The map (editor) is not the territory, but it felt like it

StarCraft's map editor taught me the word 'asphalt' - a word I don't recall ever having real cause to use and yet have intensely strong memories of learning; as a synonym, a sort of flavourful synonym, probably partly because of the innate musicality of it which may even mostly have derived from its novelty. I laugh now to myself because music is so painfully subjective that I fear I cannot convey what I feel if you do not (like a writer might, ha). But don't you feel it? AS-PHALT. It feels like a long inward breath preceding a plummet to me, physically undeniable, but I digress.

I digress because the real strength of the word is probably just that I learned it from StarCraft, which made it better than a normal word - it made it a StarCraft word. You know how it works, I think. You're small and sponge-brained and you learn most words either in context from stories you're too young to appreciate as actual constructions of language, far too pulled along by the machinery of the story, the way Aslan bleeds into his fur, the way Arthur Dent loses his lunch in the corner of a spaceship. Or you learn them McLuhan-cold from functional conversation and start assembling a mundane vocabulary. Then, suddenly, the flashing, bleeding, bright stage-show of a videogame drills a phrase or two into your head forever. Blood Omen taught me 'epoch'. Final Fantasy 7 taught me 'double edged sword'. StarCraft's map maker - through its default terrain type - taught me 'asphalt'. 

(My memories are kind of milkshakey but it may also have been Blizzard's fault, at a slight remove, that the word lodged its way into my brain the way it did. Rock N Roll Racing 2: Red Asphalt released a year before StarCraft. I wouldn't end up getting my hands on Interplay's, on reflection, comically dark sequel to Blizzard's colorful Micro Machine's-esque combat racer until much later but I have to imagine it played a part.)

(Did Steppenwolf ever use the word 'asphalt' in Born To Be Wild - captured in Rock N Roll Racing as a sort of Doom-esque midi version? I asked before I sat down to write. I would have loved that. Would have brought the thing full circle in the way someone floundering to extract resonance and poetry from memories about videogames simply could not have resisted. They did not, it turns out. I should know this, because - lacking liner notes or easy internet - I once asked my mum to sit and write down all the lyrics to 'Born To Be Wild' for me. I wanted to hold and read and touch them. I used to mumble along to some TV advert or other with it in. I used to sit down with my mum to play Rock N Roll Racing. She wrote every line down on paper for me. The thing I remember about it the most is how she pointed out that she wrote the word 'wanna' as it appears in the song but felt, as I recall, slightly embarrassed about that enough to explain the concept of a contraction to me. I'm eight or nine years old and I want to be a rockstar but I am fascinated by the idea of contractions.)

StarCraft's map editor offered its own kind of contraction but also unlocked an entire new universe that I would - that I have - thankfully, never learned to contract. To learn that Kerrigan's fall and the final stand against Mengsk and the Zerg's entire awful advance and Zeratul's every line was the product not of a Homeric ghost that lived inside a disk drive but instead crunchy sound files and win/lose conditions and asphalt placed in just the right patterns was… something. It's devastating when you learn that: you can lose your adult teeth/your parents are just people/stories are told by the same humans you use those stories to escape from. It's devastatingly energising when you learn the same things. The greatest gift a creative can offer is a peek behind the curtain, I think. An admission that 90% of art is work. StarCraft's map editor made me want to tell stories because it helped me learn that stories are just something you can tell.

I never did get good at StarCraft's map editor the same way I never got good at StarCraft. It's 2011, and in a too-crisp white-sheet hostel room on the border between Vietnam and China, I meet, for the first time, a dude from South Korea. Guess what my pasty, housecat, barely socialised, enthusiastic-bordering-on-manic self asked him?

"Of course, StarCraft!" he replied. "You?". Yeah!  I replied, enthusiastically. Then, I slumped my shoulders, and with much less verve than before, I half-whispered "just the campaign, though. And the map editor." 

Should have been more confident about that, on reflection. That map editor meant a lot to me.