On The Ball Man Versus Machine

Reading Jack Porter’s piece about the toll competitive StarCraft play can take on your psyche transported me back to my college years, when I was obsessed with an altogether more primitive strategy game: chess. Aside from our platform of choice – a modern PC in Porter’s case, a slab of patterned wood in mine – our stories played out in a similar fashion. We both became mildly obsessed with a game that revolves around the memorization and application of a nearly infinite array of patterns, to the point that we were practically haunted by what should have been an enjoyable way to pass the time. When I moved out of my freshman dorm and away from my closest competitor, I pretty much stopped playing and haven’t looked back since. Brett Staebell’s article, on the other hand, offers a portrait of a more determined competitor, one who went on to become a sort of StarCraft Grandmaster: Lim Yo-Hwan, better known as SlayerS_’BoxeR’. BoxeR practiced religiously for years until he reached the top of the professional StarCraft scene, becoming a high-profile and well-paid gaming celebrity in the process. It’s an extraordinary achievement that hasn’t been replicated since – one could argue that BoxeR wasn’t just the pinnacle of competitive StarCraft, but of e-sports in general. But one commenter wasn’t as impressed with BoxeR’s success as I was. Xersues laughed at the very idea of “e-sports,” suggesting that BoxeR and his cohorts were taking the game entirely too seriously: Why, then, aren’t we watching StarCraft Battle Reports of matches between rival A.I.s rather than the human matches we see now? Wouldn’t the highest-level play come from combatants who could focus solely on the game’s strategic elements without having to worry about the physically actions required to execute those strategies? In short, why doesn’t StarCraft have its Deep Blue, an A.I. so dominant that it leaves the best players in the world in its dust? I suspect it’s because Blizzard knows that such a program would virtually dismantle the competitive StarCraft scene as it exists now – that, and A.I. matches simply aren’t as much fun to watch. Human players have stories, like the one Staebell tells in his piece this week. They have emotions – like pride, anger and, especially in StarCraft‘s case, panic – that make them inherently more interesting to spectators. But, strictly on machine terms, they do not have über-micro. So, is StarCraft a sport (or “e-sport,” as it were)? I’m still not sure. But if it is, it may be one where actual human players would be relegated to the minor leagues if some enterprising programmers decided to try to create an unbeatable opponent – and there’s little point in playing when the best you can hope for is second place. Jordan Deam does not have über-micro. In fact, he doesn’t even have unter-micro.