Autoethnography: Korean E-Sport Culture (Starcraft)

Posted on August 19, 2016

Autoethnography is a mixture between autobiography and ethnography. In this case it is a self-reflective document on a culture that is other than my own (Korean). Ethnography draws on the study of a culture, while an autobiography draws on what is known as “epiphanies” – remembered moments that have perceived to have a significant impact on the trajectory of a person’s life (Ellis et al, 2011).

Analysing the Korean e-sports documentary State Of Play, I have drawn upon three different concepts that I personally picked up on during my viewing, and was drawn to elaborating on.

The first concept is the Gender Roles. It was very prominent in the documentary and it was something that left me thinking about it after finishing. I decided that I wanted to do some more research on this and discovered a survey, conducted by WallPlayed, who is an e-sports production company. They conducted the survey over the course of one year at multiple Korean e-sporting events, one of which was the Ender’s Game Tournament (StarCraft 2, Feb. 2014). Of the 2,040 respondents, 69 were female; 33 listed themselves as “other”. Moreover, the almost whole amount of e-sporting players were male, which is a heavy reflection on traditional South Korean beliefs. The portrayal of men in the documentary saw them in a somewhat dominant position all throughout the film.

Another concept which raised an eyebrow was the family relationship and how that was depicted, in particularly the father son one. I noticed that during the film, and I’m still trying to decipher whether this was a deliberate act, or whether this is just how it is, was the way that family was westernised. I know for sure that my family still hounds me on ‘What I’m actually going to do with my life?’ which we see done in the film, in the nicest way possible. Now from my understanding of Korean Culture, this question should be more a less a statement, and the answer should be pre-meditated. Nonetheless it was good to see that there was a choice. This is what affected me the most in the film, as it is what I was able to relate to the most. See I was thinking from the start, that the parents would have been very strict and would be wanting to know what was going on at all times, but this was not the case. This said however, I am basing this off of how I was brought up, rather than a culture as a whole which may experience the family life very differently.

Finally, the concept of e-sports culture, a culture that I had no idea even existed. During the film, there is a scene in which they are comparing StarCraft and the e-sports to soccer. After this, I felt as though there was a universal understanding of what is was to be a part of this. The way in which e-sports was portrayed in the film was very welcoming, and almost family like. They lived in the same house and they all had this respect for each other, which I saw as a brotherhood. Don’t get me wrong though it was an extremely competitive environment. I also took the liberty of looking into another autobiography on K-Pop Culture, from an Australian perspective, and you will find that is much the same.