"If I have problems I play the game and they all go away," he says and admits to losing his previous job because of CS.
The competition
Long is now head of a cartel called T.I.C (Team Iron Cross), numbering around 30 players. He says the best teams are not necessarily the best players, but have the best tactics.
Aztec (戰略高手) is the biggest Internet cafe chain in the country, with 40 branches in Taipei, each with between 50 to 300 computers. Aztec -- along with a burgeoning number of independent operations -- are expanding on the crest of the CS wave.
Last year Aztec opened two new stores a month to keep up with demand, and though the company is now forecasting slower growth, it has developed a sophisticated business model that is being copied everywhere. Membership cards, free drinks and snacks, a bright high-tech environment, with magazines and comics and attentive staff are buying loyalty.
Prize money for the Taiwan CS Open, held on Jan. 1 at Aztec's flagship center near the Taipei train station was NT$300,000, shared between six teammates. Ten thousand aspirants for the CS crown were whittled down to 180 teams for the final and of these 1,080 contenders "Storm E" emerged as Taiwan's undisputed champion. Ironically perhaps, he is unavailable for an interview as he has just started his military service.
Kevin Lai, who works at an Internet cafe in Taipei says the attraction of CS is that "it is like a true world. In Taiwan we have to do military service and we get given a gun, just like CS. The thing is we are not against a machine, but against other people. That's why it's like real-life."
Kevin says some of the best CS players in the world are from Taiwan, because of its popularity and the degree of fierce competition. In October the Global Cyber Games will take place in Korea and it is a safe bet that a Taiwan team will be battling for top honors.
CS represents a revolution in the industry because it transcends the program and the odds are that it will spawn a new generation of 3-D, first person shooter games that will fulfill the early promises of virtual world enthusiasts, who boldly predicted they would inherit the entertainment earth.
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