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Taiwan's players game for a contest

By Lin Chieh-yu
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Oct 06, 2002, Page 4

Leader Li Tung-shuai, center front, is surrounded by the team members representing Taiwan at the World Cyber Games to be held in South Korea. PHOTO: CHUANG SHU-CHUNG, TAIPEI TIMESN

Taiwan has selected 12 national representatives to compete against top cyber game players from around the world. They will soon be competing in the World Cyber Games 2002 (WCG 2002), which are to be held in Daejeon, South Korea, from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3.

The 13-member team has vowed to win the top prizes. They will of course, be getting a lot of help from last year's Age of Empires II: the Conquerors (AOE) champion, Tseng Jeng-cheng (曾政承), who is a seeded player this time.

The World Cyber Games are hosted by South Korea, which through its government and private-sector efforts has devoted itself to developing cyber games over the past decade. In contrast, Taiwan society had long seen computer games as "a sector of moral corruption" until Tseng, a 17-year-old school-dropout from Taiwan, became the Age of Empires champion at the first World Cyber Games last year.

Waving his national flag while being awarded the prize, Tseng raised the patriotic passions of the Taiwan people, whose status as a nation has long been denied by the international community due to Taiwan's standoff with China.

"We expect Tseng will win the first prize again and we even have hopes of winning the top three prizes in AOE.

-- Vivian Chao, PR manager Taiwan Cyber Game League

Despite this lack of recognition, the island is known for its success in the computer industry. And since Tseng's victory, the industry has decided to become more involved with the flourishing cyber game business.

Therefore, companies from various sectors have decided to work together to win more pride for the country in this year's World Cyber Games.

The Taiwan Cyber Game League (TCGL, 台灣電玩競技帶聯盟) comprises I-mei Foods Company, Ltd.(義美食品), Samsung Electronics in Taiwan, Gigabyte Technology (技嘉科技),Chunghwa Telecom Company, Ltd. (中華電信), the China Times (中國時報) and Aztec (戰略高手).

The league sponsored and held national preliminaries for the games to select top game players on behalf of Taiwan. "We like to select the best team to get the best results," the league's public relations manager Vivian Chao (趙慧君) told the Taipei Times yesterday.

The preliminaries started in early September and ended on Sept. 29. Chao said that more than 3,000 game players attended the preliminaries and 12 representatives were selected. They include a five-member team for Counter Strike (CS), three players for Star Craft (SC), one for FIFA 2002, and three for AOE.

"We focus our strategic target on the AOE. We expect Tseng will win the first prize again and we even have hopes of winning the top three prizes in AOE," she said.

According to the league, there were six competition categories in the first World Cyber Games which saw more than 300 people from 37 countries attend.

This year, games organizers are expecting around 450 players from 49 countries.

"Generally speaking, competitive European and American players dominate FPS games such as Quake III and CS; however, sophisticated oriental players are good at RTS games such as AOE and SC," Chao said.

"After one-year of training, Taiwan's team players have made great progress in CS. Our team for CS -- Final Fantasy from Taichung -- still has a chance to win, as long as they are lucky enough not to confront European or American players in the first round of the game, Chao added."

Since the world championships are only three weeks away, Chao confirmed that the league plans to hold friendly games on the Net so that the 13 national representatives have a chance to practice.
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