What StarCraft taught me

I got into StarCraft II in 2011, roughly six months after it released. I played the game religiously for about six years, quit in 2017 for about two years, and have recently come back to it. This game has had an enormous impact on how I turned out as a person; it and the scene have taught me lessons that I still take heart until today.

For those not in the know, StarCraft II is a real-time strategy game that is a sequel to the immensely popular StarCraft: Brood War. Both games are most well-known for their 1v1 competitive component – Two people, choosing between three asymmetric factions, compete to destroy the other person’s base. In any one game, players will manage resource collection, build up their armies (of which there are several possible compositions and combinations), control every unit’s movement and position on a map, plan engagements with the enemy, and defend their own base.

StarCraft is one of the big three games (StarCraft, Street Fighter, and CounterStrike) that was directly responsible for the current eSports scene; its editor was the basis of what we know today as DOTA, and it was the largest eSports for over a decade.

If you were interested in playing StarCraft, you were also likely interested in watching it. Both Brood War and SCII are great spectator games, drawing thousands of fans to create spectator platforms around top players. Some top-level players from the game would go on to popularize the concept of the ShoutCaster – similar commentators in physical sports (but on steroids), ShoutCasters commentate on the game by controlling the spectator’s camera, explaining strategies and concepts, and hyping battles and the rivalry between players.

But spectacle is only junk food unless there is nutrition – a deep pool of meaningful and helpful lessons that one internalizes as they become more involved in the game. Luckily for me, the game had many.

Lessons I learned from playing StarCraft II

The first was simple, “Spend your resources”. The game has you collecting two resources:

The game teaches two immutable facts about these resources:

1. It is critical that you get them
2. It is critical that you spend as much of them as you can

Minerals and gas are nice to have, but they are useless if you only bank it. The game does not care if you end with more resources than the opponent; it only cares if your army beats your opponents and that your opponent can no longer defend their base. You cannot carry resources out of the game, it is wasted if you do not use it.

Because of this, good players spend the resources as quickly as they can gather it. Those minerals and gas pay for marines, hydralisks, carriers (do not get carriers), the actual things that will help you gain power, control the map, and achieve your goals.

The first lesson applies to life very well. Money mindlessly stuffed into a savings account is as good as meaningful numbers; skills kept in secrecy is equal to no skill at all. For every resource that you have, you need to know why you are saving it, what can it be used for, and how it can be spent on the things you actually need to achieve your real goals. You cannot build a house out of money, but it can pay for the bricks.

The second lesson to take to heart is that all your resources need to be spent as quickly as possible. Save only as much as it required for you to meet your goals. As soon as it becomes sufficient, pull the trigger, and turn that resource into the things that actually matter. Every second you delay in spending that resource is a second given to your opponent. In some cases, this may even translate into forgoing the more expensive options in favour of getting a tonne of cheap but effective things instead. Saving up for a flying battlecruiser may be a good idea, but sometimes it’s better to just get eight simple marines and have them shoot your opponent’s units dead.

Okay, with these lesson in mind, you should be able to play the game then, yes? Not quite. Remember, the game demands several things:

• You need to manage and defend your gatherers so that they can collect resources and build structures.
• Armies take time to build; you need to periodically cycle back to your structures to build units.
• You need to control your units’ every move, making them move at a specific pace and distance.

All this can be overwhelming if you have no experience with playing. So many things must be done at the same time; neglect one aspect, and the other parts will crumble. So, what is the solution? How can we carry out our strategies and play the game?

The third lesson learned is to forget about the real-time strategy part of StarCraft. You cannot plan anything until you master the game’s true genre: Rhythm.

Surprise! StarCraft is secretly a Rhythm game, you’re supposed to dance to the game (At least, your fingers are doing the dancing). Because games are in real-time, time ticks on and things will continue to happen; you cannot pause to think or to weigh decisions. Because of this, a strategy is only as good as your ability to meet timings and make decisions as quickly as possible.

Good players thus learn to build their own rhythm for the game: They develop their way of mapping keys, they practice their most efficient way of moving across the keyboard, they plan and group production structures and units in specific ways. The goal is simple, “Build your own rhythm and make everything automatic.”

Once you get a solid Rhythm, your brain and body will automatically treat those actions as routine – automatic processes. Your mind is thus freed to focus on strategies – paying attention to information and using it to make better decisions.

In life, a similar lesson should be learned: If you want to make big decisions around who you are, what you want to do, and where you want to be, you better be damned sure you have your rhythm down pat – Develop and practice routines that help you meet the demands of life. Once you have that down, only then do you start making grand strategies.

Lesson the fourth is that there are two secret resources in the game that you also must gain and manage: time and information.

Time is the literal seconds you have spent in the game. However, it doesn’t run out in a normal, countdown sense – the game goes on so long as both players still have structures. However, because you and your opponent share the same real-time, any second you are not doing something is a second that your opponent gains to do something.

Time is the only resource that you start plenty with, and then it is spent for you, regardless of what you do. For this resource, you’re not only worried about spending it – you’re worried about spending it frivolously while others spend it better. Speed is thus key.

In StarCraft, there are two ways around managing your time – you either do more in the same amount of time, or you force your opponent to do less. The game even has a function that measures how many actions you are executing every minute (known as APM – actions per minute).

This is where rhythm becomes your most precious tool: the better your rhythm, the faster you can be, and the less distracted you will be. Conversely, if you can disrupt your opponent’s rhythm, they will be slowed down, and that allows you to spend more time to do more things.

The last secret resource is information – what you know about your surroundings and the opponent.

Information is how much of the map and of your enemy you can watch at any one time. In games of StarCraft, the battleground is always shrouded in a shadow (called a fog of war) that prevents you from seeing what’s going on, unless you have units standing there to give vision.

Because of this, having units control as much of the map as possible becomes crucial to your victory: If you can see everything, you will know your opponent is, what they are doing, and when they will act. With that information, you’ll know what you can and cannot do.

Importantly, information is the only resource that has an expiry date; whatever information you gain will become obsolete within seconds. You need to spend that information quickly to make good decisions – decisions that can help you defend yourself, control the map, and achieve your goals. If you don’t act on information, then it is as good as useless.

I could go on and on about this game, and how much I and many others have learned from it. So many professional players of StarCraft would go on to do great things: Nick and Sean Plott are brothers who were competitive StarCraft players –the first brother would go on to pioneer Shoutcasting and bring English casting to South Korea, while the second would form Day9.tv, a company that was one of the very first regular live-stream shows about gaming, self-improvement, and entertainment.

If you have the time, I highly recommend taking some time to get immersed in the StarCraft scene. Who knows? You might get something out of it like I have.