CNN -- http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/...html?hpt=hp_c1

The first thing you notice about the professional video game players are their fingers -- spindly creatures that seem to flail about at their own will, banging at the computer keyboard with such frequency and ferocity that to visit their live-in training centers in South Korea is to be treated to a maddening drum roll of clicks and clacks.

The clatter is loud enough to drown out conversation. And it's constant. Rows of expressionless young men sit at cubicle-like workstations tapping at a galactic military strategy game, "StarCraft II," sometimes for 18 hours a day -- from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m.

One of them is "MarineKing" (real name, Lee Jung-hoon; age, 19; annual earnings, $105,000). His digits rap like machine-gun fire at a black keyboard; the twitchy glow of a computer monitor reflects in the lenses of his purple glasses. MarineKing lives with fellow members of his team, called Prime, on the 16th floor of a high-rise building west of Seoul -- an ultra-wired city that takes on an intense, digitally enhanced quality after dark, with neon lights and big-lettered advertisements lighting up a sea of skyscrapers. It's a place that's home to the world's finest "e-sports athletes," as they're called here without irony. It's also a hub for gaming addiction -- a place where deaths are attributed to games and the government funds treatment centers.

MarineKing knows those facts all too well. He's been caught in a lifelong struggle between the dark and the light sides of gaming. It's a struggle that at times tore his family apart.

When I visited MarineKing in December, he was preparing for the Olympics of the video game world -- the World Cyber Games. There, he would compete against his chief rival, "MVP," who was ranked No. 1 heading into the tournament, to MarineKing's No. 2.

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