary but not sufficient conditions for online games to thrive.  Today I ran across a very interesting post on the Massively blog about the origins of Lineage, a MMOG with which NCSoft struck gold years ago in Korea.  It is well worth reading.  It says in part:

So let's back up the memory truck to September 1998, when a then-fledgling NCsoft rolled out a Diablo-esque isometric MMO and struck virtual gold in South Korea. At the time, gaming rooms were becoming a huge thing in the country; a recession had hit (giving people a lot of time with nothing to do), and the government was rapidly expanding the broadband network. In the face of this perfect storm, titles like StarCraft and Lineage became overnight household fixtures -- and the country hasn't looked back.

What makes this post even more interesting to me is that the offices of our new Asia Center to Advance Educational Exchange are located just down Teheran-ro from the corporate headquarters of NCSoft.  Also, I've just read  the excellent book by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read, Total Engagement:  Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete.  I will definitely need to pay them a visit!

Games and broadband development in China and Korea

A fascinating report yesterday out of China indicating that "China's fast growing online gaming industry outpaces internet bandwidth provisions."  As a quick review of earlier posts on this blog shows, the historical comparison with South Korea's experience is unavoidable.  Starting in 1998, the introduction of broadband internet in Korea was accelerated by the popularity of the online game Starcraft among middle and high school students at the time, many of whom stayed out late at night playing the game at a growing number of internet cafes (PC Bangs).  When Hanaro started providing broadband internet service in competition with Thrunet, it targeted advertising at parents with the appeal that their children, with its broadband service, could stay at home and still enjoy the new multiplayer online games.
The relationship of the online game industry to broadband networks and services is an interesting topic. As indicated in the reports from China, gaming activity accounts for a significant portion of the growing data traffic on broadband networks, both fixed and mobile.  A recent study by Ericsson, "New Ways to Play Games," also showed there is a rising interest in games not only for the traditional younger generation but across all age demographics.   Furthermore, as the researchers in Beijing noted, "Gaming is also seen as a growing mode of social interaction, transforming society and becoming a mainstream element in local culture. Gaming is now being accepted as a mode of socialization in various cultures across the world."