Chapter 4: MLG

Despite his brother's assurances that he'd done fine, David spent the next few days disappointed at his placement, since he was in the second-lowest league. However, he gradually started to notice that many of his opponents were in gold, which suggested he might be able to move up before much longer.

As the days went by, he continued to play Starcraft every day, and Mark tantalized him with promises of going to MLG, a video game tournament that would be held in Los Angeles in a few months. Day9 was going to be there, along with some of the highest-ranked professional players, and David couldn't wait to see them all in person. He decided that if he trained hard enough, he might make it to gold league before MLG. Mark wasn't so sure, however.

"I think you have to wait until the season ends to move up a league," he explained, "and that might not happen in time for MLG. Don't worry, though—it'll still be tons of fun."

Over time, David developed an inkling of just how little he knew about Starcraft; though he could name all the units, buildings and their hotkeys, the myriad ways in which they could be used and combined were incredibly complex. He would watch Day9's videos to improve his understanding, but he suspected that becoming truly proficient at the game might take years—not that this would stop him.

He would often play with his friends from school, but quickly realized that they were all terrible. He began letting them win against him from time to time to ensure that they could have as much fun as he did—however, he sometimes found that he would win by accident due to overestimating their abilities.

When he played online, he realized what a cold, hard place the internet could be. His opponents would call him a scrub if he lost, a noob if he won, a dumbass if his connection to the server crashed. Some people, he realized, would look for any excuse to be mad.

Weeks passed, and just as David was beginning to forget about it, MLG came, conveniently coinciding with his school's winter break. For the entire duration of the car ride there, David and Mark discussed Starcraft, right up until they arrived at the hotel they'd be staying at. It was the first time either of them would be staying somewhere away from home for an entire week, and they endured a barrage of warnings from their parents not to venture too far from the hotel, to be careful whom they talked to, to call home every day and confirm that they were doing all right.

Eventually, however, they were able to escape, and they made their way to the building where the tournament would be held. Once they were inside, David beheld a wonderland of computers, many running Starcraft or similar games, all laid out in rows that gave off a fantastic light made up of the stuff of strange and otherworldly dreams. All around the two brothers was the raw electrical brilliance of their champions, the liquid joy that seeped from some of the world's finest games, the heady smell of unwashed gamers.

David was home.

"C'mon," said Mark, momentarily snapping him out of his reverie. "Let's go play some 2v2."

This year, a special matchmaking system had been set up specifically to pit all participating amateur gamers at MLG against one another, to the exclusion of those laddering outside of the tournament. The winner of each of several divisions, Mark explained, would be determined by a complex system based on wins and losses against players of varying skill levels after several games, and would receive a $20 gift certificate.

"That doesn't sound like very much."

"Well, the pros get a lot more if they win. These games aren't really that big of a deal."

Once they were registered, Mark and David sat down at two adjacent computers and began their first team game. "Don't worry if they blow up a bunch of our buildings," Mark assured his brother. "I can send you resources, so we can recover as long as we keep our workers alive."

Once Mark had sent his probes and David had sent his drones to mine, there was a tense silence as they wondered how they would fare against their opponents, who were both terran. After a few minutes, they were attacked unexpectedly by reapers, who used their jetpacks to sneak into Mark's base from the side. However, his stalkers made short work of the fragile units, and soon David and Mark were able to march their armies to victory against their opponents' poorly defended bases.

They lost their second game, along with the third. As the fourth game was loading, Mark gave David a warning: "Oh, watch out. This guy has a Kerrigan portrait." He pointed to an icon of a red-haired woman next to the name "Fabrosi."

"What does that mean?" asked David as the game started.

"You can only get it by beating the game on the hardest difficulty."

"So he's a pro?"

"No, lots of people can beat the game on brutal—it's just that I can't. Anyways, this 'Guillermo' guy just has a starter portrait, so we can just focus on him."

"Oh."

A few seconds later, they were surprised by a massive rush of SCVs and charging in and attacking David's workers. He tried to fight them off, but his workers were outnumbered nearly two to one, and so he fled towards Mark's base. As the two of them struggled to outmaneuver the enemy's bizarre rush, they were baffled by the sight of a massive command center floating into their base, followed shortly by another.

"trololololol," proclaimed Guillermo triumphantly. Soon, the enemy command centers had both landed next to David's, and the enemy SCVs commenced stealing his minerals.

"Oh my God," muttered Mark under his breath, "these guys are such noobs."

The SCVs moved with incredible synchronization—it was as if the two players had spent several weeks perfecting worker rushing, and only worker rushing. As David tried to chase them away from his minerals, they immediately attacked his drones, and he lost two of them as he attempted to flee.

"Let's keep our workers together until I can get a gateway up," instructed Mark. "Don't let them surround."

Unfortunately, Fabrosi noticed Mark's attempted gateway and promptly started attacking the pylon that was providing it with power. Despite the brothers' best efforts, the pylon went down, leaving the gateway useless. To make matters worse, it seemed that their opponents had been working on production buildings of their own, for their workers soon found themselves under fire from marines.

