Startupcraft: a Starcraft tournament for startups in SF

http://www.startupcraftsf.com

by justin • 16 years ago

86 78 16 years ago

startupcraftsf.com

pascalchristian• 16 years ago

The costume competition pic is sooo deceiving.

justin10• 16 years ago

Haha. Well we thought it would be fun... we'll see what happens!

I promise I won't dress up as Ghost Kerrigan

koichi6• 16 years ago

You should come in full SCV costume.

w1ntermute• 16 years ago

Yeah, I'd say it's rather cruel to get the hopes of a bunch of nerds up like that...

asdf3332• 16 years ago

You should ping HDStarcraft to see if he wants to cast. He lives in the bay area.

So does Trump, if you want to do a showmatch vs a progamer. He is ranked 159 or so in the world right now....and lives near Cupertino I think

What is novice? Silver league and below?

gort2• 16 years ago

Trump is awesome. His stream is live right now at http://www.trumpsclive.com/ if you want to get a sense of him... (when it ceases being live it will no longer have a big red rectangle saying "live")

Mongoose2• 16 years ago

Definitely a good idea. We've gotten him to agree to cast the finals of an internal Google SC2 tourney that's going on right now. (I'm an intern)

justin10• 16 years ago

You should consider playing at Startupcraft :)

Mongoose2• 16 years ago

Sounds good. I'm in Seattle, but I'll be making a weekend trip to SF in a couple weeks.

xenophanes• 16 years ago

Realistically, novice is more like platinum and below. Blizzard went to a lot of trouble to name everyone's ranks in a way to make them feel good even if they're bad. Unlike iCCup which ranked tons of people with grades like "D-"

gort2• 16 years ago

Agreed. I'm a Platinum 1v1 player, and completely terrible.

Charuru3• 16 years ago

Well iCCup bills itself as a gosu server, so it's understandable. D on iCCup must be about the top 4% of the SC population or something. C would be 1%.

JeremyChase• 16 years ago

Blizzard did try to make everyone feel good about their ranking. However, the flaw in your argument is that hardly anyone ranked D- in ICCup was actually a novice at Broodwar.

asdf3332• 16 years ago

I would recommend getting 'novice' defined for this tourney... reading through this thread it is apparent that people have wildly differing views on what novice is.

Would hate to enter as real novice (beat cpu on normal) and be up against gold players.

dsiroker• 16 years ago

This is great! Thanks for hosting, Justin. Let me know if you are looking for other sponsors. We'd be interested.

justin10• 16 years ago

We are! You can contact kevin 'at' justin.tv to find out how to help.

zeeg2• 16 years ago

Stay away from the beginners cup, unless you want to face the wrath that is DISQUS :)

koichi6• 16 years ago

your name is ALMOST zerg... I have a feeling you're a Starcraft Shark.

ataranto2• 16 years ago

Hot tip for investors: invest in the companies that lose in the first round, as their employees are probably too busy building great products to play games.

metellus• 16 years ago

I hope you realize how insulting that is to any developer (or anyone, really) that enjoys playing games (or doing anything aside from work).

ataranto2• 16 years ago

Is there a button you can click in Starcraft II that will upgrade your sense of humor?

xal• 16 years ago

I build and run a very successful startup and I'm at the top of diamond :-)

staunch• 16 years ago

A functioning craftaholic.

cvg2• 16 years ago

Hopefully people aren't too good at Starcraft 2. The worst Starcraft team should get a round of funding.

leif• 16 years ago

Yeah, because they're probably spending some of their time working on their product.

pclark4• 16 years ago

i'm sure you meant it in jest, but it still really bugs me: this idea that startups shouldn't do anything but work. who does that, seriously.

koichi6• 16 years ago

I dunno. I wouldn't fund any startup that can't pull off a good zergling rush.

ovi256• 16 years ago

Hey pops, zerglings are so 1998.

jokermatt999• 16 years ago

Really, there's an article on the front page about timing lessons. If you can't time an attack in an RTS, judging by what the competitor has and when you should release your force, how can you expect to release a product in a much more complicated situation?

teej• 16 years ago

That's a shame, because you'd rule out great companies like Quora, Dropbox, Posterous, Gaia Online, and Serious Business.

secretasiandan• 16 years ago

What percent of good starcraft players do you think are developers like that?

What percent of good developers do you think are good starcraft players?

sprout4• 16 years ago

It's interesting that they chose to use a region-locked game. Alone it's all well and good to have an event like this in SF, but at least use a more open medium. (I mean, even a weakly open medium like Age of Empires III or something.)

I feel like there's a clear line where 'closed' is bad for everyone, and though I'm not sure if the SF startup community has crossed it, StarCraft II clearly has. It sends a bad message, as I see it.

zeeg2• 16 years ago

Are you saying someone should play an RTS other than SC2?

johngalt• 16 years ago

AoE3 is the best RTS I've ever played. The problems were; a fairly small online community, and some balance issues.

But the "home city/shipment" dynamic broke new ground.

abraham• 16 years ago

Then organize a competing tournament with a more "open" game.

sprout4• 16 years ago

I don't live in SF. The tournament has a regional bias on multiple levels. Not that I take this event incredibly seriously, but I do consider Activision's region locking deeply offensive, as someone with dear friends on far-flung continents, some of whom I have fond memories of weekend college LAN parties, and I occasionally like to revisit those memories with them.

