The season was slow to start due to scheduling conflicts at the venue, but the Mission City Brawling Betties finally had a home brawl last weekend, hosting Oakland. The bout was very physical with many penalties and the three-board playing a major role in personnel decisions on both sides. Though it seemed close at times, Oakland was able to pull away in the second half. I was pretty surprised by all of this - Oakland isn't really known for thuggishness, is it? =)
One note: the Betties were playing without Vino, a veteran jammer who should be returning from injury in the near future. I hope to see her schooling some fools later in the season.
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| Brawling in the Mission City |
More Betty action can be found here, thanks to Tina for taking some of the shots.
In Irish Pub news, I have recovered the mayorship of Dargans.
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| Now it's time to start reneging on my mayoral campaign promises! |
I celebrated by - well, you know exactly how I celebrated.
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| Melch getting it done at the table |
This weekend we took a brief break from our regularly scheduled ultimate playing, plane flying and beer drinking (but almost never all three at once) to head down to Anaheim for the MLG Spring Championship.
If you don't know but for some reason have the time to find out... There's a company called Blizzard that released a game called Starcraft that was pretty popular. The expansion to Starcraft was Brood War, and that was even more popular. It became big in Korea, where a group called Kespa put together a pro league featuring both individual and team competition. Meanwhile in the states, a group of pro gaming scenes combined to create Major League Gaming.
Blizzard created a money-making machine called World of Warcraft and got distracted for a long time, but eventually produced Starcraft 2. The foreign (i.e., "not Korean") scene switched pretty quickly from Brood War to Sc2, but Kespa was still pretty bound up in Brood War. That's changing though, and Kespa sent 8 players to MLG to demonstrate their intention to move to Starcraft 2. Blizzard is sort of okay with the MLG and Kespa, but they can't just sit around and let others monetize any channels related to their stuff without doing something about it. So Blizzard created the World Championship Series.
Now that we're all caught up, that means that the MLG Spring Championship featured three separate tournaments for the same game: the MLG Championship, the WCS American Championship, and the Kespa Invitiational. In addition to all of that, the expansion for Starcraft 2 (Heart of the Swarm) is coming out, so Blizzard had demos for that.
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| Must have been a huge bet |
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| It's a Zerg thing |
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| Meeting Huk, Melch's favorite Protoss |
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| Chris meets DongRaeGu, possibly the world's best Zerg |
As for our weekend itself, you can find the photo set here. Saturday was awesome - we got to see some of the best pros in the world close up, playing as well as hanging out in the crowd taking photos and signing for fans. Dinner was at Roy's, a "Hawaiian fusion" place that caters to the DisneyLand tourist crowd. The food and drinks were good and the patio was nice. Melch and Chris concocted a scheme to send ice cream to a broadcaster who we recognized at another table. It was an inside joke and it was funny. Good times were had by all.
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| You know it's a good place because it has a really hefty menu |
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| Good Eats |
After dinner was Kespa. Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, Fantasy, Stork, Calm, Soulkey and Leta. These are basically the best players ever, at their prime, finally playing Sc2. Flash was on the main stage the whole time but I got to go see Jaedong play up close at one of the smaller stages. If you're into this kind of thing, that's as good as it gets. Jaedong lost to Bisu in semis, so I didn't get the Flash-Jaedong match that I (and pretty much everyone else) wanted, but Flash smashing Bisu was entertaining as well.
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| Never thought I'd see Jaedong play live |
Just like an ultimate tournament, Saturday was pool and Sunday was bracket. The Kespa thing was a one-evening affair on Saturday night, but the MLG championship and the WCS finals played out on Sunday. The WCS was kind of in a rough spot since the players weren't as good, but the final was sandwiched between two really good Korean match-ups (SlayerS Alicia vs MKP and SlayerS Aleica vs MVP DRG). Root Vibe took the American crown though which was pretty cool as I dig both Root and Zerg (Vibe's race).
In the MLG Championship, DRG beat MKP decisively in the winner's bracket final. That might be a minor upset but was definitely no surprise to me. MKP dropped to the loser's final where he lost to Alicia, making it Alicia-DRG for the championship. That was surprising. Alicia fought hard against DRG but was basically out-played all series long. His only win was a single all-in that barely worked and his losses were situations where he held on bravely but really never had control of the game. In the end, DRG won it all pretty convincingly and had some great ceremony to boot.
Watching DRG play was awesome. He's fast and once he hits three bases his pressure is relentless. Here's a video of his play, starting about a minute before he launches the multi-pronged pressure on Oz that will eventually win him the game:
In general, it was a pretty awesome weekend. Starcraft is a lot like ultimate in many ways. It's a pretty obscure sport that requires a huge commitment to dominate, but which is basically unknown to the general public at best. As a result, the communities have a bit of an inferiority complex where every tournament is trying its best to seem "legit." No one wants to work hard at something and then have it get laughed off with comments like "you mean, like throwing to your dog?" or "so you're playing a video game, right?"
The inferiority complex bothers me a bit. I understand that folks want respect for their efforts, but at the end of the day I think it would be better if everyone would quit worrying about what the world thinks and just do it for themselves. If it's as awesome as you think it is, it'll impress others all on its own without you worrying explicitly about impressing others.
On the flip side, the obscurity makes for a close-knit community. When you go to an ultimate or Starcraft tournament, you feel like you're already friends with everyone there even if you don't know them yet. That's a connection that you wouldn't have if you played basketball or soccer. The fans, players, coaches, teams, broadcasters and sponsors interact with each other much more than they do in established sports. The amount of money is still low enough that everyone involved is still in it for the love of the game.
These things might well change in my lifetime and the change might end up being better for everyone, but I'll be happy to have been around at the ground level.
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