GO.esc // DreamHack Malaysia Qualifiers
Just announced today… Go International E-Sport Cup (GO.esc) takes you directly to DreamHack Winter 2009. Registration opens 1st August 2009. Confirmed games include Counter Strike 1.6 and more to be announced later. Watch this space… or visit www.indieyouthfest.com for more details on the event.
Coming soon…
indie youth fest 2009 - digital delirium poster
Despite the changes to the Electronic Sports World Cup 2009 as announced by Games Services France, i.e. the sad demise of the world revered e-sport tournament due to lack of sponsorship funding, Go International Group is still keen to support the electronic sports fraternity by organising an e-sport tournament at its annual INDEPENDENT YOUTH FESTIVAL at 1 Utama from 29 July – 2 August, 2009 kickstarting with the Selangor Road Show on 1 & 2 August at 1 Utama Shopping Centre (High Street & Rainforest), followed by a series of Road Shows nationwide in September, and returning to 1 Utama Shopping Centre again from 14-18 October 2009 for the 5-day festival of digital mayhem! Get ready, gamers for another challenge of your lifetime!
INDIE YOUTH FEST 09 will provide a platform for * indie musicians * dancers * entrepreneurs * fashionistas * gen Y greenies * video gamers * casual gamers * social entrepreneurs * multimedia design artists * and more!
Want to know more? Email us today KL@gointernationalgroup.com
Media Release
The Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) Global Organizing Committee announced today that the 7th Grand Final of the ongoing season is delayed to the end of the year.
The current global economic context is not favourable to the organisation of the event in June 2009 in Paris as in previous years. Thus, more time is necessary to finance and properly prepare for the grand finals. New dates and location shall be announced in the upcoming months.
The ESWC Grand Final has been organised successfully the last 6 years throughout France and USA. The first two ESWC grand finals were held at the Futuroscope, the next three years in Paris (at the Carrousel du Louvre in 2005, in Bercy in 2006 and Porte de Versailles in 2007), and last year in San José, CA, USA.
Go International Group Sdn Bhd, the Malaysian Licensee for ESWC 2009 will make further announcements on the revised dates for its ESWC 2009 Malaysia Grand Finals, in conjunction with Independent Youth Festival originally slated to run from 24-26 April at The Spring in East Malaysia and 27-31 May at 1 Utama Shopping Centre in West Malaysia. The dates will be announced in the first week of April 2009.
For further information, visit www.eswc.com or contact Jeremy Yeo on (603) 7727 0093.
-Ends-
About ESWC
ESWC is the acronym for “Electronic Sports World Cup” (registered trademark in 50 countries) and has been running for the past 8 years. Organised by France-based company, Games Services, it has garnered sponsorship support from Nvidia, Intel, BNP Paribas, Packard Bell, Orange, Mondial Assitance, Medion, Kaspersky, Région Ile-de-France, City of San José CA. It has also worked with game publishers like Konami, Blizzard, Nadeo & Focus, Sony Playstation and offered more than USD1Million in prize monies to video games champions since the first competition.
The ESWC Grand Final:
Go International Group is the Master Licensee of ESWC in Malaysia and directly manages:
ESWC achievements since 2003:
Media inquiries:
Jasmine Low
National Director – ESWC 2009 MALAYSIA www.eswc.com/malaysia
Managing Director – GO INTERNATIONAL GROUP SDN BHD . the marketing solutions company .
Incorporating NOVApr – integrated communication consultancy
Master Licensees
DIGITAL WEEK – INDIE YOUTH FEST // ELECTRONIC SPORTS WORLD CUP
24-26 APRIL 2009, THE SPRING KUCHING
27-31 MAY 2009, 1 UTAMA SHOPPING CENTRE KL
Suite 12B, Jln SS20/10 Damansara Kim
Petaling Jaya 47400 Selangor DE Malaysia
Tel: (603) 7727 0093 | Fax: (603) 7727 3093
Call me +6017 623 0288
Email me jasminelow@gointernationalgroup.com
This is us @ www.gointernationalgroup.com
Hello there! Welcome to the ESWC 2009 Malaysia official blog!
The 2009 season has begun and we’ll be announcing details by March 2009. Gamers, are you ready for another round of the world’s most exciting e-sports championship? This year, we’ll be bringing a delegation of pro-gamers to compete against the rest of the world at the World Finals in Bercy Paris, France. For more info on the World Finals, visit www.eswc.com.
