Feature

WCG 2009 National Championship: Bangladesh

WORLD Cyber Games, or WCG for short, is the world cup for all the gamers around the world, a chance to truly see just how good you are with a keyboard and mouse against other human players. For the last couple of years, F1 IT, 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 XBOX 360 was used for gaming besides the usual norm of playing PC games.

The final rounds of WCG will be held in Chengdu, China in November. The participating countries include Bangladesh, USA, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Australia, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Thailand, and New Zealand and dozens more. This event is more than just a gathering of thousands of gamers around the world; it's the benchmark of the gaming world. This is where the high scores and records are set and broken. The official games this year are Counter Strike1.6, FIFA 09, Trackmania, Caromed, Guitar Hero World tour, Virtua Fighter, Redstone, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Asphalt 4 and WiseStar 2.

In the National Championships, the games that were played were FIFA 09, Counter Strike 1.6, Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, Guitar Hero World Tour, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The winners of FIFA 09 and Counter Strike 1.6 will be headed to Chengdu, China later this year for the final rounds of the World Championship.

This years Mojo, along with our global partner Samsung, Intel, Gigabyte and Smart Technologies, sponsored WCG 2009 National Championships

In order to select the best gamers to represent Bangladesh in the World Championship, a Qualifier round was held at North South University from 13-16 August. F1 IT organized it in association with Department of EECS (Electric Engineering and Computer Science) of North South University. The registration process for the event went on from 7-9 August. More Than 1200 gamers from all over Bangladesh including Dhaka, Sylhet, Chittagong, Rangpur, Barisal, etc took part in this three-day long prestigious gaming event.

Sixty computer stations were networked for the gaming contest for FIFA '09 and Warcraft III, and twenty-two other computers for Counter Strike and Call of Duty 4. Guitar Hero was played on a giant projector screen through a XBOX 360 console and two console guitars.

The preparations for this grand event started almost a month early, with carefully planning out of the details for the programme. The main action started on 7 August, with organizers of F1 IT (Me, Nasir, Basit, Aumit, Tarif, Suraiya, Mou) setting up the registration booth. From 7-9August, we literally shed our sweat and tears as we 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. The tedious task of organizing the registrations forms with their respective photos and ID cards took us a whole two days to complete. On the 12th, a briefing session was held at the North South University premises for the volunteers, as they were all briefed in detail about their work for the next couple of days. A few hours later, the computer stations were brought in and the organizers and volunteers started setting them up as fast as they could, with the main task being networking the PCs. For FIFA, a simple pc-to-pc LAN wire connected the PCs, whereas for Counter Strike and Call of Duty, which are 5v5 team games, a hub switch had to be used to connect 22 PCs together. After that a thorough test was run on every PC to ensure they was in fine working condition with all the equipments. However, the organizers had no time to breathe, as we had to move onto the plan for the next day and organize our operations with the North South University officials.

While the competition was going on in the NSU premises, a booth was opened on the ground floor just outside the main compound gates where the participants collected their IDs and t-shirt uniforms. As the competition rushed on at full steam through out the day, Suraiya, our MC and Meraj, our head referee had barely a second to catch their breath, managing the gamers and the PCs. On the other hand, Aumit and Basit single handedly took care of Call of Duty 4 and Counter Strike respectively, while Tarif supervised Warcraft III. Me and Nasir ran about the whole place, taking care of any problems or glitches regarding anyone or anything and making sure the event went on smoothly, while Mou manned the booth, where the promotion for the first Bangladesh Exclusive multiplayer online gaming platform, HOONKAR.NET, was going on. The five main heads of the show wore "Haori"s throughout the event, a traditional Japanese military dress worn by division commanding officers. We adopted the idea from the popular anime Bleach.

The FIFA09 games were played as a best of 3 matches in the 1st and second rounds. After that, it was knockout to the finals. Counter Strike 1.6 and Call of Duty 4 was played as league split in 4 different groups, from which the winners advanced to the knockout rounds up to the finals, where it was a best of 3 match.

As the gamers moved around the tournament premises before and after the games, they had fun with various activities, for example a dart throwing competition by Mojo, two stationary gaming PCs and two PCs with steering wheels, gear box and driving seats for a true to life driving simulation provided by Intel. Intel also held a quiz contest and a PC guru contest, where contestants were required to assemble a PC from scratch in the fastest time possible. F1 IT had a surprise for all the gamers and spectators: three coin arcade Game consoles, featuring the most popular console games of all times: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (better known as Mustafa), King Of Fighters, and U.N. Squadron, giving all the hardcore gamers a blast from the past, reminding where all the games started from.

On the second day it was pretty much the same picture, except the ID collection booth was shut down. The day went on smoothly, thanks to the hard work from volunteers and organizers, and excellent cooperation provided by North South University Authorities. The next day (15 August) the tournament was put on hiatus for the national mourning day.

On the final day, 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 congregated 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 our guitarists making wild moves!

Also later that day, the final showdown occurred in each game, 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 FIFA and Counter Strike finals, where the two finalist teams had an epic showdown with neither of the players giving the other an inch.

After a grand 3 day long event, after many tears shed and many voices shred by shouting in joy, the winners, the top players in Bangladesh in their respective games emerged. The grand closing ceremony held on 16 August was attended by the Vice Chancellor of North South University Dr. Hafiz G.A. Siddiqi, along with the Dean of EECS dept Prof. Abul L. Haque and the head of the department Prof. Miftahur Rahman.

The Winners of this year's WCG National Championship Bangladesh are:

FIFA09:
1. Ananny Rahman
2. Rahim Mallek
3. Arafat Jani

Call Of Duty:
Champion Team: Ahmed Hasan Zaman Safi, Ashek Ishaque, Arifur Rahman Nabil, Moshiur Rahman Pantho, Md. Tasdidul Islam.

1st Runners up: Bappy, Sajeeb Hossain, Iqbal Hossain, Rakibul Hasan, Danish.

2nd Runners up: Raqibul Islam Joy, Tariqul Islam, Nafis Sarker, Shahriar Shamim Hasan, Shahrear Humayun.

Warcraft III:
1. Rafsan Choudhury
2. Jishnu Brahmaputra
3. Saleh Hossain

Guitar Hero:
1. Dony Douglas Rozario
2. Duke Paul Rozario
3. Ziko Mazumder

Counter Strike 1.6:
Champion Team: Rajon, Mehdee, Rashid, Sharif, Newaz, Tushar.

Runners up: Toky, Sunny, Navid, Tonmoy, Shijit.