201102 by sungchul byun

In this Issue:

Member Nations‟ News

Member Nations‟ News The Trend in the World Today

1st International between South Africa and Namibia

8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

by Colin Webster

The MSSA (Mind Sports South Africa) has always been concerned with growing eSports in South Africa, as well as helping other African states to further develop. It is hoped that as soon as there are enough African countries with recognized National Federations that the IeSF will be able to effectively apply to have e-Sports included in

“MSSA's COD 4 team L – R Jo-Ash Rajcoomer, Daniel Grundlingh, Peter Myburgh, Nialle Momsen”

the All African Games. Once e-Sports is accepted into the All African Games, the importance of eSports will be evident for all to see. Thus, the MSSA, in partnership with the

Namibian Electronic Sports Association (NESA), decided to hold an official test match between Namibia and South Africa at the largest e-Sports competition in Namibia – NAMLAN - to be held on 12 December 2010 in Windhoek, Namibia. This is the first time that a South African national e-Sports team had ever travelled to Namibia. Consequently, both sides were wary of what to expect and of the standard of play that they would encounter. The Namibian organizers, Brendan Ihmig and Kai Eysselein, did everything humanly possible to make the event a success. The test match was held in COD 4 and FIFA 10 and both federations

selected official teams to represent their respective countries. Even though South Africa won the test match, the result was not nearly as important as the fact that the event was held. It is now an established fact that the governments of both South Africa and Namibia recognize e-Sports as fullyfledged sports and that international test matches between different countries are not only possible, but are also necessary, in terms of the long-term-development of e-Sports as a sport.

In this Issue: Member Nations‟ News

Korea 2011, Fierce Battlefield of Shooting Games by Alex Lim

The Trend in the World Today 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

As looking over the online game market, some game titles are arising smell of gunpowder globally here and there. Especially, some of Korean FPS (First Person Shooting) games came to the fore to be „Top Billing Rising Stars‟. One of Korean FPS game, “Special Force” just hit the stardom in Philippine. Started regular service on March 2008 in Philippine. “Special Force” established a proleague in Korea has continuously grown up, and finally wrote the new record, on last December, which is breaking 50 thousands line of simultaneous access users and 20millions line of accumulated number of members. Now, “Special force” is

on service in more than 30 countries. Compared to “Cross Fire” published by Neowiz Games Inc., it is not even a big issue. “Cross Fire” has built monumental landmark in China. The record that the number of simultaneous access exceeded 2.3 million is just astonishing. “Cross Fire” is also getting enthusiastic reactions in 10 countries as well such as Japan, Chinese Taipei, United States, etc. Also, “A.V.A” published by Neowiz, which was the official title at the IeSF 2009 Challenge and exhibition title at the IeSF 2010 Grand Final, stands out as well. “A.V.A” is on service in United States, Chinese Taipei, and Europe. Then, it earned commercial success such as it broke 15 thousands line for simultaneous access number in Chinese Taipei. Recently, “A.V.A” is expanding its own territory through some affairs as making the contract to export it to 5 nations in Southeastern Asia such as Singapore, Malaysia, Philippine and Indonesia. Due to these phenomena, more than twice, compared with previous year, of brand new shooting games are on standby to be published, and there is expected to be cutthroat competition in online game market in 2011. Even, games being published for certain are a dozen. “Special Force 2” is on standby to be published, and „Red Duck‟, the development company of “A.V.A” is planning to show

“Metro Conflict: Presto”. Besides, there will be numbers of shooting games in diverse concepts such as “Gun Dog” which dogs have battle as characters of this game. This phenomenon is not even limited to online game market. As diversifying the platform, „Com2us‟ starts service of mobile FPS “Sniper VS Sniper” in Korea, which is already on service in several countries with iPhone.

In this Issue:

The Trend in the World Today

Member Nations‟ News

States in Austria

The Trend in the World Today

by Elisabeth Haider

8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

One major aspect that makes StarCraft 2 superior to their competitors is that the producers constantly provide the community with updates and balancing-patches. Therefore, development of the game never stops. Reasons for the enormous popularity are firstly the huge community and secondly the great number of contests for its players. At the moment, a StarCraft 2 competition called EPS, Electronic Sports League Pro Series, takes place in Austria. In addition, the amateur series, ladders and cups are also organized. When there will be more detailed information about the European Nations Championship (ENC), the esvö (Austrian e-sports association) will make up a national team for Austria. The Austrian team is going to compete at the ENC and will hopefully qualify for a

World Cyber Games (WCG) slot in StarCraft 2.