Competition rules and Games Settings Overview
Counter-Strike – 5vs5
* Game version: Counter-Strike 1.6
* Map pool: de_dust2, de_inferno, de_nuke, de_train, de_tuscan
* Games settings: max round 15, round time 1 minutes 45, start money 800
* Complete Rules
Warcraft III The Frozen Throne – 1vs1
* Game version: latest available version
* Map pool: Echo Isles, Secret Valley, Melting Valley, Turtle Rock, Twisted Meadows
* Games settings: gameplay «Fast»
* Complete Rules
Trackmania – 1vs1vs1vs1
* Game version: TMN Forever (or latest available version)
* Tracks: official pack of tracks released each two months files.eswc.com/regulations/2009/files/trackmania
* Match format: Cup mod, point limit 100, round limit 5, number of winner 2
* Complete Rules
Unofficial Games:
DOTA
PES / FIFA
ESWC 2009 General Regulations Overview
* Players and clubs must be duly registered on www.eswc.com and must have subscribed to a 2009 season’s license.
* Players must have the nationality of the preliminary’s country they will represent. If the preliminary covers more than one country, players must have the nationality of one country represented in the preliminary.
* For a player with more than one nationality, the nationality will be defined by the country of the first preliminary tournament the player attends. After the choice, players cannot change the country they represent during the season.
* Teams have to determine their nationalities and, in consequence, play the preliminaries of the country they represent. A team’s nationality is determined by the majority of all players’ nationalities. In the case of teams of 5 players, the majority is three or more players of the same nationality. Accepted nationality compositions: 5/0, 4/1, 3/2 or 3/1/1. A team of 5, without at least 3 players of the same nationality will not be eligible for ESWC Grand Final.
* Players must be at least 16 years old on the first day of the ESWC 2009 Grand Final.
* Complete Regulations
Creation of the “Defending Champion” rule
* For individual games, selected as ESWC official disciplines, winners of ESWC Grand Finals are granted of an autoberth to attend to the succeeding edition. This autoberth is granted to the natural person only and will not be transferable in any case.
* For games played in team, selected as ESWC official disciplines, winning teams of ESWC Grand Finals are granted of an autoberth to attend to the succeeding edition. This autoberth is granted to the club officially registered to the Grand Final and will not be transferable. To apply to the defending champion autoberth, the club will have to include in its team’s line-up, for the Grand Final, a majority of players who have won the previous edition. In the case of teams of 5 players, the majority is three or more players.
o If the granted club cannot confirm its team’s line-up, 60 days before the ESWC Grand Final, with a majority of players that have won the previous edition, the Defending Champion autoberth is definitely canceled.
o If the winning team’s club doesn’t exist anymore 60 days before the ESWC Grand Final, and if ALL the players who have won the previous edition are registered in another team’s club on www.eswc.com, then the Defending Champion autoberth is granted to this club. (This rule is not applicable if the original club still has a team playing competitions).
Defending Champions for ESWC Grand Final 2009 will be, in consequence, confirmed early May.
By IAN YEE
The Sendi Mutiara Multimedia Grand National DotA tournament was a huge success.
COMPUTER games have long been the bane of many a parent, and one of the biggest culprits would have to be the Warcraft custom scenario Defense of the Ancients, better known as DotA.
The highly addictive RPG (role-playing game) has had youngsters flooding cyber cafes over the last four or five years where they’d spend hours building up their characters, called Heroes, and battling each other in a strategy game-like map.
Of course, that would sound like trouble to most parents. But as of last weekend, it could also sound like a nice, melodious “ka-ching”.
We’re talking money. Lots and lots of money. The Sendi Mutiara Multimedia Grand National DotA Tournament (SGNDT) held last weekend at Berjaya Times Square gave away a whopping RM120,000 in prize money, a Malaysian record for a pro-gaming competition, to some of the best DotA teams in Asia.
Team Ehome from China emerged as champions of the SMM Grand National DotA Tournament, pocketing RM36,000 in cash along with other prizes.
Over 50 teams representing seven countries from as far as China and Russia, signed up to play for the huge payout, though the latter had to withdraw due to unsuccessful visa application.
A testament to how big a cash cow this tournament was is that internationally renowned names like China’s Ehome, global electronic sports organisation Fnatic as well as the famed PMS clan flew in for it.
