Like the Manchester United legends in the UK Premier League all gathered up in Old Trafford time to time for a friendly all star match — David Beckham, Gary Neville, Eric Cantona, and etc. — something similar happened in the esports scene in Korea a couple of years ago.
Blizzard released a remastered version of the old Starcraft, with cool improved graphics in 2017, almost 20 years after it’s first release which is an unprecedented record for an online game, and to promote the new release they had organized an interesting event that was held in Busan. Just like in 2003 when the first Starcraft league final was held in Busan by the Gwang-An-Ri beach that had a whooping 100,000 audience beating the all star baseball league match happened the same date, they threw the same thing in the same place. But now less about competition, but more about enjoying the nostalgia.
Several exhibition matches were set up. The first match was between Kook Ki Bong, who’s the 1st generation pro gamer (who strangely resembles the look of a Zerg) now working at Blizzard Korea, and Guillaume Patry, the handsome Canadian Protoss prince. Now both weren’t in shape to still be called as pro athlete. They were actually pretty bad. Now that there are many online streamers who are really good at it, their movements were semi-professional, at best. But that was fine and that was actually more entertaining. The caster and commentators were making fun of what was happening, in a light hearted yet pleasant way, and the crowd full of laughters. Most of the audience were in their 30s and above, some bringing their own family members to watch and say like “son, papa used to play this game back in the day pretty seriously”.
The second match was between the two legends — the Im Yo Hwan, Roger Federer of Starcraft, vs. Hong Jin Ho, The permanent No. 2. And there were more following matches.
Just imagine, on a summer night in Busan just by the beach, thousands of people in family unit gathered up in front of a large screen watching their once favorite game played by former professional gamers now in all different occupations. Perfect nostalgia.
Just eSports 