Part 1: The state of competitive gaming in South East Asia

Traditionally, interviews were conducted in confined quiet places with pen and paper in hand and perhaps some coffee to help the words. Occasionally you would have it over at your friendly local cake and tea parlour—or if the scale demands it, on a glitzy stage setting braided with electrifiers, spotlights, prompters and an enthusiastic crowd to complete the picture. However, rarely do you quite ever get the chance to have one aboard a spaceship. And while I was not in an intergalactic space traversing vessel in the literal sense, make no mistake that I did find myself in the latter. 

The captain at helm was none other than Joseph Chan, or better known to his followers on Youtube and friends on Battlenet as HDphoenixx; an avid real-time strategist, Starcraft enthusiast and shoutcaster extraordinaire. He is manager with an agriculture company called Farmers Choice and is also the founder of the company, appropriately named after the most powerful Protoss vessel, Mothership Studios; which is Joseph’s flagship startup that aims to lay the infrastructure and support for Starcraft 2 and eSports in general in South East Asia. 

Starcraft, or SC2 for short, is the immensely popular sci-fi real-time strategy (or RTS) game developed by Blizzard that has spawned an international cult like following in the recent 2 decades. Competitive gaming in Starcraft 2 is a sport which has attracted fans that number in the millions and has engendered professional gamers that receive as much acclaim and attention as some Hollywood celebrities would have. It’s an extraordinary becoming of a game that first began as a compelling single player experience compounded with a riveting plot laced exquisitely with racy American flamboyance and satire.  

So with the game such a hit with the international eSports community, why hasn't the Starcraft 2 scene hit fever pitch in South East Asia? We certainly possess the talent, such as the prodigious Warcraft 3 player FXOmoonglade, and we definitely have the following to suit but yet something is still quite amiss. Our top players, while immensely talented, have yet to dominate the international scene like how the North Americans, Europeans and Koreans have done so over the years. Major tournaments only graze our pastures once every blue moon and the quality of our play on ladder leaves much to be desired of. Having been the vocal spectator of many competitive South East Asian Starcraft 2 games to date, HDphoenixx notes that the eSports scene here, in its current state, simply cannot make it.  

In an unflattering but realistic assessment of our level of play he points out, “Not to be cruel, but if I took the grandmaster league of Korea and put them into the SEA league, they would crush everybody and that’s including the top players.” So what is the cause of the rut? Immediately one can think of plethora reasons but for the industry to take flight we must dig deep and wrestle the root of the problem. And that is—this industry simply lacks the financial foundation for the game to live up to its true potential. 

“Professional gaming is just not a viable way of life in South East Asia at the moment. At the end of the day you have mouths to feed and you have to put food on the table. There isn’t a stable income to be made from gaming so there is really no incentive to train 8 to 10 hours a day.” Making examples of local players such as Revenant and Light, Joseph explains that one’s a full-time student and the latter is pursuing his degree and this means devoting 4 to 6 hours a day to practice is already a feat in itself. Doing so would also mean the opportunity cost of having no time left to pursue a “proper” part-time job if one desired. Unfortunately this is the perennial problem that plagues eSports in South East Asia and is hardly unique to Starcraft 2. 

HDphoenixx (left) & FlashRevz (right) 

“In an Asian culture where we are much more filial, we have to take care of our families. It’s unlike Western societies where at 16 you move out and you have to fend for yourselves.” To put it plainly, unless you can pay the bills with competitive gaming, the practice is going to be deemed unacceptable and irresponsible by Asian cultural standards. This doesn’t mean that other cultures condone irresponsible behaviour; it just so happens that there’s a living to be etched out of professional gaming in those regions. As Joseph concedes, “here, eSports is not marketable yet.” 

But this is no Gordian knot as the father of the Mothership asserts. To rescue our abysmal play from being forever condemned to the kiddie pool the simple remedy is in order; and that is to herald bigger and more frequent tournaments onto our shores. Giving the masses an incentive to practice will not only benefit the lay players but the professionals as well. Much like how top players in Korea can improve by grinding off their ladder, pro gamers at the local level need not journey across three oceans and two or more different time zones to find decent competition. 

“Even if you train for 2 to 4 hours a day, if the prize pool is $50, no one is going to join,” explains Joseph, “especially when the more established players participate and the chance of winning is so low. Now, if the prize pool was $5000 instead, even if you totally suck at SC2, you would be tempted to join for the mere shot of winning the $5000! You may then be moved into practising 8 to 10 hours a day to raise your game.”  

Small prize pools also diminish the prestige of the tournament. “I know of players who would cheese small tournaments so they can win. It’s an Asian cultural thing where most of us are more concerned about face rather than actually winning proper and that’s why they would rather do that then play a regular tournament and get first round out.” 

The proof of theory is in the pudding; or prize pool, as Joseph emphatically reiterates. “Back in December, I organised a tournament in Singapore with a prize pool of a thousand dollars. And although it was just a thousand dollars, I managed to get almost 128 people to register! This was incredible because back then SC2 was fairly young.” The competition, which was first advertised on the equally vernal SC2SEA.com, was an indicator that even the small populous Singapore could sustain an appetite for competitive gaming on par with that of other more successful regions.  

“There may be a genius around that hasn’t been discovered yet. If say there’s a $10,000 tournament every month then he is going to be like, ‘hey, this might just be worth training for!’ and he might end up kicking everybody’s ass!” His comments draw a chorus of laughs from the both of us but unfortunately Joseph closes this segment on a sombre note. “But until we get tournaments of that size and magnitude, your winnings are going to run out in less than 3 months. If no one finds it worth their time to improve, we’re going to stagnate.”  

Join us in the next edition of this 2-part interview with Joseph “HDphoenixx” Chan as we discuss the other areas which are subservient at raising our level of play, Mothership Studios and some of your favourite Starcraft 2 professional gamers! For more information and videos by Joseph, be sure to head on down to his Youtube channel. 

---End--- 

Ads:

Rapture Gaming Network (RGN) is looking for E-Sports article writers. Think you have what it takes? Contact us at