Image by Tammy Todd.
The gamers at the World Cyber Games tournament show just how committed and downright serious video gaming can be. Gaming has escalated to a degree that one can genuinely call themselves a professional gamer, and these tournaments are very much akin to a sports competition, drawing in massive crowds of cheering gamers and fans.
This writer had the chance to talk gaming with the Director of Marketing for World Cyber Games, Aaron Smolick, at the New York Anime Festival. Cheerful and enthusiastic, Smolick was more than happy to answer questions, despite the deafening noise of what was undoubtedly the most rowdy and colorful crowd the Jacob K. Javits Center has seen since the NY Comic Con.
Plenty of gamers out there have never heard of World Cyber Games. What sets the WCG apart from other tournaments?
Well, World Cyber Games is the Olympics of games. Gamers compete in the preliminaries in ten distinct games, on the PC, X-Box 360, and mobile phone. World Cyber Games national finals has 152 gamers trying to qualify to make it into Team USA. They also compete for $100,000 in cash and prizes for this event. Team USA then heads on to China to take on 78 other countries, like Canada and Brazil, for a grand prize that is a little under half a million in cash and prizes. Divided among the winning team, of course. Also, the systems we use are top of the line, too. Because we take gaming so seriously, we need to have high-end machines to run the games at an optimum level.
Now, how exactly did the WCG get started?
The World Cyber Games were started in 2000, and it grew from country to country. This is the ninth year, and we are up to 800 players at the Grand Finals from 78 countries around the world. It started as an Olympic model and has grown every year consecutively, year after year, to the point where we are today. And next year will be our tenth year.
How are the games chosen for the tournament?
Good question. The World Cyber Games chooses their games on several different criteria. The most important criteria is the popularity of the game, and it has to be popular on a global scale. A lot of people come up to me and ask, 'Well, what about Madden? Madden is really popular in the US'. While that is true, Madden is not popular overseas, so we have to make sure that all the games are popular, even around the world for our 78 countries.
Some titles that are chosen, for this years World Cyber Games are called legacy titles. Legacy titles are StarCraft, WarCraft, Counter Strike. These are huge games that have been around for years and years and years and have developed such a large following over the last ten years, so we always have to have those.
The next set of games, we like to call our "new games" or "innovative games". These games are mostly X-Box games: Guitar Hero, Virtual Fighter. Some PC games. That is slowly moving into mobile gaming as well. It's the up and coming platform for the preferred gamer. This years national final plays host to what is known as the Samsung mobile challenge. At the Samsung mobile challenge there are two games: WiseStar2, and Asphalt 4. One's a racing game one's a jewel game much like Bejeweled. These games are going to be the future of all gaming, as the trends are showing us that more and more people are using their mobile phones to actually game, around the world. So we have PC, Legacy titles, X-Box 360, very good popular titles, and Mobile titles as well.
Another reason we select the games that we do is community support. Publishers who get behind their games, who show a robust website, they show a fan base, and do a lot around their games, we like to incorporate those games to the world cyber games as well.
I know you have a lot of responsibilities orchestrating this event, but thank you very much for your time today!
No, don't worry about it. I'll be here all weekend!
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