Esports journalists, a new breed of writer that was tasked with creating mythology out of the scene rising around them, quickly turned several of the scene’s rising stars into legend. The bug hit my friendship group so badly, a close friend dropped out of university to learn his build orders. If you liked the heady world of digital sports back in 2010, chances are you were in deep when it came to StarCraft 2. It was an instant hit, becoming the most-watched game in the world for a chunk of 2010. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect: live streaming and video content were gaining popularity and while League of Legends had launched a year before in 2009, Starcraft 2 was the game that stepped out of the shadows to tell the world it was a new dawn for esports. A solid spectator mode made it easy for casters to watch and recount games. It was built from the ground up for competitive play, designed to be easy to spectate and understand. StarCraft 2 signalled the dawn of a new era for esports. At that point I think every single esports individual on the planet kind of said ‘well, that’s the game I’ve got to play in 2010.’ I was one of them, so I started playing the beta in March or April of 2010.” “Around that time was the announcement that StarCraft 2 was coming out. “I was playing Brood War in 2008 – 2009,” Apollo says. He started playing the game religiously and competed for a couple of years in Starcraft: Brood War, the 1998 predecessor to the 2010 release of StarCraft 2. As a life-long sports fan, this was the first time that esports really clicked with me.įor Shaun ’Apollo’ Clark, a prominent caster, he fell headfirst into the world of Starcraft when he saw it while playing Command and Conquer. The excitement of watching that match with a few friends in cramped university digs was phenomenal. There’s a lot of different ways to do this: you could rush your enemies early to try and mess up their economy, you can focus on turtling up and surviving your opponent’s attacks until they’re out of resources or, as is the case with HuK’s Mothership rush, you can get a bit cheesy and hope to catch your opponent unaware. StarCraft 2 is a real-time strategy game that most often pitches two players against each other as they use their preferred option from three races to try and batter the other player into submission.
I still think of Chris ‘HuK’ Loranger’s second Mothership rush, which saw the StarCraft 2 legend being destroyed by ‘Pinder’ before his build finally clicked into place, turning the tide and allowing him to finally clinch the match.
Every Starcraft player has a special moment that’s resonated with them. In esports years, that makes it around 100, meaning that as classic games come and go, StarCraft 2 has stood eternal as the grandfather of the scene.
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