Starcraft
Every lunch break, 30% of the time, I watch Youtube. After wading through the snippet videos, I watch Starcraft. I’m not a nerd, but I do regularly watch other people play a computer game which I myself unregulary play. For a stretch during deep Covid, I paired the viewing experience with Chipotel because I kept forgetting to pack a lunch. (The bottom of the iceberg problem was really that I kept forgetting to buy groceries, so I couldn’t pack food that I didn’t have. That’s beside the point but I think it’s worth mentioning because it is dumb and that’s totally on theme with the content I’m trying to produce.) Now, everytime I eat Chipotle, I think to myself: “This burrito is tasty, but what would really make it great is a 17-year-old South Korean boy with the thumb dexterity of a pro-level athlete.”
For anyone without a life, i.e., anyone who hasn’t played the game, here’s the premise: Starcraft is a two-player computer game where each player builds an army, and then, the player who’s the fastest at clicking their mouse usually wins. The best players in the world log around 600 actions per minute, so every second they can somehow click the mouse 10 times. For comparison, my peak APM is 120 or 2 clicks per second - still respectable, but nowhere near the threshold I’d need for an E-sports endorsement deal.
Apart from an army, you also have to build an economy. Like any good dystopian book, the units in Starcraft are divided into two classes - the soldier class and the worker class. The underappreciated, overutilized worker units are painstakingly in charge of mining raw materials, building infrastructure, and maintaining farms to support the troops. This is all in an effort so your bloodthirsty army can continue the warpath. (As an aside, the game’s developer, Blizzard, is headquartered in Irvine California, so the violent and socialist influences check out. J.K., Blizzard is a great company and I’m sure Irvine is a fine place.) Ironically, the workers are usually the first units to die in the game. If you can crush your opponents economy, killing their depleted army and ransaking their unguarded cities proves easy work.
I enjoy the game because there’s so much strategy rooted in the gameplay. There are 15 different soldier units to select from when building your army and on top of that, three different races to select from - so a total of 45ish options. The three races determine the type of units you can build, not how they will be stereotyped or how they’ll be systematically oppressed. The options are the human race, the monster race, or my favorite the alien race. Depending on how your opponent constructs their army, you’ll have to counter with an army distribution that negates theirs. Do you need more melee units or infantry units? Should you break your army into sub-armies or march your death ball across the map? Would it be better to invest in weapon upgrades or scouting intel on the enemy? Essentially it’s 3D chess with cooler graphics and 200 potential pieces rather than a measly 16.
If I had unlimited free time, I’d play more often. In fact if I had unlimited free time, I’d do everything more often, so statistically that last sentence was dumb. Given my current time constraints - burdened by a job that pays me well and a lifestyle that I highly enjoy - I play the game about once every six weeks, about the same frequency that I go to Chipotle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azhpEHcwzMQ
