The World Cyber Games 2007 Grand Final in Seattle was both depressing and eye opening all at the same time. It reminded us that at some point in our lives, we’ve all tried to convince ourselves (and our parents) that playing video games was a viable career choice. While most of us decided to grow up, get a job and move out of our parent’s basements, some lucky buggers get to travel around the world and compete in video game tournaments for prize money and glory.
The World Cyber Games originated in Seoul, Korea and was originally known as the WCG Challenge way back in 2000. 168,000 players were whittled down to 174 players from 17 countries for the grand final showdown. They competed in Quake III, FIFA 2000, Age of Empires II, and StarCraft Broodwar for a prize pot of $200,000 US dollars (when it was worth something).
Fast forward to 2007 at Seattle’s Grand Final last week, which ran from the 4th to 7th of October. Over 700 gamers came from a field of over 1.25 million gamers from over 74 countries to compete for 2.7 million dollars in cash and prizes. The players qualify from a series of regional and online tournaments to win enough points to secure their place at this presitigiou tournament. The list of games that competitors battled on this season to get here included:
- StarCraft Broodwar
- Counter-Strike
- Need for Speed Carbon
- Age of Empire III: The WarChief’s
- Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
- Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars
- Carom3D
In 2003, Xbox gamers got their chance to join in on the action and this year gamers did battle on Project Gotham Racing 3, Gears of War, Dear or Alive 4 and Tony Hawk’s Project 8. I bet dollars to donuts that next year we’ll see Halo 3 replacing Gears of War.
It’s Like the Frickin’ Olympics!
As a World Cyber Games Rookie observer, not only have I never been to an event like this, but I expected this event to be like any other big time Lan Party or at least as big as events like Fragapalooza. I was totally off the mark. With international attendance, visiting government dignitaries and live entertainment and indoor fireworks, the event played out more like a cross between a WWE Main Event and a scaled down version of the Olympic opening cereomonies.
A “Cyber-Athelete” was selected from each of the 74 nations to be a flag bearer. I still can’t get over that moniker. I mean, I play games, and I don’t consider it to be athletic in any sense. I guess if Golf gets to be a sport, then we can call games Cyber-Atheletes!
Each nation’s flag was displayed on the huge screen as each flag bearer was announced by an MC and marched out one by one accompanied by some very dramatic “Flag Bearing” music. Some of the gamers that looked like they’ve never seen light outside of the glow of a monitor seemed completely frightened while other revelled in the opportunity to represent themselves and their nation at the games. After some entertainment and speeches by visiting dignitaries like the Lieutenant-Governor of Washington State, fireworks went off to announce the start of the World Cyber Games 2007 Grand Final.
Real-Time Price and Stock Check
Cyber-Atheletes Game in Style
All competing gamers got to sit behind big shiny displays supplied by Samsung, who is also the main sponsor of the World Cyber Games. I’m willing to bet that a lot of the xbox gamers practice on displays only half the size of the massive 40+ Inch panels that were dropped in front of them, and even if they did have a panel that big at home, they certainly wouldn’t be 2 feet away from them. I’m sure a few gamers were thrown off their game by that. I got queezy sitting that close to some of the gaming stations myself.
PC Gamers got treated to 22 inch widescreen LCD panels from Samsung and Razer Gaming Keyboards, Mice and headsets wers standard equipment, however many of the competitors preferred to run their own mice, keyboards and headsets. I noticed a lot of Logitech gaming mice and keyboards in the competition pits, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the gamers had sponsorships setup.
Finals were carried out on stage in front of the whole crowd in these little spaceship like capsules. As competitors were called on stage, they had a chance to do a little showboating like backflips. I guess they really are atheletes! Even more so than a Golfer! When was the last time you saw a Golfer do that on the green?
What About the Spectators?
Spectators were treated to big beanbag chairs and huge TV’s in the center of the venue while semi-finals and eliminations were taking place in the pits.
When the big showdowns began, spectators were treated to live commentary and play by play by seasoned commentators. I must admit, they did a really good job calling the games, giving the crowd a lot of decent information and creating drama and tension through their descriptions of players triumphs and mistakes.
One of the things that is interesting at a world caliber gaming competion like World Cyber Games is the fact that the games at the demo booths were all turned up to their most difficult levels. I found myself struggling with a lot of the demo game stations and just couldn’t figure out why…till I checked the settings. I thought I drank too much of the free pop in the press room and started to have a sugar crash (I don’t usually drink pop at all…at least not anymore). In fact, almost every game was set to Godly levels. I was also playing Halo 3 on the local network, a game I’m actually doing OK with on legendary, and kept getting my ass handed to me. To add insult to injury, as I looked around the corner to the other stations, it seemed that I was taller than most of the other players and probably a good number of years older. There’s nothing like getting your ass handed to by a 12 year old that makes you feel more like a man!
Real-Time Price and Stock Check
Gamers Need Gear and Hardware Too…
As mentioned earlier, Razer had a huge presence at the World Cyber Games, supplying mice and keyboards for the competition systems. But their presense wasn’t just about selling products. Most of the employees at Razer, inlcuding their CEO, Rob Krakoff aka “RazerGuy” are gamers themselves and are deeply immersed in the gaming culture. He even had the time to sit down with me to tell me more about his company and how truly tuned in they were to the gamers. All their employees game, and the ones that don’t, start polishing up their games quickly because it’s sort of a rite of passage.
