Gaming fans gear up for World Cyber Games

BANGALORE: The Indian leg of the annual Cyber Olympics, to select participants for the international gaming competition-World Cyber Games (WCG) 2004, will kick off in India in the next five weeks.



Samsung India Electronics, which is the chief sponsor of the event, announced that WCG India would be held across 12 cities in India.

The event is open to any gaming buff in India and follows a three-stage elimination process. In the pre-prelims stage, one could take up the challenge at a Sify iWay outlet or log on to the WCG micro-site.

Stage two of the event would include the 12 city preliminaries. The third and final stage of the competition would include the semi-finals and then the finals in Mumbai on August 23.

Participants can try their hand in any one of the games including Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment), Counter Strike (Valve Corporation), Need for Speed Underground (2004 Electric Arts Inc), Unreal tournament 2004 and FIFA Football 2004 (2004 Electric Arts).

The winners of the all-India prelims would compete with winners from 56 countries at the WCG Finals to be held in San Francisco, USA in October this year. Last year's WCG in India was held in five cities and saw an encouraging participation from around 5,000 participants in each city. Organizers are hoping to tap into the youth and student gaming enthusiasts in India by targeting schools and colleges.

Samsung along with the event's alliance partners like Sify, AMD and Indiagames, are wooing the potential gaming population in the country to participate in the event. "Gaming is an application that really tests the performance of a PC and hardware. With PC gaming, one can develop abilities like analytical skills, team work, speed and reflexes, management skills and competitiveness," said Samsung India Electronics VP (marketing), Vivek Prakash.