Taiwan wins cyber-games gold medal

Taiwanese computer wizards once again proved their prowess over the weekend, grabbing one gold medal and one silver in group events and one silver in a singles event in this year's World Cyber Games in Daejeon.

Chun Ming-chu (陳明助) won second place yesterday in the singles event of the Age of Empires II game after losing the final to Japan's Akihiro Nakamura.

Chun will get US$10,000 and an additional NT$100,000 from Hinet and NT$500,000 Taiwan Cyber Game League respectively.

Tseng won the top prize in the singles event of the Age of Empires II game in last year's WCG, which was held in Seoul.

On Saturday, Chun and Tseng Jeng-cheng (曾政承) defeated a team from Hong Kong to win the Nations Tournament in Age of Empires II.

A five-member team consisting of Taiwan's Lo Wen-yu (羅文裕) and players from Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and South Africa won second place in the Continental Tournament of Counter-Strike.

Lo's team, named AAO (Asia-Africa-Oceania) 2, lost the final match to Europe 1.

The World Cyber Games awards no money to winners in the group events, but Hinet will give NT$150,000 to Chun and Tseng for winning the gold medal, and NT$100,000 to Taiwan's "FF" cyber game team, of which Lo is a member.

Another duo from Taiwan, Chang Po-chi (張柏奇) and Huang Shih-che (黃士哲), lost their first play-off match to Kazakhstan in the group category of the game Starcraft on Saturday.

Other cyber games featured in the WCG include 2002 FIFA World Cup, Quake III and Unreal Tournament.

The Taiwan Cyber Game League sent a 13-member team to Seoul this year for the WCG.

The delegation played under the name "Chinese Taipei" as a result of objections from Beijing regarding the name under which Taiwanese competitors play.

All 13 players were born after 1980 and the youngest one, Kang Hung-wen, is only 16.

The seven-day competition, seen as the Olympics of computer games, attracted around 450 players from 45 nations.

For further information on the WCG, go to http://www4.worldcybergames.org.