"u guys are such noobs," typed Mark in exasperation.

"ur the noob," retorted Guillermo. "gtfo scrub."

"go back 2 neopets," concurred Fabrosi.

Before long, David and Mark had lost all of their units, and their buildings shortly followed. Rather than surrender, they stayed in the game until their opponents had finished destroying everything, each of them typing "gg" at the last second.

David looked all around, trying to spot the idiots he'd just lost to, but the crowd was too dense and too large. He shrugged and readied himself for the next game. An hour or so later, they were done playing, and, as they'd expected, they ended up leaving with no gift certificate. They spent a few minutes searching for the pro players, but it was getting late, and the eventually gave up and left to get dinner.

The next day, they got up at 6 o'clock sharp to eat breakfast with the intent of saving as much time as possible to meet their heroes.

Unfortunately, the pros were all backstage, shielded from prying eyes, so they waited patiently until the first round of the tournament began. David was thrilled to see that Day9 would be commentating on the game alongside Artosis, another famous Starcraft caster. As they watched one game after another, Mark amazed his brother with the sheer number of names he could name: that guy was called Idra, and over there was HuK, and Boxer, and Select, KikiKawaii, and he was pretty sure that was Jinro, and that one was White-Ra…

David found himself transfixed by the battles playing out on the large screen at the front of the room—he tried to memorize every build order he could, study every subtle nuance, imagine himself pulling off every strategy. There were insane rushes, masterful drops, 1-1-1 builds, unbelievable blink stalker micro, flawless zerg macro that coated the map in creep like a massive purple tide flooding the map. These players were all champions, kings among men as far as David was concerned, their player booths like thrones where they might sit and show the world the nature of true skill.

Hours later, the final match commenced: Select versus Idra. When David saw that the latter was playing zerg, he immediately found himself rooting for him, and felt a surge of joy every time Idra's army repelled Select's, and lurch of fear every time it was shelled by Select's tanks. For a while, the game looked as though it could just as easily go either way—Idra had control of more of the map, but Select had a solid siege line set up and continually launched drops on Idra's bases. The players' armies were like two ferocious waves crashing against each other, dispersing and reforming as Idra's perfect macro was pitted against Select's impeccable micro. Roaches melted marines, hellions incinerated zerglings, tanks popped scores of banelings, and soon it was ultralisks against thors as Idra tried to buy enough time to tech to broodlords.

Idra fell back, prepared to defend until he could get corruptors ready and begin morphing them, but as soon as he did, Select simultaneously launches two large drops on the two of Idra's expansions that were furthest from each other. The expansions went down, and Select, who spotted a small group of corruptors, scrambled a sizable fleet of vikings to bring them down. Soon, the time had come for Select to launch his final, massive attack, which Idra resisted for as long as he could before leaving the game without warning, too enraged to type "gg".

"…and there it is, ladies and gentlemen," laughed Day9, over the deafening roar of the crowd's cheering, "yet another incredible ragequit by Idra, which means of course that Idra is the winner of this year's MLG!"

The raw excitement of the moment made David dizzy, and the next few minutes were something of a blur: there was sound and commotion everywhere, high-fives and chest bumps, and soon he and his brother were stumbling away, and Mark was saying something about perhaps getting to meet the pros…

…and they did. One struggle through a massive swarm of people later, David found himself momentarily face to face with Idra, holding out a piece of paper and a pen and shyly muttering something incomprehensible. Idra gave him an exasperated smile, along with an autograph, and then he was back in the sea of excited gamer fans, where he drifted for a minute before washing ashore back outside the crowd.

"It was Idra!" David kept shouting as he stumbled alongside his brother, back towards the hotel. "I was right in front of him!"

Mark laughed. "Yeah, it's pretty cool seeing them in person, huh?"

MLG lasted a few days longer, and there were other games played, but David only had eyes for Starcraft. He would play against his brother, losing consistently, and he would ladder, and he would walk to random strangers and challenge them to games, which amused Mark to no end.

Eventually, however, MLG came to an end, and as their parents drove them home, David told his brother that he wanted to be a pro player someday.

"Well, you'll have to practice pretty hard. Those guys play for hours and hours every day."

"I don't care. I'll practice as much as it takes."

"Well, if you want to be a pro player, you'll also need a cool name."

David blinked in confusion. "What's wrong with 'David'?"

"You need a handle—you know, like 'Destiny', or 'CombatEx'."

That night, he sat at his computer rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes as he reached the last step of acquiring a free name change for his account. He thought about his experiences with Starcraft, about the pros who had set the bar for playing the game at its highest level, about the things Mark had taught him, and about the storied history that the game surely had. He realized that he would be part of the next generation of Starcraft players, that he would inherit that which those before him had striven so hard to create. His mind was made up, and he typed in the name that would represent him on from that day forward:

Legacy.