StarCraft 2 had been out for less than a month when its first major LAN tournament took place. Lowko has gone back and rewatched the grand final, and his video is part history lesson, part reminder of how quickly a competitive scene can grow up.
The event
According to the video's description, the tournament was IEM Season V Global Challenge Cologne, held at Gamescom in August 2010, where 16 players met on stage with $15,000 at stake. The final was a best-of-five between IdrA's Zerg and MorroW's Terran. MorroW, the description notes, only got in as a replacement invite, and reached the final with a Reaper-heavy Terran style that people argued about at the time.
The look of 2010
The opening minutes are a time capsule. Lowko laughs at the arrival footage (00:00) and watches the host bring out the casters, Apollo and Day[9], who walk onto the stage in casual clothes (00:40). That sends him into a short history of esports caster fashion, from graphic T-shirts to blazers, and he admits he is secretly still a fan of that era (01:49). The players are then introduced and interviewed on stage (05:48), the casters sit at a desk in front of the live crowd (10:30), and Lowko adds that he personally prefers casting from a quiet room backstage (11:13).
The games
Game one, on Zel'Naga Caverns in a 4:3 broadcast (15:35), is where the 2010 game shows its age. Lowko points out early Wings of Liberty habits, like building a Barracks before a Supply Depot (18:00), and the absence of now-standard features such as an in-game clock. Then MorroW's five-Barracks Reaper build arrives and tears through IdrA's base (21:18), before Marines and Marauders with Stimpack close out the game (26:20). Lowko even pulls up old patch notes mid-video to check how different early unit stats were (30:30).
Game two moves to Metalopolis (32:45), and Lowko uses it to point out how odd four-player maps were for one-on-one play, with spawn distances that changed the whole game.
Then and now
Lowko's conclusion is affectionate but clear. The 2010 final was historic and fun to watch, he says, but esports has improved enormously since, in gameplay quality, event organisation, casting and stream quality (1:28:03). He goes as far as arguing that today's Diamond or Platinum ladder players have better mechanics than the 2010 professionals and could beat them (18:03), which is less an insult to the pioneers than a measure of how much a community can learn in sixteen years.
Why it's worth watching
For anyone who followed StarCraft 2 from the start, it is a nostalgia trip. For anyone who didn't, it is a rare, watchable record of how an esport looks in its first weeks, before strategies are solved and before broadcasts had found their polish.
Viewers loved it. Many joked about being "there 3,000 years ago", some suggested Lowko run a tournament on the 2010 patch to see whether modern players could stop the Reaper rush, and others had fun with the awkward on-stage introductions.
From the creators
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