There has been no shortage of big events this year. The narratives we have built from each serve both history and imagination, determining what it will mean to have been a Starcraft fan in 2012. Here are the nominations for Story of the Year.
KeSPA enters Starcraft II
All through Brood War the one organization to follow, the one that set the standard of competition and built, from the ground up, the culture and industry of Starcraft as we came to know it, was KeSPA. But when Starcraft 2 came about, negotiations with Blizzard failed and the giant remained behind.
That it would eventually reenter the fray was obvious; the wait was, for these two years, our elephant in the room. So large and ominous an elephant this was that even as we celebrated the titans of the new game, we remained unconvinced that what we had was the real deal, that somehow the players we already knew were only appetizers compared to Proleague stock. Kespa is now here, bringing with them all that that entails.
This summer we had a series of miscommunication that led to a few scuffles between KeSPA and the eSF, and now Proleague has begun in full, giving us a chilling reminder (or a shiver of excitement) that for every eSF player in GSL, there might exist a counterpart in KeSPA’s roster.
Valencia eSports Congress
Overlapping schedules, the eSports bubble, interleague rivalry, the future of the industry: these topics were the concern of the first ever eSports Congress, a meeting of the eminent minds of the industry, of its movers and shakers. Guests included IPL General Manager David Ting, MLG’s CEO Sundance DiGiovanni, and Blizzard’s own Dustin Browder. It was arguably the biggest and most inclusive official meeting in eSports’ brief history, and it was streamed live for everyone to follow, coming at a point not long before #SaveHOTS and other concerns stressed the importance of having disparate groups communicate more effectively for the good of all.
SlayerS disbands
No better example of bad management and miscommunication exists in the scene than SlayerS' slow but sudden dissolution. It will remain an example for years to come; cautions will be drawn. The spectacle of the once revered team’s death throes was worthy of Beckett. You could not walk away without thinking (or fearing) that Boxer’s legacy was besmirched, that nobody left SlayerS without having been irreversibly stained. We had the definitive proof of Jessica’s difficult personality, but also a glimpse into the way different teams and managers deal with each other. An entire organization was destroyed and a name was struck from every tournament it would have graced.
The Morenos
A story as old as Zeus and Poseidon, two brothers met and divided sea and sky. They are Lucifron and Vortix, two of Europe's best new players. Not exactly godlike, their results fell short of a dream narrative, but they came close enough to warrant this mention. Consider WCS Europe: both brothers pummel through the brackets, their ultimate goal the Grand Finals.They eventually meet their natural competitor, Stephano, who first knocks down Vortix then Lucifron, pushing them into a fratricidal struggle that will nonetheless propel one of them back into the fight against Stephano. Having eliminated his brother from the tournament, Vortix takes center stage in the Grand Finals, where once again he falls to Stephano. If Starcraft 2 is to prosper, 2013 will need more stories like theirs.
Unholy Alliance
In the fine tradition of shonen manga there is a point when villain and hero join forces to take on a greater challenge. This has been the story of EG-TL so far, and given their results, they had the right idea. The partnership united rivals who represent themselves as diametrical opposites - Liquid as Radiant, EG as Dire. Idra and HuK, PuMa and HerO, Liquid’s repeated all kills of EG, and of course HuK’s great crossing - these are the storylines which led, perhaps inexorably, to their union. And yet this remains a marriage that exists on only one front: everywhere else the policy remains “take no prisoners.”