States in Singapore by Lee Wei Meng

When three of the top four players in a major tournament hail from a single country, you know you have a regional powerhouse on your hands. That's exactly what happened last September as Singaporeans Daryl "ice" Koh Wei-Yang, "OxygeN" Lim and Bryan, "nirvAnA" Choo made it to the top four in Blizzard's

official StarCraft 2 Southeast Asia Battle.net Invitational Tournament. Since then, Singaporeans have done well in regional tournaments, including a second-place finish in the SEA Nation Wars league, losing only to arch-rivals Australia in the seven-week-long tournament. While Singaporeans may be playing competitively at the highest level in the region, they have not forgotten the importance of building a strong and vibrant community. After the Blizzard SEA Invitational, “nirvAnA” went on to create SC2SEA.com, a community website frequented by virtually all of the top players in the SEA region. SC2SEA.com has gone a long way toward promoting an active and vibrant StarCraft 2 e-sports community in

Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand with its weekly tournaments, clan and player databases, strategy articles by top players and livestreams from exciting casters. With such strong showings in tournaments and a clear leadership role in the regional community, Singapore's StarCraft 2 community looks set to have a bright future ahead.

In this Issue:

States in Russia by Constantine Surkont

Member Nations‟ News The Trend in the World Today 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month

StarCraft (the first one) used to be very popular in Russia. We have quite famous players which must be well-known over the World and particularly in Korea. BratOK (PavelKuznetsov), Android (Andrey Kukhianidze, also known as "Killer of Koreans"), Asmodey (Sergey Ozhigin, lived in Korea for some time and

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played in OnGameNet Star League). Popularity of StarCraft in Russia was not affected much by publication of WarCraft III or any other RTS. StarCraft always

had it's stable audience, quite big one. All those people impatiently waited for StarCrat 2 after it had been announced. When StarCraft 2 was published in Russia, in a few weeks more than million copies were sold. In a couple of months most famous WarCraft3 players gave up playing WC3 and started practicing SC2. By the way it was the reason why Russian WC3 player Dmytriy Kostin (Happy) decided not to attend IeSF GF. He also turned into SC2. Today BattleNet2 has around 750000 of Russian accounts. Each weekend, Starcraft 2 competitions are held in Russia with very different prize funds.

States in Germany by Thomas von Treichel

Rarely a game was so desperately awaited as StarCraft 2. For a person who’s new in the gaming scene it might be hard to understand why the name StarCraft brings such amazement within all the players on the globe. The game StarCraft is legendary for one simple fact: it’s perfectly balanced. This – and nothing else – is the main reason StarCraft can look back on 10 years of unrivaled history relating to eSport – especially within Korea. In 2009 a young German player aged only 14 years participated at the World Cyber Games in China. Consequently he was just 4 years old at the day StarCraft was published. Hence he wasn‟t somebody who‟d bought the game and played it over all these years – no, as a matter of fact he decided to start playing this game when he was much older because of its great game mechanics and the very glamour of eSport fascination surrounding it. In general StarCraft players are seen as idols for gamers all over the globe. In particular the Korean StarCraft league indicates this immense recognition which can be attributed to the unique glamour of the game. WarCraft 3 is also a very good game; however it couldn‟t keep up with StarCraft which is one of the

reasons why the whole eSport community was divided into two groups – one playing WarCraft 3, the other one remaining loyal to StarCraft.

In this Issue: Member Nations‟ News The Trend in the World Today 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

States in Germany Cont. But then – finally – Blizzard announced StarCraft 2. Everyone has been waiting and looking for it all these long years – and of course the expectations were very high. Therefore it was crucial for the developer to meet these expectations in every way possible in order to create a worthy successor of their previous game. So, what did happen to StarCraft 2? Even before the game was launched people were aware of the care Blizzard brought in its Multiplayer part. In order to ensure the satisfaction of the core gamers a lot of early beta tests have been taken place and although it still wasn‟t released at this time there had been more tournaments, cups and matches in comparison to nearly every other game on the market. Needless to say that people liked and appreciated that. Shortly after StarCraft 2 was launched and it turned out to be a huge success. Everyone – regardless of their interest in the game – noticed the deep impact the game had on the whole eSport community. Surprisingly all players were satisfied with the game – so what was its secret? It may sound weird, but it’s quite easy to answer: A successful sequel should nearly be the same – just a bit better. Now you could ask whether StarCraft 2 changed gaming in general. In a way it did as it reunited a lot of players which had been divided between different games before. Apart from that there was no big difference to StarCraft 1 – they‟ve just provided some fine-tuning. But as you can see – it worked! Even if StarCraft 2 didn‟t reinvent the wheel relating to gameplay, it was the first time in history a company positioned itself with such effort and financial expenses within the market of eSport in order to influence and change it. Licensees, contracts, lawsuits, regulations – all of a sudden these things have to be considered by organizers. Should this be considered a bad thing? Difficult to say as so called “Game Changers” are normally seen in emerging markets and they are mandatory and necessary to the industry and its development. A consolidated view of the points mentioned above indicates that we still have to see whether we can handle these new steps in order to satisfy all participating parties. To maintain a product successful, you need a great product which StarCraft 2 is without any doubt, and you need an active environment. That means Communities, Player, Tournaments and Media. So let‟s hope, that this

environment will be and can be as active as it wants. Personally I’m already looking forward to the release of StarCraft 3 – and I really hope we won’t have to wait another 10 years for that to happen!

