GosuGamers fought hard but could have done better. But was it ever worth it? Here's why the Nordic World Cyber Games preliminaries never happened.
Nordic WCG organizers, Scandinavian Event Marketing Group, in cooperations with Samsung, chose not to select StarCraft as an official game this year. Nevertheless, WCG normally has the possibility open for interested organizations or companies to host preliminaries in any of the official games assuming they can cover the expenses. This year required a total of 2,400 € and the Nordic organizers showed no interest in asking any of the eleven sponsors for preliminaries in WarCraft, Counter-Strike and FIFA for support. It was up to a third party to get the money.
GosuGamers, just like last year and the year before that, stepped up and researched for interest in registrations for an offline event in Stockholm as attempt to host the preliminaries. It showed that even though we had a lot of names, it was not sufficient to cover up the expenses. We chose another stragegy; an online preliminary would hopefully get the names we all needed.
A problem which arose with an online preliminary is also the main reason why the event did not take place. In order for any preliminary to be called an official WCG event, it must have the money secured before the event starts. The money, roughly 2,400 €, needed to be transferred to an account before we were able to announce an online preliminary. Paying 2,400 € for an online preliminary where about 150 players participates is way too much money for way too less marketing for any sponsor to be interested in covering the money and taking the risk of having it cancelled.
Banners was one of the methods of gaining increased economical possibilities for GosuGamers to support gaming events. More methods will be used; we're working with opening a webshop with t-shirts featuring our new logotype and more. However, we did not make more revenue from the bet OG banners than a few euroes so far and no new donations have come in. It seems we're still far, far away from any 2,400 €.
The last date for the event to be announced was Oct. 2. It means the time ran out for anyone to get the money needed to send one single player to Singapore from the Nordic countries. However, one might argue, would it ever be worth it? Increased player fees from WCG and additionally a very long trip to Singapore put a very high pressure on the local organizers.
Italy next year
We stay happy, however, and aim for Italy next year where there will be a hugely decreased travel cost. GosuGamers furthermore wishes to remind you that we are not the official organizers of the World Cyber Games, nor are we responsible for the choice of preliminary games in each country. We can only, based on support from the community, make attemps to send additional players. And year this, that attempt proved unsuccesful.
