Chinese player Li Xiaofeng struck gold in the game Warcraft at
the 5th World Cyber Games Grand Finals, which closed in Singapore
on Sunday night.
The US won the overall championship title when their gamers
bagged two golds and a silver. South Korea was second with two
golds and a bronze.
More than 700 gamers from 67 countries competed for prize money
worth US$435,000 in the past four days at Singapore's Suntec
Convention and Exhibition Center.
"Apart from its entertainment and fun element, digital games can
also be a positive tool to promote inter-cultural interaction,
breaking down traditional barriers such as physical distance and
cultural differences," Singapore Minister for Information,
Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang said at the closing
ceremony.
He added that digital games as part of the whole entertainment
and media ecosystem is big business and a growing contributor to
the global creative economy.
The global interactive entertainment market is estimated to grow
from about 28.5 billion Singapore dollars (about US$16.7 billion)
in 2005 to some S$42 billion (about US$24.7 billion) in 2010,
according to Lee.
The next World Cyber Games Grand Finals will be held in Europe
for the first time in Monza, Italy.
In 2003, China hosted legs of three world-class eSports
tournaments; World Cyber Games (WCG), Cyberathlete Professional
League (CPL) and Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). The State
General Administration of Sports inaugurated a China ESport Games
(CEG) the following year.??
The first eSports national team was founded in June 13, 2004.
Over 200 matches were held nationwide in 2004 and more than 1,000
enterprises got involved in the industry. The first CEG
championship attracted 2 million participants and the China leg of
the 4th WCG tournament attracted tens of thousands of
applicants.
(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn November 21, 2005)