It's a decent read, even if it has a ton of factual errors. Please click the CNN link. The article works best when read in it's entirety, but it's too long to fit into 1 post. The article page has tons of embedded videos. Here are some excerpts.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/08/tech/gaming.series/korea.html?hpt=hp_c1
It's a somewhat balanced article written for people who have no understanding of gaming. I think it's not bad, it doesn't paint gaming to be as negative as I would have expected. It looks like they put a decent effort into this feature article. If this gets a lot of attention then maybe they'll do more in-depth gaming articles.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/08/tech/gaming.series/korea.html?hpt=hp_c1
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) --- Rows of expressionless young men sit at cubicle-like workstations tapping at a galactic military strategy game, "StarCraft II," sometimes for 18 hours a day -- from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m.
One of them is "MarineKing" (real name, Lee Jung-hoon; age, 19; annual earnings, $105,000). His digits rap like machine-gun fire at a black keyboard; the twitchy glow of a computer monitor reflects in the lenses of his purple glasses. MarineKing lives with fellow members of his team, called Prime, on the 16th floor of a high-rise building west of Seoul -- an ultra-wired city that takes on an intense, digitally enhanced quality after dark, with neon lights and big-lettered advertisements lighting up a sea of skyscrapers. It's a place that's home to the world's finest "e-sports athletes," as they're called here without irony. It's also a hub for gaming addiction -- a place where deaths are attributed to games and the government funds treatment centers.
MarineKing knows those facts all too well. He's been caught in a lifelong struggle between the dark and the light sides of gaming. It's a struggle that at times tore his family apart.
...
"When I played 'StarCraft' for the first time, it was like a fantasy. I felt like I discovered a new joy in my life. I was so excited that I could become a controller -- or fight against monsters."
In real life, he was shy and bright, but not all that interested in schoolwork.
He started skipping after-school classes to go to a PC bang -- Korean for "PC room" -- in Changwon, his hometown, where he played "StarCraft" for hours on end.
In the game, he belonged. He was a conqueror -- a general who controlled sci-fi armies and determined the fate of civilization. He drifted further into the game and, as his parents came to see it, out of the physical world. It was all fiction, of course, but it seemed real to him. And soon MarineKing started to like this fantasy world better than the real one.
One night, in his journal, he scribbled a secret: "I want to grow up to be a pro gamer."
He stuffed the note in the bookshelf of his bedroom and didn't tell a soul.
When MarineKing isn't playing "StarCraft II," he's a Raggedy-Andy-looking character, with red pockmarks on his cheeks and a swoop of chestnut hair, which he dyes. At the training center back in Seoul, he wears a pink T-shirt and pajama pants with cartoon monkeys on them at all hours of the day. When he smiles, his cheeks touch his glasses. Like other members of his team, he sleeps in bunk beds with pink and blue sheets, like those of young children.
...
Park Ae-young was cleaning her son's room when she stumbled on his private notebook. She opened it, she told me in an interview, to see if his homework was finished.
But the secret she found was infuriating. It confirmed her worst fears: Her son, MarineKing, wanted to spend his life in an online world as a pro gamer.
Park wanted her bright child to be a judge -- and she saw online games as a dangerous distraction.
"We were really, really concerned about him," she said. "We asked him to stop again and again."
It's easy to see how she would worry. She knew her family was living in the world's most wired country -- a place where talk of gaming addiction is on the minds of many parents.
After investing heavily in broadband Internet infrastructure, and creating a network that is the fastest in the world, South Korea's government in recent years has launched a full-on assault against what it sees as the scourge of an over-connected digital life: Internet and gaming addiction. About 8% of Koreans ages 9 to 39 suffer from one of these new forms of addiction, according to a 2010 survey by the National Information Society Agency. At 14%, the addiction rate is higher for young people between the ages of 9 and 12, the survey says.
A number of high-profile deaths have brought national and international attention to the problem. In 2010, a 32-year-old man played the first version of "StarCraft" for so long that he keeled over dead. He was so entranced, according to news reports, he didn't stop for rest for five days. Also that year, a 25-year-old woman pleaded guilty to negligent homicide after her infant died while she was playing an online game at a PC bang -- sometimes for 10 hours at a time, according to a CNN report. Her game of choice? "Prius Online," which asks players to care for a virtual girl as she gains magical powers and grows older.
Park Deok-soo, director of South Korea's Information Culture Division in the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, said in an interview that treatment programs are often successful at grounding young people in the real world and curing them of gaming and Internet addiction.
But this isn't always the case.