With over 60 foreign individual players, the tournament also set another Malaysian record for the ‘Most International Participants in a Single Gaming Event’, as verified by the Malaysia Book of Records.
Records aside, the tournament was a huge step forward for the local pro-gaming community. Not only did it raise the bar in terms of how much teams can earn , it also provided a much needed boost, that our gamers are now of such a high standard, foreign teams are coming to our shores to take us on.
That makes it two Malaysia Book of Record entries, and two steps forward for local gamers. Now, that’s what we’d call a Double Kill.
Malaysia’s own DotA Hero
Dr Ricky Lim, president and CEO of Sendi Mutiara Multimedia, insisted that Malaysians had what it takes to be at the top of the international DotA community.
“Over the years, I’ve come to realise that the standard of Malaysian DotA teams isn’t very good. It’s extremely good! Team Kingsurf ( silver medallists at the worldwide Electronic Sports World Cup [ESWC] grand finals in California three months ago) proved that.
“So, we thought, instead of always going to other countries to play, why not we get players from the other countries to come to us?” he said.
And according to Ricky, local players were responding well to the challenge of playing against top class gaming teams.
“They haven’t been complaining at all! They’ve been saying ‘bring it on!’ and that’s the spirit we need. They’re not kiasu at all.”
In fact, Ricky believes the next step is to attract even more top teams to the annual competition, particularly by making it clear that gamers can make a healthy profit by playing in Malaysia.
“We want to make this a calendar event. We’ll try to increase the prize money each year, so that gamers in the region who are trying to earn money will come here,” he said.
“Next, we want to have American and European teams coming. They say they’re the best, so we want them to come here and prove it.”
Johor Baru-based Team Kingsurf, featuring players absorbed from ESWC gold medallists Team Zenith of Singapore, were one of the early favourites. Unfortunately, they lost to three foreign teams to claim fourth place.
Best of the best
But in terms of the best at the tournament, Team Kingsurf from Johor Baru were widely tipped as the pre-tournament favourites, particularly after they absorbed members from Team Zenith of Singapore, the team who beat them for the gold medal at ESWC.
Fnatic’s Indonesian DotA team was one of the favourites if only because of them being part of Fnatic, the Australia-based professional e-Sports organisation whose gamers have won numerous honours.
The two PMS (which stands for Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers) teams also attracted plenty of attention, for obvious reasons.
But in the end, it was Ehome, one of the best teams in China, who made the grand final along with Team Evo-xtc of Singapore.
And with plenty of DotA fans watching the match intently on large screens, the atmosphere was pretty intense. But in the end, it was Ehome who managed to deal Evo-xtc a killer blow, earning themselves RM36,000 in the process.
Even though the best Malaysian team, Kingsurf, only managed fourth place, Ehome’s captain Dong Can, aka Ehome DC, had some encouraging words for our boys.
“The Malaysian teams definitely have the ability, and they put us under a lot of pressure.
But we were really hoping to play Kingsurf in the final. We’d met them before and they’re a very good team. We even prepared special strategies on how to beat them before coming here!” said Dong.
Lee Vei Xiang, aka PapaXiong from Kingsurf, believes they had no one else but themselves to blame for the loss.
“I threw the game away. I shouldn’t have lost so early on but these things happen,” said the 18-year-old.
Bright future
The silver lining for our local gamers however, is that the quality of the competition, in terms of opponents, prize money and quality, are all improving.
“The event was very well-organised. There were many teams, and even then they managed to work out the schedules. It was a bit tight at times, but all in all, I think gaming competitions in China have a lot to learn from this. We don’t normally have as many participants, and we compete online most of the time. There are also very few competitions that give out more than US$10,000 (like SGNDT),” said Dong.
With teams up to 16th place winning at least RM100 in consolation prizes, and even the eighth placed team pocketing RM1,000 along with five Edifier iPod Speakers and five Warcraft Battlechests, the SGNDT is one of the most lucrative competitions in the region.
Fourth placed Kingsurf bagged RM5,000, five Seagate 120GB external hard drives and Silverstone Mouses, while the second and third placed teams got RM18,000 and RM10,000 respectively along with external hard drives and other gaming gear.
And still, Ricky promised during the closing ceremony to make the competition even more lucrative next year by bringing in more sponsors, inviting more foreign teams and spreading the gospel of DotA to even more young gamers.
Now that would be a Monster Kill.
