Web log entry by Mazor, the day before the opening ceremony at World Cyber Games 2005 in Singapore.
We finally got to enter the tournament area today. The area is huge; everything is so much better prepared than in San Francisco. The organization of World Cyber Games Grand Finals have improved and many mistakes from last year have been corrected. Nobody is perfect but many fixes were appreciated.
One particular change is the margin between the tournament area and the outer border of this zone. It has been drastically increased and this will make the tournament area a lot calmer.
As usual, "spanking new" keyboards, mice, headphones, computers, monitors and mousepads are presented. Its not a very common thing to see a pile of 500 Razer Copperhead. And still, most players bring their own equipment meaning these will not be used by the majority. Another interesting and suprising news I just heard was about last year's finals. The Korean WCG team were so busy after the finals that they did not have time to transport away all the expensive shuttle computers and flatscreens that they left them all at the location. I was told that they were taken by anyone who had anything to carry them in - "well, either the janitor took them, or perhaps the cleaning people." an anonymous source told me. The shuttles alone were $1,000 each, and I am guessing there were around rougly 500 computers at the location.
This year does not only show improvements in choice of location, several new guidelines and rules have been added for the referees, better information for people working with the event in general and lots of other experiences have been converted to great solutions.
Nevertheless, there is one major possible source of problems: the restart and power buttons on the computers. They're very sensitive and a slight touch restarts the whole machine. I can see problems in Counter-Strike in particular but in for all games in general.
We haven't been let out of the tournament area as of today so my plans to see more of the host city this year seems rather dead but I will see what I can do about it. We have been moving monitors, installing mice and keyboards, tested each computer by playing about four 10-minutes games of each game. I know perfectly well how to split wisps now, how not to play FIFA, how you must take strategic points in WarHammer 40k: Dawn of War so as not to be asskicked by hustler100 and how to win two StarCraft matches simultaneously within ten minutes.
Despite my jet lag-lag-lag-lag-lag problems while trying to sleep, I still got about four hours before we reluctantly got up to catch the bus to this place, the tournament area, called the SunTec. I am sure most of the players have arrived by now but we left far too early to meet any of the new arrivals.
I managed to upload some pictures of today, though yesterday's are too big to upload as of now. My fellow Crew members will help out to mask them and post a news about the pictures once they're ready.
For Tuesday's coverage, I wish to remind our users that we will indeed try to run a live coverage and that it will be played seven hours plus from central european time. However, as I have been appointed Head Referee for StarCraft this year I will mainly make sure that everything is run smooth and make the live updates second priority. There is going to be a huge pressure on every staff member to make this a good event but I will atleast update the results of each group in the end of the round (meaning at the end of each hour) when we have a short break. Results will also be updated, though with some delay, at the World Cyber Games website. GosuBets to be added of each group match shortly.
If there's any time over after work and before the Opening Ceremony, tomorrow will be scouting-Singapore-day and getting some more interviews with players.
Time to go back now, we're going to test all the 160 Counter-Strike: Source computers and sort out any bad hardware or bugs - like there would be any for a computer that reboots faster than it would take build an SCV.
Links
GosuGamers event coverage - WCG 2005 Grand Finals
