To most people, terms like zerg, tassadar and protoss sound like gibberish. But for Mona Zhang ’12, president of Smashcraft Heroes, these words are just part of another day in the life of a Starcraft expert.
Zhang, who admitted, “If you listen to us, we sound crazy,” founded the group in October along with Jack Gang ’12 after realizing there was no videogaming club on campus to host tournaments within Princeton or outside its gates.
The club gets its name from the three games its members play competitively: Super Smash Brothers, Starcraft and Guitar Hero. So far, most of the events the group has hosted have centered on Starcraft.
While most Princeton students play games like Madden, Guitar Hero, Halo, and Fifa alone or with friends in their rooms, the Smashcraft Heroes take their videogaming more seriously. The team practices every Friday in a Frist classroom, starting at 8 p.m. and sometimes continuing until 2 or 3 in the morning. Players bring their computers and receive advice from the coach, Yang Mou ’10.
“We don’t do actual finger workouts or anything, but you’ve got to work on getting fast fingers, mouse skills and becoming a multitasker,” Gang, Smashcraft vice-president, said.
To gauge their Starcraft skill, the players can view their “actions-per-minute” level after each game. Some of the best players’ statistics show that they do three or four moves per second. “It looks like twitching,” Gang said. “My roommates tell me they can hear the click-clacking of the buttons before they even enter our dorm.”
While Starcraft is a challenging game to pick up, the club’s leaders are always eager to teach beginners by “star braining” them — Starcraft lingo for sitting behind them and telling them what to do.
The club wants to reach out to more casual video-game players, but the challenge, as Gang puts it, is “to get those gamers off the couch, out of their rooms and into our club.”
They also hope to bring more gender and racial diversity into an activity whose demographics are “usually skewed to Asian boys,” Zhang said. The executive board consists of nine Asian males and one Asian female (Zhang), but the group now has four non-Asian members and two other girls. The club’s leaders say that the problem is not in recruiting a more diverse crowd but rather that certain demographics are linked to certain activities.
“Girls, in almost any culture, are brought up playing with dolls instead of Gamecube controllers,” Zhang said. She added that she has never felt out of place or disheartened in the gaming culture, except when receiving questionable comments on her YouTube.com channel when she was the only solo female English Starcraft commentator (there are now only a few) providing commentary about Starcraft matches on YouTube. Being a female gamer has certainly has brought her some interesting experiences, though. Saying that she sometimes feels objectified in the online gaming world and may get more attention than other players, Zhang noted, “I’ve gotten a few marriage proposals and invasive questions from other faceless gamers on the internet.”
But in real life (or what gamers fondly refer to as “IRL”) gaming, Zhang said, “The guys are hilarious, and if you can take things in stride, the gaming culture is one of the most interesting cultures to partake in.” She added, however, that the world of Smashcraft can sometimes be a bit of a shock to the inexperienced female outsider, because the culture involves what she called “a lot of political incorrectness, male humor and crass jokes in general.”
In addition to enhancing the diversity of the group, Gang says the club aims to alter commonly held perceptions about people — regardless of gender or race — who play video games. “One of our goals is for people to understand that we’re not all hermits,” Gang said, “even though lots of people immediately connect gaming with nerdiness.”
Zhang said she kept her own gaming under wraps in high school and that even some Smashcraft members “don’t like to broadcast that they’re in the club.”
While some naysayers see games like Starcraft as a distraction from physical activity, there is no question in Gang’s mind that what they do is as valuable as a sport.
“You practice specific skills, similar to how you would practice shooting foul shots in basketball, and you’ve also got to learn how to read people, like in martial arts or boxing,” Gang said.
Zhang echoed that sentiment. “Our dream is to eventually make the league official enough so that we can get Princeton transportation to events, just like other teams do,” she said.
Smashcraft Heroes has not taken its time, moving quickly from a disorganized group of likeminded people to a club boasting an executive board and Projects Board-funded events. In November, Smashcraft hosted a Princeton Starcraft tournament, drawing 21 competitors, including students from the graduate school and Princeton High School.
The club quickly began working to take the competition nationwide. To create the necessary network, Zhang founded a team league for colleges called the Collegiate Star League (CSL). Currently boasting 26 schools, the league was modeled off similar leagues in Korea, where, Zhang said, “pro-gamers are celebrities who earn six figures.”
After promoting the Princeton vs. MIT match with Facebook invitations, posters, homemade videos and word of mouth, the Princeton team took over the Forbes Multipurpose Room on Feb. 7 to get its Starcraft on. The match became a full-fledged event, with the games projected onto a big screen, Zhang and two others giving a running commentary over microphones and more than 50 spectators cheering “Go Tigers!”
The competition’s viewers extended far beyond campus, however. It was streamed live online, and more than 250 people around the world watched the competition on their computers. Despite losing the best-of-five match 3-2, the Princeton team was thrilled by the enthusiasm and turnout in Forbes that night.
As if playing against MIT wasn’t enough, Princeton Smashcraft Heroes will be competing Friday against what Gang calls “the MIT of China,” Tsinghua University, in a CSL special-exhibition match that will be the first intercollegiate international faceoff of its type. A renowned YouTube Starcraft commentator with the alias “CholeraSC” will be coming to Princeton to give live commentary on the match, which will take place at 8 p.m. in the Forbes Multipurpose Room.
“We’re hoping to have an even bigger audience this time,” Zhang said. “It’s actually a really nice spectator sport.”
Having already been contacted by a New York Times reporter interested in writing about the burgeoning CSL, the Smashcraft Heroes seem to be on the road to a bright future. “This is really special,” Gang said. “I have high hopes for this club, and hopefully it will still be around when I’m an alum. Video games are always popular and are always evolving, so I think it’s definitely a possibility.”
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