For my first reaction, I took to a personal interest of mine. I decided to look into an artifact that involves a scene from Esports in Korea. Growing up, I played numerous video games, including a very popular MMO, League of Legends. The main body of people who play League of Legends comes from Asian countries like Korea and China mainly. The video shines a light on how the capital of Esports was deemed Seoul, South Korea. This was very surprising to me because I did not know how intensely it is valued in their culture. The video displayed the popularity of computer cafes, which are exactly what they sound. A cafe-type place that is typically small, and in populated areas that homes computers for anyone to come in and use. The culture has shifted towards computer games within the past years as the video displays, the sheer amount of people who play within these cafes. The majority are younger people who range from 16 to 24. They go afterschool to hang out with friends and socialize and have a good time. I really thought it was cool that this was accepted and promoted in Korean culture, whereas in many other countries, including America, the idea that you would go to a store to play a video game would be looked down upon. In Korea, it is not uncommon for younger kids to look up to pro gamers and dream of one day being like them, which is similar to how kids look up to people like Lebron James and Wayne Gretzky, etc. I also did my best to follow the video as best I could, looking for words I recognized. I heard things like “Pro-Gamer,” which sounded similar to what it did in English. One thought that was interesting was that one of the commenters described how Koreans can be heavily invested. One might leave all their studies behind and try to become a pro gamer which in some people's eyes is a bad career choice, as people from America would say. Another key point from the video is that Koreans are blazing the trail and setting a new standard for Esports. While they dominate the Esports scene as far as game performance, they are also changing the stigmatism behind Esports as a whole, which can spread to other countries. I love seeing the cultural shift and differences within the world; it’s been a passion for me, and overlapping between psychology and language studies will be a common theme throughout these journal entries. I also found out that there are actual classes for these games; people pay coaches and teams in order to get better. Although the culture has not shifted to America yet, I have personal experience in the transition as I helped start the LoL Esports team at my local high school, which won 2 years in a row when I was there. I would like to research this more or come back to it in a meeting with my TA in order to discuss further the culture behind video games in Korea and depict the similarities and differences between them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FV_M6BHXgo&ab_channel=RedBullGaming
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