Fortunately, all of those (RTS) memories are of Age of Kings and Age of Mythology, so I can't say StarCraft's locking affects me too much lately. But I'm not going to stay silent while people try to wall off the Internet out of greed. Games should be an opportunity to come together without barriers of language or nation.

Charuru3• 16 years ago

I think the point is warranted. Blizzard has some pretty onerous terms, like the necessity of going through Battle.net and requiring permission from them to run a tournament. Justin.tv probably got sanction, but having to do it really ruins the neighborhood casualness of it.

Starcraft is great, but people should play StarCraft 1 broodwar with LAN instead. Most StarCrafters agree that it's the better game at the moment.

Of course this is just my minor feelings on this point. Startupcraft sounds like fun and good luck to everyone involved!

pclark4• 16 years ago

This is a bit like saying the iPhone is "bad" closed ... most founders still have iPhones.

sprout4• 16 years ago

Except the iPhone isn't as worrisome as StarCraft to me. Ultimately, the iPhone's problems are going to force Apple to open up, because they are decreasing the quality of the iPhone ecosystem.

And even if it doesn't, the iPhone platform is not actually a communication medium. Obviously it contains one, and people build communication media on top of it, but Apple, as far as I know, doesn't prevent you from making calls to China, or from communicating via any app that is distributed both in China and here in the States. Your provider may charge you a pretty penny, but you're free to do it.

Compare that to StarCraft, which represents a vision of a terrifyingly closed Internet, where every nation has its own walled garden and you cannot get out. Apple has a walled garden, but you're free to enter or leave any time you want.

giannii• 16 years ago

I'm down!

coryl• 16 years ago

This is so cool. My partner and I play at least an hour a day of 2v2 at the end of our work sessions. It'd be a lot of fun, AND cool to meet other startups.

AND its hosted at Justin.tv! Damn you San Francisco, damn you.

*We're not in SF :(

justin10• 16 years ago

We might do a simultaneous East coast satellite section of the tournament if you are in NYC to open up the event to New York startups. Talking to some friends about hosting in their office. Stay tuned.

kschrader• 16 years ago

Working on locking down space right now. Should know in the next couple of days.

diziet• 16 years ago

Why no 1v1?

justin10• 16 years ago

Startups are about putting together the right teams, and we think Starcraft is more interesting in team games.

yosho• 16 years ago

Justin, 3v3 is like THE traditional Starcraft team battle. You need to have a 3v3 in the tourney, 4v4 makes the map too crowded and 2v2 means one of our co-founders can't play. C'mon man!!!! make it happen please

fatbat• 16 years ago

Wow, too bad I am not around. :( Any plans to make this a recurring event? Also, post the replays!

justin10• 16 years ago

Yes, if this is successful we will do it again!

koichi6• 16 years ago

DAMNIT. Apparently I just HAD to move out of SF before this happened. The poor location, cost of living, and everything else don't matter when Starcraft 2 is on the line.

justin10• 16 years ago

You can always come back to play!

koichi6• 16 years ago

Hmm... don't tempt me, haha! I think my girlfriend would kill me.

LeBlanc• 16 years ago

Any other solo founders interested in this? I am diamond 2v2.

ztay• 16 years ago

Yes! I'm in the gold, but will keep practicing. Email me, Taylor at printfriendly.com

Sindrome• 16 years ago

This is on the front page... guess I will be seeing a few of you guys @ Blizzcon this year.

radley• 16 years ago

OMG - it's on!

koichi6• 16 years ago

Is it faux pas to do this? If so, please let me know and I'll delete it, though.

I wrote a response to some of the comments on this page about the StarCraft tournament in the form of a post.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1661616

justin10• 16 years ago

Nice post!

arram• 16 years ago

Makes me wish I'd jumped on the wagon sooner and gotten my skills up to par.

pclark4• 16 years ago

You should fly Day[9] out to SF to commentate. He's done a few noteworthy things other than be awesome at Starcraft that are valuable to startups:

* Never give up (eg: play SC for 10 years)

* Build a huge following around his daily series

* And my god he is so evangelical about what he loves, he exudes love for the game - http://blip.tv/file/3486428

/tenuous.

carnevalem• 16 years ago

I will second this recommendation. I watch that video every time I need a motivation to keep working hard. I've never been much of a Starcraft player, but the way he explains his passion for the game and the dedication he has put into developing his skills is amazingly inspiring to me. Most of the points he makes about training for Starcraft can be applied to any other field.

jeff18• 16 years ago

This is what I've been training for! Count Wolfire Games in.

jacoblyles• 16 years ago

Solo founder beginner-league looking for a second. Send me an email. I may be unranked, but I pwn n00bz in the practice league.

This will be after the Terran nerf patch comes out, so there are no guarantees on how good I will be.

kobs• 16 years ago

Hah, definitely not a surprise that Justin.tv is sponsoring it.

DrewHintz• 16 years ago

If anyone wants to play SC2, feel free to add me: pushespretn@gmail.com

ohashi• 16 years ago

Damnit. I wish I lived in the area now.

tvon• 16 years ago

Because clearly startups are overloaded with free time... ;)

rradu• 16 years ago

I've never played Starcraft, maybe just because I didn't grow up in America. Can anyone explain why it's so popular among entrepreneurs?

Startupcraft: a Starcraft tournament for startups in SF

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