JP/19/GAMERS

JP/19/GAMERS

Gamers duke it out
for WCG berth

Vishnu K. Mahmud
Contributor
Jakarta
vmahmud@yahoo.com

Gamers nationwide are steeling themselves for combat. The World
Cyber Games (WCG) competition season has just begun and a long
list of elite Indonesian gamers have lined up to do battle.

At stake, an all expenses paid berth at the WCG Finals in
Korea and the chance to represent Indonesia. It is the ultimate
opportunity to be ranked in the global domain of PC gaming by
competing against the world's best.

Gaming as a competitive sport?

Judging by the large numbers who signed up to play in the
first qualifying sessions of the Indonesian preliminaries last
Saturday, many consider it to be an activity that requires
constant training. After last year's Indonesian Counter-Strike
team got clobbered by teams from Singapore, Spain, the Czech
Republic and Portugal in the 2002 WCG, local gamers researched
new tactics and strategies in order to beat their competition.

This year, Indonesian Gamer (www.ligagame.com) and Samsung
(www.samsung.co.id) are again preparing to send representatives
of Indonesia to Seoul. Lead by former gamer Eddie Lim (aka
Samxz), Indonesian Gamer (IG) is organizing a multi city cyber
battle-fest to find the best of the best in the nation.

Eddie is enthusiastic about sending another team to Korea as
the IG community has learned a lot from last year.

"Watching how people play in person instead of just watching
the recorded video is very different," he said. "Last year we
learned how to play Counter-Strike as a team as it should be."

It can be said that the level of play in each country is
different. Singapore is said to have the best gamers in the
region while South Korea, thanks to the popularity of the PC-
Baang (as game centers are known there) is slowly edging out the
U.S. for gaming supremacy.

IG is sending representatives for only three games: Counter-
Strike, StarCraft and Warcraft 3. The WCG also has competition
for the Unreal Tournament 2003, Fifa Soccer 2003, and Age of
Mythology games, but only champions from a national tournament
sanctioned by the WCG can enter.

For the national preliminaries, local game centers determine
(usually via competition) representatives to send to the IG
Tournament. After months of round robin play, the national finals
will take place in September, with the champions bundled off to
Korea.

Most of the preliminary tournaments will take place at local
game centers, following stringent WCG regulations to ensure fair
play. Thus teams could be playing at home and away.

There are of course concerns about games and violence,
especially after a spate of shootings in the U.S. that imitated
movies such as The Matrix. However, after observing the
Indonesian gaming community for four years, there have been few
negative consequences of gaming and even these minimal (such as
bad grades in school). The kinship of Indonesian gamers is strong
as most will still help out others while blasting away at their
cyber enemies.

Finding a balance between school and games should always be an
issue. But just because students are not playing games doesn't
mean they will not find another activity to disrupt their
schoolwork. Besides, recent studies found that gamers have
heightened visual coordination skills, allowing them to track
more then one object at a time. These skills are ideal for police
work, flying aircraft ... or shooting zombies before they reach
innocent bystanders!

As one gamer put it, "you must find a balance between playing
and work, because the game shouldn't rule you, you should rule
the game!"

So why are people interested in signing up for a cyber battle
tournament? Every gamer worth their salt knows the famous names
of the gaming world such as Fatality, Wombat, Immortal and
Thresh. These are some of the gaming gods of yesteryear who not
only won tournaments, but signed lucrative sponsorship contracts
to play games for a living, which is every gamer's dream.

But for Indonesians, this chance might take some time.

"One of the best teams in Indonesia right now earns about Rp
10-15 million annually per person from prize money or
sponsorships," Eddie Lim says. "Indonesian gamers are considered
to be semi-professional players, but they can earn money too if
they are good."

Things can only get better if they win the WCG.

i-box:

For more information about the World Cyber Games, check out
www.worldcybergames.org. Tournament schedules can be found on the
IG website.