StarCraft has prospered for a decade thanks in part to fan mods. As Hector Postigo argues, fan-programmed works contribute to a 'content pool' that extends the life of games by prolonging the time they remain 'a subject of active involvement with the consumer base' ('Of Mods' 302). The Terran, Protoss, and Zerg races of the original game could be tweaked but also replaced entirely in total conversions. In addition to these simpler modifications (or 'mods'), players expanded the game in more ambitious projects called 'total conversions' (TCs), in which the StarCraft engine (the code underneath surface-level graphics) would be put to entirely different purposes. The StarCraft software included a Campaign Editor that allowed players to design their own maps, tweak the properties of buildable units, and program scenarios for gameplay. In a market dependent on built-in obsolescence and newness, StarCraft perseveres.Ī contributing factor to that longevity has been a continual stream of user-generated content to keep the game fresh. In 2007 Edge Magazine declared Star Craft the thirty-seventh 'greatest game of all time,' while Game Pro called it the nineteenth 'most important' and GameSpot UK deemed it in 2003 'The Standard by Which All Real-Time Strategy Games Are Judged' (Edge Staff Boba Fatt GameSpot).This commercial, critical, and cultural success continued with the Brood War expansion pack in 1998 and is expected to extend to StarCraft 2 in 2009. In addition to commercial success and cultural impact, the game won critical acclaim.

Annually, between 600,000 and 700,000 South Koreans attend professional StarCraft tournaments where celebrity players are sponsored by corporate giants like Samsung (Cho). In 2006 StarCraft remained the best-selling game in South Korea, having sold 3.5 million copies. According to Blizzard, StarCraft sold more than 1.5 million copies to become the best-selling PC game of 1998 and has since sold 8 million more worldwide, thanks largely to phenomenal success in South Korea ('10 Years'). Though the game was released in March 1998, publisher Blizzard Entertainment continues to distribute this PC software, and despite the hardware and software advances of the last decade, hit-driven mass retailers in the United States like Best Buy still stock this relatively ancient game. StarCraft-a real-time strategy game in which players command one of three space-faring races in a struggle to secure natural resources, develop technological infrastructure, build military units, and achieve martial victory over the competition-has proven to be one of the greatest video game success stories of all time.

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