Take Seung, a 17-year-old I met in Seoul. He didn't want his real name used because of stigma associated with gaming addiction. Like MarineKing, he grew up idolizing the pro players he saw on TV. He told me he wishes he could stop playing, but he can't. He spends sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day, he said, tapping away on the keyboard playing online games like "Maple Story," "Sudden Attack" and "StarCraft."
Seung attended several counseling sessions for gaming addiction -- supported by the government -- but said that wasn't enough to make him stop. He's not sure he'll ever be able to.
"I feel like the game is pulling me," he told me in December.
---
MarineKing's parents succeeded at first by cutting off the power in their apartment to stop their son from playing "StarCraft II." Eventually, however, he found ways to circumvent their ban.
So his mother and father decided to try another tactic: Against his will, they sent their son to a meditation center near Seoul, several hours by bus to the north. There were no games at the center; no Internet, television or cell phone use either. The goal was to yank out the cords that connected MarineKing to the digital world.
It wasn't the most extreme treatment choice available. The Korean government spends about $10 million (11.5 billion won) per year on a network of Internet and gaming addiction treatment centers, according to officials.
At some of the counseling centers, kids do arts and crafts and talk about the perils of gaming too long or too hard. At others, suspected addicts are sent away to 10-day Internet-free camps where they're forced to quit the habit cold turkey. In place of games, they do physical exercise, since both of those activities have been shown to produce a release of the pleasure hormone dopamine, said Dr. Han Doug-hyun, a psychiatrist and researcher at Chung-Ang University Hospital in Seoul.
Han's hospital also is home to an experimental "virtual-reality" treatment that forces players to confront recordings of their loved ones yelling at them and saying how the games have ruined their lives, too. The treatment also puts players face-to-face with 3-D videos of the games they play. The screen suddenly cuts to a dark hallway and screams emit from the televisions.
The idea is to pair negative experiences with the games, he said. The result feels like something out of the dystopian movie "A Clockwork Orange."
There are prevention programs, too. In November, South Korea imposed a national curfew on online gaming for people younger than 16. They're no longer allowed to play online games from midnight to 6 a.m., although the law is being challenged in court. And in school, kids are taught not only to be wary of drug and alcohol addiction, but digital addiction as well.
Other countries, including China, have tried to treat gaming addiction. South Korea, however, is regarded as the world's leader in combating addiction. It's unclear how well the treatment programs are working, if at all, but the government reports a drop in the number of young addicts over the past few years.
It could be a window into what other less technologically developed countries will face. Or, as critics say, it could be a waste of energy and money.
Some psychologists, both in South Korea and abroad, question the legitimacy of gaming and Internet addiction as diseases. And treatment, of course, has mixed results.
MarineKing's non-clinical treatment at the meditation center didn't work as planned. It kept him away from "StarCraft," sure, but he spent much of his time there visualizing the game -- wishing he could play. When he came home, MarineKing's parents once again heard the familiar rattle of his keyboard through the night.
Their feud came to a head in October 2008, when MarineKing was 15.
After a heated shouting match, MarineKing's parents decided to throw their son out of the home.
Lee Hang-jae, his father, pushed him out of the door and locked it behind him. His mom, somewhat remorseful, peeked out to see where her son would go. She watched in horror as the elevator climbed to the top floor of their building.
She worried he would jump to his death.
"I was freaked out," she said through a translator. "But a few minutes later, he went down to first floor and went to security office."
MarineKing spent several hours in that office, not sure where else to go. He never considered committing suicide, he later told me. He needed to get some air.
His parents let him come back into their home later that night.
But after that, MarineKing would make a secret promise to himself: He decided to give himself one chance -- one tournament -- to see if he could become a professional gamer.
If he won, conquering a field of several hundred "StarCraft II" players, he would follow that path as far as it would lead. If he lost, he would try to give up "StarCraft" and become a lawyer or a judge, like his parents wanted.
He boarded a bus to Seoul. This time, it would be all or nothing.
The next morning, MarineKing's mom walked into her son's room empty.
She didn't know where he could be. She panicked.
She remained in a state of distress until her son returned to the apartment several days later with a certificate in hand. He'd won a major tournament, he told them. That win, in April 2009, made it official: He was a pro gamer, whether they liked it or not.
At first, they didn't accept this new reality. But they softened over a long, tearful conversation in MarineKing's bedroom the night he returned. They agreed to let him pursue this career -- moving to Seoul so he could train.
"I never realized how good he was," his mom later told me.
But his father put one condition on this agreement.
If you're going to be a gamer, he told his son, you have to be the best in the world.
---
MarineKing's parents used to do everything they could to stop their son from playing "StarCraft." But on the third day of the World Cyber Games, they were sitting in the front row, their faces expressionless. His father wore a suit, tie and slicked-back hair. His mother clutched a purse on her lap and sat with the at-attention posture of a Catholic school student.
