WORLD Cyber Games ( WCG) is the world cup for gamers around the world, a chance to truly see just how good you are with keyboard and mouse against other players. For the last couple of years, F1 Management Limited, an event management company has been organizing the National Round in Bangladesh, selecting the winners who will face the players from all over the globe. This year for the first time Bangladesh has been invited in the WCG 2009 Asian Championship.
The Asian Championship of WCG will be held in Singapore on the first week of July, where all the past Asian Championships has been held, along with the WCG Grand Finals back in 2005. The participating countries include Bangladesh, Australia, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Thailand and New Zealand among others. This event is more than just a gathering of thousands of gamers around the world -- it's the benchmark of the Asian gaming world. This is where the high scores and records are set and broken. The event finals will be held from 3rd to 5th July and the official games of this year are DoTA (Defense of The Ancients), a modified version of Warcraft III Frozen Throne, FIFA '09 and Guitar Hero: World Tour.
In order to select the best gamers to represent Bangladesh in the Asian Championship, a qualifying round was held at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (Dhanmondi Campus) from 11th to 13th June. It was organized by F1 Management Limited in association with Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. The registration process of the event was held between 7th to 9th June. More than 500 gamers took part in this three-day prestigious gaming event.
Thirty computer stations were networked for the gaming contest for FIFA '09, and twelve other computers for DoTA. Guitar Hero was played on a giant projector screen through a XBOX 360 console and two console guitars. The winners of these games will be representing Bangladesh in the Asian finals in Singapore.
The preparation for this grand event started almost a month early, with careful planning out of the details for the program. The main action started on the morning of 7th June, with members of F1 setting up the registration booth, backed up by the enthusiastic student volunteers of ULAB. From 7th to 9th June, the organizers literally shed their sweat and tears as they struggled to meet the overwhelming response from the crowd. Even after closing down the registration, requests kept pouring in from parents to let their children register. On the 10th, the computer stations were brought in and the organizers started setting them up as fast as they could, with the main job being setting up the networking between the PCs. For FIFA the PCs were connected by a simple PC to PC LAN wire whereas for DoTA, which is a 5v5 team game, they had to use a hub switch to connect 12 PCs together. After that a thorough test was run on every PC to ensure they were in fine working condition with all the associated equipments. However, the organizers had no time to breathe as they had to hold a mock tournament on the 10th in order to train and prepare the referees accurately for the tournament starting the next day. The games were simulated over and over by the organizers emphasizing on the rules and how they were broken. The work went on till 11 almost every night after which the organizers, namely Basit, Tarif, Me and Nasir stayed over at Nasir's place near Dhanmondi.
On the big day, the competition began with the participants collecting their IDs and t-shirt uniforms. As the competition rushed on at full steam through the day, Hasib, our techie and Meraj, our head referee had barely a second to catch their breath, managing the gamers and the PCs.
On the second day it was pretty much the same picture, except the ID collection booth was shut down and a XBOX 360 console was brought onstage so that anyone who wanted to practice and register for Guitar Hero could give it a try. With a huge projector screen and two large speakers at both sides of the room at full blast, it was not long before everyone simply forgot about the other games and gathered in front of the stage, where two competitors would take it in turns to play the guitars and turn the mass into a mini concert, filled with head banging, crowds singing along, and the guitarists making wild moves!
On the final day, the final showdown occurred in each of the games, and they were displayed in the giant projector screen, where the crowds actually turned the place into a stadium, and took sides to cheer for not only the gamers, but the teams they were playing with as well! The heat of the crowd was turned up a few notches with the guitar hero finals, where the two finalists had an epic showdown with neither of the players giving the other an inch.
Afterwards, there was a grand closing ceremony where among many were present Prof. M. Lutfar Rahman (Dhaka University), and from ULAB D. Jahirul Haque, Prof. Abdul Mannan and Prof. Syed Akhter Hossain(Head of CSE Dept.) were present. They distributed the medals amongst the winners and handed over our national flag to them, which will represent Bangladesh in the Final round in Singapore. The winners of the competition were:
Guitar Hero
1st: Fahad Bin Jafar
2nd: Iftekharul Islam
3rd: Ishtehar Hossain
DoTA
1st: Xtreme Lungis\Shadow Play
1.Md Shajjadur Rahman
2.Ashiqur Rahman Moin Sami
3. Faisal Jashim Uddin
4. Md. Mohiuddin Sajol
5. Saadman Sakib Rahman
2nd: Team Bangladesh
1. Baadhan Saha
2. Riyasat al Jamil
3. S.M. Rezaur Rahman
4. Rafiqul Islam Joy
5. Amit Richard
3rd: Xtreme Lungis\Xtreme Lungis
1. Kazi Newaj Ibne Mahtab
2. Sharif Nazir
3. Tushar Khan
4. Imran Meah
5. Rubaiyat Islam
FIFA '09:
1st: Md. Aminur Rashid Asif
2nd: Atif Al Rashid
3rd: Arafat Jani