CNN has conducted an interview with Jungwon Hahn, managing director of Blizzard’s Korean office. Jungwon describes the StarCraft phenomenon to the CNN host and explains its incredible popularity in Korea. A never before seen short bit of gameplay can also be seen, though it’s unfortunately of very low quality.

The CNN host mentions the Asian financial crisis as a catalyst for StarCraft’s popularity. The crisis led to very high unemployment rates. That, coupled with subsidized broadband Internet access, caused many people to spend a lot of time playing video games. They were easily sucked into StarCraft. Jungwon replies and talks about the gaming rooms that have popped up and became very popular at the same time, allowing a new gaming culture to emerge.

The short gameplay video shows a couple of skirmishes between Marines and Reapers, who are trying to raid a Protoss base, and the Zealots defending it.

Overall, we have expected more from CNN, even if the interview is only 3 minutes long. Also, You’d think CNN would know how to embed the videos in their site with a proper aspect ratio…

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6 Comments to “CNN Interviews Jungwon Hahn”

1. Frozenlingon — October 19, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
   

   haha, just look at their expressions on that picture

2. Starcraft 2 — October 19, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
   

   “Asian financial crisis as a catalyst for StarCraft’s popularity. The crisis led to very high unemployment rates. That, coupled with subsidized broadband Internet access”
   I always wondered why korea was so hardcore into games, thats sort of explains but there must have been other countries in a similar situation and why didn’t they evovle with the same culture. Was korea the only country in that region with subsisized broadband at the same time as poor economics???

3. Anonymous — October 20, 2007 @ 7:50 am
   

   LOL at the left pic

4. Frozenlingon — October 20, 2007 @ 8:23 am
   

   #2
   Poor economics and subsisized broadband doesn’t go with eachother, I guess it’s one of those rare occasion that happends. Also I think that asians have a tendency to “go to the extreme”, but that is probably just a prejudice I have.

5. Justin — October 24, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
   

   I believe the incredibly cheap broadband has a lot to do with the dot com bubble of the late nineties when companies were sinking HUGE amounts of money into broadband infrastructure all over the world.

   It’s also a lot cheaper to hook up a smaller country like South Korea than say China.

6. exp — November 8, 2007 @ 4:09 am
   

   Where can I take that interview?