They were in the audience to watch their son get a second chance. After thinking he was eliminated from the World Cyber Games, MarineKing again was up on the main stage -- with its soundproof pods and jumbo screen. He hoped to show his parents how far he'd come and how well he was doing on the international circuit.
That he was, in fact, the best.
Only 16 "StarCraft II" players remained in the tournament; MarineKing knew if he could advance to WCG's version of the Final Four, he would have a chance to play MVP, his rival, and the only player at the tournament ranked higher.
It would be the ultimate yin-and-yang match-up -- MarineKing, who attacks aggressively and without pause, versus MVP, who waits to see his opponent's strategy and then uses it against him. MarineKing, whose parents did everything they could to stop him from playing "StarCraft II," and MVP, whose parents saw that he wasn't excelling in school and enrolled him in an after-school academy for "StarCraft" players because they wanted him to go pro. MarineKing, who bangs on a black keyboard and MVP, whose manicured-looking fingers seem to float over white keys.
---
Before MarineKing could meet MVP, though, he would have to play one more match.
He would face a relatively unknown Ukrainian player named Kas.
Over lunch his dad, who has become well-versed enough in "StarCraft" strategy to engage in lengthy conversations about troop movements, attack formations and character choices, tried to help MarineKing with his strategy against MVP. MarineKing's dad now calls his son by his screen name, even in private conversation.
Since attacking MVP with all of his forces at the start of the match hadn't worked in the past, father and son decided MarineKing should try something new.
He would need to play a brainier game than usual.
At the start of the match with Kas, MarineKing ran through all this normal routines: the fidgety keyboard runs, the frantic badgering of his opponent to get ready and start the game.
He tapped on the table impatiently.
Soon the game began. "StarCraft II" lets players face each other on several boards. This one looked like an abandoned city in outer space -- broken neon signs, trees stripped of their bark, cracked pavement and dark skyscrapers in the distance.
MarineKing lost the first round of three, putting his head on his hands and letting out a deep breath, trying to regroup.
He would have to win the next two rounds to advance.
The game was over.
"gg," or good game, MarineKing wrote to his opponent just before the screen went black.
MarineKing slumped in his seat for an uncomfortable period of time before emerging with watery eyes. This is how his mother found him after the match.
Not the world champion. Just a player.
She patted him on the back and told him it would be OK.
On Twitter he posted a message to his fans: "I'm sorry."
I asked MarineKing if he ever thought about quitting "StarCraft II." The game had caused his family such strife, and he hadn't been able to fully meet their expectation that, if he pursued pro gaming as a career, he had to be the No. 1 player.
"I mean, of course there are times when I have a really hard time -- especially today. And I feel depressed and sad but right there there are fans who are cheering for me and are very supportive, so I never thought about quitting," he said. "Unless I'm forced to quit."
He expressed regret at not performing better in front of his parents.
"I wanted to show them the moment I was going to win."
Ultimately, it didn't matter. They'd realized sometime ago how much the game means to him. And they could see its impact: He was happy, driven. His father thinks the game actually could help broaden his perspective.
"I already had a long talk with the coach," he said after the game. "By next year, he's going to graduate from high school. After that, we hope he can play in the world leagues -- not just in Korea."
After the tournament, I talked with the psychologist, Dr. Han, about gaming addiction in Korea. I described MarineKing's training habits, and his personal story. He said the number of hours and the intensity with which he approaches "StarCraft II" borders on addiction.
But there's one difference, he said. Pro gamers usually aren't addicts.
Addicts can't succeed on a higher competitive level, he said. The game takes complete control.
Pros, however, find a magical balance. They're obsessed with the game, maybe, but their playing of it isn't depressive, meandering and hopeless. They're chasing after a goal.
After MarineKing collected himself, he went to talk to his teammate, MVP, who would meet Kas, the player who defeated MarineKing, in the semi-finals.
"You've got to be aggressive," he told him.
That always had been his tactic. He hoped it could help his Korean teammate.
It did. MVP, the player whose parents had sent him to a video game training camp when he was young, and who always supported his habit, beat Kas in the semi-finals -- and went on to win the championship set, against a Chinese opponent, 2-0. He was the world champion.
The first person to rush the stage after the win was MarineKing.
The rivals hugged and then held the Korean flag, together in triumph.
It's a somewhat balanced article written for people who have no understanding of gaming. I think it's not bad, it doesn't paint gaming to be as negative as I would have expected. It looks like they put a decent effort into this feature article. If this gets a lot of attention then maybe they'll do more in-depth gaming articles.