Razer’s participation at the games also allows them to gather firsthand feedback on their products and conduct on the spot R&D, further allowing them to tune their products for peak gaming performance. With over 700 professional gamers at the event, it’s like R&D heaven. Even Microsoft recognizes Razer’s gamer focus and the two companies have worked together in the past on gaming mice and keyboards, though they had nothing to do with the SideWinder Mouse that was recently released by MS. Let’s just say that there was a big “groan” when that product was mentioned and it wasn’t the “I wish I thougth of that” groan.
While at the show, Razer announced a couple new products that should be hitting the store shelves shortly. The keyboard above, called the Razer Lycosa features 1000Hz Ultrapolling™/1ms response time for ultra fast responsiveness. It also features illuminated, non-slip rubber keys and Hyperesponse™ technology.
The Lycosa can be considered a lighter and thinner version of their Tarantula keyboard, and based on gamers needs, they created this one to be more suited to LAN gamers that need to tote around their gear. It also features accessible USB, earphone and microphone jacks so that you aren’t always reaching down to plugin. I had a chance to play a few games with this keyboard and it definitely has a nice feel and is super responsive. Although all the keys light up, you can actually make just the WASD keys light up if you like, so it doesn’t interfere with your vision in a dark room. The Lyosa also features a super beefy cable that can take the abuse of being plugged and unplugged all day long.
I also had an opportunity to check out their new Piranha gaming headset, also launching at World Cyber Games. The Piranha features glowing earpieces with the Razer logo and are fairly lightweight. They actually reminded me of a Sennheisser PC151 headset, but more refined, more beefy, and lighter. The cord is extra thick to resist those accidental pull outs from the headphone jack and the mic flips up and out of the way when not in use. The earpieces were quite comfortable and the sounded great in Command and Conquer 3 that was on demo. I didn’t have a chance to listen to any tunes with them however so I can’t comment on music performance. The Piranha also features an inline volume control with mute. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend some more time with these when they officially launch.
The Razer Lycosa will retail globally in November 2007 at an MSRP of US$79.99. The Razer Piranha will be available later this month at an MSRP of US$79.99.
Sapphire was there to support the gamers and to show off their new Dual HD2600XT GPU Video Card. The HD2600 X2 comes with memory options of 512MB or 1GB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 800MHz (1600MHz effective) and each GPU core is clocked at 800MHz. It has four Dual Link DVI outputs that can be used to drive four separate high resolution displays at up to 2560 x 1600, or with CrossFire, enabled will drive a single display for higher performance.
The X2 also supports HDCP and HDMI over the DVI interface with the correct HDMI Adapter to DVI adapter. Like most big GPU’s this day, it will take up two slots and is just slightly taller than your standard GPU and will require two 6 pin PCIE power connectors. These should be hitting retail very soon.
Real-Time Price and Stock Check
AMD Was Here Too!
AMD was hiding out at the Sapphire booth with a few goodies. The first thing we noticed was their new RV670 GPU running in Crossfire. The RV670 features a die shrink to 55nm and will not only run cooler than their current current HD2900XT part, but will use a heckuva lot less power. While the HD2900XT’s require two PCIE power connectors per card, the RV670 requires only one PCIE power connector.
They were also showing off their Phenom Quad Core processor and a new software utility that is being release to help users optimize system performance on full AMD/ATI systems. The utility offers automatic settings for those os us that just want to game knowing their systems are pre-tweaked and stable or users can totally unlock all the features and tweaks on their systems and go nuts. Best of all, it works perfectly under Windows so no need to reboot and tweak those settings through the BIOS.
For the last while, INTEL has taken the pure performance crown, but AMD hopes to capture the performance per watt crown this next quarter with their new processors and win the hearts and minds of ECO-conscious users. They also showed off some reference motherboard platform design enhancements that should improve audio quality and reduce heat and power consumption on those platforms which should be showing up on their new 7 series chipsets.
Now the question is…where was INTEL…and do they not care about gamers?
Not Immune From Political Influence
Although this year’s slogan was “Beyond the Game”, it certainly wasn’t beyond politics. What appeared to be a standard medal cereomony turned into a political statement as Taiwan’s PGR3 Bronze Medal Winner, You Chen Liu, was booed and insulted by Mainland Chinese Gamers for waving the Taiwanese flag while accepting his medal. HardCoreWare has a piece on this incident.
So What’s The Medal Count?
At the end of the day, the US was the favourite to produce the most medals, and with a home court advantage, they did just that. They also lead in gold medals. What was most surprising to me was Brazil’s second place result over Korea. There were some serious upsets this year.
So What Did This World Cyber Games Rookie Think?
Overall, the pomp and pageantry as well as the controversy, made the World Cyber Games exciting. I was somewhat disappointed with the poor turn out while I was at the event. They even started handing out free tickets to passerbys. As a comparison, the Grand Finals when held overseas are packed ot the rafters. Seattle did do a great job of organizing the event and it was well run so the team deserves props. However, the low turnout wasn’t completely their fault as NewEgg’s LanFest, (running October 5 – 7) competed for the attention of gamers on exactly the same weekend. Ouch! That’s like having SuperBowl during the Olympics!
So as the lights go down on another World Cyber Games Grand Final, the torch (there is no torch, just an expression) was handed to the representative from Cologne, Germany, where the 2008 World Cyber Games Grand Final will take place. Germany goes nuts for professional gaming so it shouldn’t be hard to top Seattle for attendance records. For complete results and recaps, head on over to the World Cyber Games Website.
Discuss This Article in the Futurelooks Community Forums
Real-Time Price and Stock Check