StarCraft in Korea

StarCraft in Korea

Video gaming is pretty popular in the western world and you may even find yourself addicted to the wide variety of games available today.  According to “Video game studies 101”, by  Lars Schmeink, video games accounted for $15.9 billion sales in the entertainment industry while music sales made up $6.8 billion and motion pictures made up for $10.6billion. Lars also found that video games can be found in 72% of American households.

 
These may seem like large numbers but surprisingly Korea takes their love for gaming, StarCraft specifically, to a whole different level.

StarCraft, for those of you who do not know, is a military battle, sci-fi themed, real-time strategy game. If you think that you are a hard core video game lover and are interested in making money playing video games as a career then I suggest you read on.

In Korea StarCraft is a very popular game and enjoyed almost as a national sport. According to an online article on cracked.com, more than 120,000 people gathered in 2005 at a stadium to watch a StarCraft championship. Surprisingly that was 40,000 more people than the Super Bowl that year.

The article also reports that StarCraft is a career in Korea. Professional StarCraft players make up 12 teams in Korea and are licensed; the best of them are said to make 6 figure salaries! Average professional players are said to make more money than the average Korean.  

If you still don’t think the Koreans are serious about their StarCraft, you should know that the Korean Air force has their own StarCraft team.

In comparison to the aforementioned facts about gaming in the U.S., almost half of all copies of StarCraft sold (the total being 11 million worldwide) were sold in South Korea. Korea’s population is nearly one sixth that of the U.S.

The games popularity and influence is not only known in Korea. According to the cracked.com article, many foreigners have traveled to Korea to start StarCraft careers and there is even a University class for StarCraft at the University of Florida.