Singapore Teamliquid Meetup

If you love Starcraft and you don’t know Teamliquid.net you should be ashamed.

StarCraft is one of the most famous computer games out there. Being 10 years old you would think that nobody plays this game anymore, but you would be surprised with the huge fan base that it has part of which Korea played a big role. E-Sports being a huge thing in Korea, StarCraft became one of the most celebrated games there. With it’s deep strategic play and exciting maneuvers, StarCraft has reached a high level of popularity in Korea for the past 7-8 years.

Teamliquid on the other hand started as a website in 2002. A bunch of passionate players, Teamliquid is now the most authoritative and popular StarCraft news site outside of Korea. With great content and passionate members it has become the best source of anything StarCraft.

I have been frequenting Teamliquid since 2004-2005 (can’t really remember) and it has been that long already! I always go back to watch amazing VODs (video on demand) of StarCraft tournaments as well as the ‘General’ news that either makes me laugh or think or both.

Background aside, Teamliquid had its first Singapore meetup. This was brought about by Konadara with the push of FakeSteve (a TL mod) moving to Singapore for work. I wouldn’t want to miss this as I always laughed so much at FakeSteve’s “art” that I wanted to meet the man behind the jpgs made in MSPaint. He also got a couple of surprises which I thought were Razer mice as he works for Razer. Not bad as he got Idra, a StarCraft progamer and Artosis, a StarCraft commentator and overall cool guy to come down to Singapore all the way from South Korea. All hell broke lose as I never watched an in-person game before. It was just amazing. I would’ve challenged them if it was a few years back (even though I’ll be raped sideways) but it was just a great experience to watch experts play. It’s so different from the telly.

It was a great experience seeing them play. Twas just amazing for a geek like me.

FakeSteve and his crotch grabin. We shouted nerds in this pic

Hanging out with these guys, I gained a new found appreciation for the game, community involvement and overall passion for anything you do in life. I can’t believe that Idra was just 19 years old and basically jumped to Korea to play StarCraft professionally. Artosis doing commentating for games and loving it and FakeSteve working for Razer and being involved in the gaming community. How fun can that job be!

I know there are a lot of progamers out there but it was great being able to pick these guys’ brain and why they dedicate so much of their time for Starcraft. Their passion for the community and the game is just amazing and I can’t believe at how much knowledge and understanding they have for StarCraft. The depth and analysis that they have just blew my mind.

Not all of us would of course dedicate their lives for a game but what I took from these guys is the idea that dedication and passion is very important. That our lives would be more exciting if we find something that we enjoy doing and pursue it like it’s nobody’s business.

Thanks to Konadora for organizing and all the guys that I met that night. It might be a sausage fest but it was a damn fun one.

TeamLiquid fighting!

~Eugene

Visit http://teamliquid.net and more pics and discussion on the meetup http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=96959

All pics taken by TL members. thanks guys!