Beyond the Game - Into the mind of the professional Warcraft player

Kasparovs of a new generation

The game-industry is a young industry. Whenever it is pictured by the old industry (the media), we see a typical approach: one of concern. The game industry is stereotyped as a menace, either of ‘high culture’, or, in a more sociological sense, as a kind of new drug, that will affect the behavior of a new generation in a negative way.

From the start of my research, I felt I should not choose this perspective, or take on the superior approach of the elder generation. I thought it would be more interesting (and honest) to try and look closely, and maybe judge later.

That is probably the main reason why I chose to portray the Warcraft-scene. Jos (“Zerter”) Buyvoets, my young guide in cyberworld, told me that Warcraft is the ‘thinking-gamer’s game’, where I would find interesting personalities –players who indeed function as role models in the universe of the gamers’ generation.

That is how I found, amongst others that did not make it into the final film, the 2 main protagonists, Grubby and Sky. As luck would have it, at the end of 2006, they were, together with the Korean player Moon, the Kings of Warcraft. What I mean by ‘luck’ is that, from a documentary filmmaker’s point of view (who did not understand even the basics of the game) Grubby and Sky seemed to represent different personalities, styles, and cultural backgrounds.

Grubby, Dutch, is an impressively cool character, regarded as the ‘artist of the game’ by numerous fans worldwide, and he turned out to have a deeply personal, at times philosophical approach to the game. Sky, on the other hand, in a way seemed to embody China: very hard-working, being able to sacrifice a ‘normal existence’ to improve his game, developing a style that is maybe more feared than admired by both opponents and fans. Grubby once told me he felt Sky was like a stone, while he himself tried to be like liquid, more adopting and being able to react to situations than creating them by sheer force.

For a filmmaker who wants to make a western in cyberspace, these kind of differences are interesting to work with. As filming developed, this opposition of course became more nuanced, the texture became richer, for example because of Sky’s life story that in itself is kind of epic in a Hollywood sense (boy runs away from home to play games, and after many setbacks makes it to the top).

In the end, I am glad that I took a filmmaker’s approach to the subject, portraying gamers on their various ways, and not the detached, easy moralistic rejection of the gaming culture as a whole. For my generation, chess players may be heroes –and I have never heard anyone ask if maybe Gary Kasparov is addicted. Sky and Grubby may very well be the Kasparovs of a new generation, practicing a game that sets new standards, new borders, of intellectual creativity. At the same time, one wonders about the balance between sacrifice and goal, or even success. That is the underlying theme of ‘Beyond the Game‘, and it gives the narration an undercurrent of tragedy.

Read all articles by documentary filmmaker Jos de Putter here…