Earlier this week, Blizzard released patch 1.18 for StarCraft. It counts as the first patch for the game in over eight years, and with its release saw StarCraft become a free game. Now a South Korean politician is attempting to take full advantage by releasing his very own StarCraft maps for free.
The politician in question is Moon Jae-in who, according to Kotaku, is the front-runner in the race to become the next president of South Korea. Another key fact in this story is just how popular StarCraft is there. South Korea is home to professional StarCraft players, and enjoys a very healthy obsession with the game that attracts sponsorship and regularly includes televised matches.
The 64-year-old Moon Jae-in decided to release two custom maps for StarCraft via his official blog. He also released the video you see above showing a time lapse of one of his maps being played.
A presidential candidate managing to even load and play StarCraft would be impressive enough, but making maps? That's sure to garner a lot of positive attention and press. Unfortunately, Jae-in's achievement isn't as great as it first looks.
The maps he released are actually an existing map he modified to add piles of minerals to. The minerals in one map are laid out to read "1 Moon Jae-in." The other simply spells out "1" in the upper right corner.
If he had the knowledge to do this, he really should have gone a step further and produced something a bit more unique. As it stands, this now looks more like a quickly put together PR campaign. The fact we're talking about it means it worked, though, right?