Virtual Excitement

At the Cyber Games, Even Virtual Excitement Is in Short Supply
FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By DAN ACKMAN
September 13, 2005; Page D8

New York

Cyber games may be small-time now, but Peter Weedfald has seen the future and the future is Korea. In Korea, top videogamers can earn six-figure salaries and have the status of sports stars. The "gamers" and their games are the subjects of two 24-hour cable television networks devoted to gaming the way ESPN is devoted to sports. "You'll see [gamers] on a box of Wheaties," Mr. Weedfald says. If you think his vision is far-fetched -- well, five years ago the popularity of poker on TV might have seemed far-fetched, too.

Mr. Weedfald is a marketing executive for Samsung Electronics, the lead sponsor for the World Cyber Games, whose U.S. final was held over the weekend at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan. So his enthusiasm may be understandable. But he may have to wait for Wheaties if this weekend's event is any indication.


Hoping to exploit the popularity of videogames, the World Cyber Games promotes tournaments as both sporting events and cultural festivals. But are they either?


The World Cyber Games, owned by South Korea-based International Cyber Marketing Inc., aims to both exploit and expand the popularity of videogames and to be both the Olympics of cyber-sport and "a true world cultural festival." But even at the highest level, and with all due respect to the fans in Korea, a gamer in full action is still a kid staring at a screen while twiddling his thumbs on a console or fingering a mouse. Just as videogames are essentially cartoons of the action they parody, cyber games, even at their highest level, are parodies at best of sporting competitions.

If the U.S. finals of the World Cyber Games are any indication, they are joyless and don't provide much in the way of culture, either.

That gaming has a world-wide following is undeniable. Americans spent $9.9 billion on videogames last year, including software, consoles and accessories, according to the NPD Group, which tracks the industry. World-wide, 500 million people play videogames on a regular basis, says Robert Krakoff, president of Razer, a maker of videogame peripherals and a World Cyber Games sponsor. An untold number play the games seriously enough to compete in leagues and tournaments over the Internet. Those who aspire to gaming glory devote as much as 50 hours a week to the games, though most of the top players can maintain their skills by practicing 20 hours weekly.

The World Cyber Games is not alone: The gaming circuit competes for primacy with the Electronic Sports World Cup and the World E-Sports Games. About 40,000 entered World Cyber Games qualifiers, which are open and free of charge, organizers say. International Cyber Marketing flew 185 contestants (184 boys and young men, nearly all between 18 and 22, and one girl) to New York to compete for $34,000 in total prize money and a spot on Team USA, which will compete for a world championship in Singapore next month. There the prize money will total $420,000.

Last year in San Francisco, the U.S. team placed third, its best finish in four tries at the World Cyber Games, trailing Korea and a plucky squad from the Netherlands. Why doesn't the U.S. lead the world in cyber games? Don't American kids have more computers and more free time?

A partial answer may be found in the mix of games selected. The U.S. is good at shooting games, says Won Suk Ohm, executive vice president of World Cyber Marketing. It won the world title last year in Counter-Strike, a personal-computer-based game played between teams of mock terrorists and counter-terrorists, and Halo 2, an Xbox console game that mimics gunfights between genetically enhanced super-soldiers. But America is not so good at strategy games like StarCraft or WarCraft III, both for PCs. It also lags in FIFA Soccer.

True to form, most of the excitement at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Saturday was during the shooting events. In Halo 2, Dan and Tom Ryan, twin 19-year-olds from Pickerington, Ohio, representing Team 3D, a professional squad, beat another Team 3D pair in the final. In an earlier round, two-time World Cyber Games champion Matt Leto, at 21 an aging cyber-gunslinger, was knocked out.

The high point of the event was the Counter-Strike final, where another Team 3D squad beat Complexity in a tight final match. While Team 3D was defending champ in the five-man game, Complexity had won the Electronic Sports World Cup in Paris in July. The Team 3D Counter-Strike players are among the two dozen Americans who can make a living playing videogames, according to Craig Levine, 22, the team's managing director.

For all the artificial mayhem, the atmosphere in the ballroom was subdued. To be sure, the organizers do their best to inject excitement. "Cultural events" included an appearance by Mick Foley, a professional wrestler, who signed autographs.

Organizers employed "shoutcasters," who are something like sportcasters, only louder and more frenetic, to sit on stage screaming explanations of what was happening on overhead screens being manipulated offstage if not entirely out of sight of the small band of spectators who showed up.

For the most part, though, it was hard to get a rise out of either the gamers, whose eyes were locked on their video screens, or their fans. Victorious gamers all seem to have learned to mimic the most numbing clichés of actual athletes: "We were confident going in … We knew it was going to be a tough game" and so on. Team 3D's Josh "Dominator" Sievers, for instance, when asked to express his emotions after winning the final, expounded in slightly greater detail: "I guess anyone who ever played a sport in high school and won a big competition knows how it feels."

Gamers would know how it feels, too, if they ever pulled away from the screen and had the experience.

Mr. Ackman is a writer for Breakingviews, a financial news and opinion Web site that will have a regular column in the Journal's new Weekend Edition.

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See also: Ackman on Sports