Old News, But Wow About StarCraft!

In South Korea, StarCraft professional gamers, such as SlayerS_`BoxeR`, Iloveoov, [Oops]Reach, [ReD]NaDa, [NC]...YellOw, and Nal_rA are celebrities: their games are broadcast over the television channels MBC Game and Ongamenet. A selected few have made substantial monetary gains through this. For example, one highly successful player, [Red]Nada, signed a 3 year, $500,000 contract in 2004. Another example is SlayerS_`BoxeR who can, if all goes well, make $780,000 in the next 3 years, making him the highest paid Starcraft player ever. Some players can earn a decent to good living from TV-contracts and sponsoring and tournament prizes. However, the lower-echelon pro players tend to subsist on relatively small wages. Many pro gamers playing StarCraft use every minute of their spare time to play, in order to maintain preparation for the highly competitive leagues. Superior StarCraft and Warcraft III players are often referred to as "gosu", a Korean word meaning "expert player". Professional gaming in South Korea is an example of how e-sports can attain a social status similar to physical sports.

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Yeah, pro gaming is big in S. Korea...more so than just about anywhere else in terms of variety. Though gaming culture as a whole in S.Korea is insanely hardcore with a recent case of parents leaving their newborn alone in their apt. so they could go play World of Warcraft...needless to say the kid died.

They take it a bit too far at times with DEATHS actually related to gaming. Outside of that it is a vision of the future in terms of gaming being more organized and pro leagues coming up. Their is simply too much $$$ to be made to ignore it...with gaming in the U.S. surpassing and equaling the $$$ made by the movie industry their are already gaming leages trying to take off here.