T
he foyer of the fourthfloor entrance to the StarTale house is a tangle of two items: shoes and trophies. While 20 pairs of shoes are haphazardly scattered throughout the entryway, the trophies are lined up in cabinets and on shelves, sometimes stacked two or three deep. ESports doesn’t have an off-season; there are dozens of professional video game tournaments every year. Members of StarTale travel across the world collecting wins: the United States, China, Germany, Sweden. From down the hall comes an incessant click-click-clicking. Inside the main StarCraft II training room are a dozen computers, with a professional gamer staring into each screen. Lee doesn’t budge when a large group enters the room; like his teammates, he’s wearing headphones with the sounds of the game cranked up. A giant portable air conditioner churns from the corner—but it’s pointed to cool off the computers, not the players.
M e m b e rs of the startal e H ou se tr ave l a r o u n d the wor l d col l ecti ng tr op hi es: T h e U.S. , Chi na, Ge r ma n y, Swe d e n . Lee and Choi spend some of their rare weekend downtime in Seoul’s Seonjeongneung Park.
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A typical training day in the StarTale house begins at 11 a.m.; the team plays until 3 p.m. and takes a one-hour break for eating and exercise. Then there is a second training set of four hours, with another one-hour dinner break at 8 p.m. The team then plays from 9 p.m. until 3 a.m., when it’s time to go to bed. Lee’s schedule is a little bit different because he is still in school; he attends classes in Seoul three times a week, where he is in the equivalent of 10th grade. “It’s a specialized high school for video game players,” he says. “They are OK if I just go to four classes in the morning, and they support us. It really surprised me. If I have a game, I don’t have to go to school.” For those outside the professional eSports realm, it’s a dream lifestyle— Skipping school to play video games all day? Really?—but being a top professional means relinquishing every other interest outside of the game. “I don’t actually hang out with friends,” Lee says. “My days are always dedicated to gaming.” As the players age into their the red bulletin