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As the finals neared, the bar filled to near bursting. We witnessed so many amazing games! But just as good as the tournament on the screen was the camaraderie. I chatted with a math / economics wonk, who mostly just watched StarCraft for the high-level "macro" strategy. My Diamond-level table mate was building a Diablo clone with StarCraft II's modding tools in her free time. Even before the final match aired, a couple of nearby patrons were discussing a road trip to Providence, RI, where MLG will be hosting the year-end championships, with a $50,000 grand prize. People shouted suggestions at the screen, like "Get Dark Templar!" or "Focus fire the Ghosts!" Gamers filtered in from Comic Con and from an Intel-sponsored StarCraft tournament. Professionals were sighted, wearing logo-covered jerseys to represent their sponsors.

I chatted with people I'd never met before about the delicate balance between the races, about things like "Warp Prism harass" and "Ghost snipes," about other video games, even. I'm not exactly a talk-to-strangers person, not even with a few Diet Cokes in me. Even when it comes to my job, where I regularly interact with colleagues and readers, I'd rather hide in a corner: I find myself at a loss for anything intelligent to say in casual conversation — yeah, the iPhone is pretty good, I guess. But here I was at a bar and I was overflowing with all this pent-up useless knowledge I'd been amassing in a secret YouTube tryst with Husky. And the best part was that I knew about a tenth as much as pretty much every other fan there, and they all wanted to share, too. I was in StarCraft heaven, which turned out to be across the street from a faux-European salad bar in Midtown.

Disappointment and frustration turned into patriotic bedlam

IdrA went up against another Korean Terran, Bomber, and the internet failed. It had been spotty all day, but now it was down for the count. Luckily, a guy with a MacBook near us managed to get a stream during the bar’s downtime, so twenty or so nerds gathered around his table, craning necks to get a glimpse of the action, and relaying the action for those who couldn’t see. The main stream was out for almost twenty minutes, but the first game turned out to be an epic match, and the bar TVs kicked back to life just as IdrA was launching a huge "Fungal Growth" attack on Bomber’s units, which we cheered wildly. A little cheer-drunk at this point (or maybe just drunk), we cheered IdrA again when he expanded to a new base at the 35 minute mark, in what turned out to be a needless economic flourish. Soon after, he destroyed Bomber’s army. Our disappointment and frustration from minutes before quickly turned into patriotic bedlam.