In this Issue: Member Nations‟ News

The Trend posted on „The Wall Street Journal‟ We found a noteworthy news article from „The Wall Street Journal”, which

The Trend in the World Today

informs the very new trend in videogame market. The article below is the posting 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

of the news article that we want to share with you all. We beg to inform you that the Article below is quoted out of Asia edition of „ The Wall Street Journal‟ on February 11th, 2011.

In this Issue:

The Trend posted on „The Wall Street Journal‟ Cont.

Member Nations‟ News The Trend in the World Today 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

8th International Abilympics Seoul

In this Issue: Member Nations‟ News The Trend in the World Today

by Alex Lim

“Unlimited Challenge to the world!” With this slogan, the global festival

8th International Abilympics Seoul

for the disabled will be held in Seoul, Korea in 2011, and approximately 1,500

People of the Month

people from 50 nations are participating in this event. This global event includes e-

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Sports as one of contests for Leisure & Living Skills. The information for this event is as follows:

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Content

Date

- 25th~30th of September 2011(for 6 consecutive days)

Venue

- aT Center & Olympic Park, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Contact

www.ia2011.org / ia2011@kead.or.kr

Categories

- Date: 27th~30th of September 2011 (2 days) - Task Assignment: FIFA On-line 2 Information on e-Sports

- Short description of task: On-line PC game competition . Contest : Individual Play . Preliminary: Knock-out

. Semi-finals & Finals: 3 rounds . Mode : Match mode

In this Issue: Member Nationsâ&#x20AC;&#x; News

8th International Abilympics Seoul Cont. The organizing committee for this event has requested IeSF for cooperation to support them supplying participants for e-Sports contest. If you are kindly

The Trend in the World Today

interested in supporting the Abilympic association in your country to recruit e-

8th

Sports participants, please contact the POC listed below for member nations of

International Abilympics Seoul

People of the Month

International Abilympic Federation(IAF).

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Oceania

Europe

America

Africa

Asia

Nation Australia Austria Czech Republic Slovakia Poland Croatia Ukraine Slovenia Hungary Finland France U.S.A Canada Ecuador Ghana Zimbabwe Rwanda Republic of Congo Kenya Korea Japan China Hong Kong Chinese Taipei Macau Pakistan Indonesia India Philippines Thailand Bangladesh Sri Lanka Lebanon Malaysia Singapore Iran United Arab Emirates

Tel E-Mail 61-8-924-88828 abily@iinet.net.au 43-1-33111-558 Dominique.Dressler@auva.at 420-466-797 081 projekty@abilympics.cz 421-2-5244-4710 ztpm@changenet.sk 48-42-2583555 boguslaw.grzelak@wp.pl 385-1-4829-394 office@croatiaskills.hr 38044-272-2286 bubnova_ludmila@list.ru 386-2870-4025 Fabio.feregotto@guest.arnes.si 36-1-250-9013 meosz@axelero.hu 358-98689-6820 maria.atzmon@skillsfinland.com 33(0)1-40-28-18-58 yvan.valentinuzzi@cofom.org 1-520-795-6502 barbarayorkis@vsaaz.org 902-497-9335 rudderjs@gov.ns.ca 593-9-600-8195 tecnha@lpemail.com 233-21680104 ghanablind@4u.com.gh 263-492826 danhiko@mango.zw 250-0252-575-412 onelove@rwanda1.com 242-556-3743 ansdaco_mercier@yahoo.fr 254-20-826157 bodop41@yahoo.co.uk 82-31-728-7307 ia2011@kepad.or.kr 81-3-5400-1620 chikako.kohyama@jeed.or.jp 86-10-6658-0035 zhangguozhong@cdpf.org.cn 852-2864-2931 cc.kuo@hkcss.org.hk 886-2-2556-1236 gao@clare.com.tw 853-28573297 caritas@macau.ctm.net 92-321-9040484 dpipk@yahoo.com 62-21-98766981 abilindo@yahoo.com 91-11-2237-5205 umatuli@amarjyotirehab.org 632-926-0910 council@ncda.gov.ph 662-668-3255 infogit@ncswt.or.th 880-2-8923915 bpkspm@agni.com 94-11-2611056 slcohp@sltnet.lk 961-5-210338 nrdc@destination.com.lb 603-7955-3510 myrehab@tm.net.my 65-6449-5652 patan@bizlink.org.sg 98-21-6656-9908 imanibj@gmail.com 97150-553-0078 yahya4@gmail.com

In this Issue: Member Nationsâ&#x20AC;&#x; News The Trend in the World Today 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month Notice

People of the Month By Sungchul Byun

- Name: Lee, Taek Soo - Recent CEO of Daily Game Co. Ltd - Recent chief editor of Daily Game (Online media) - 2007 Member of registration committee at KeSPA - 2005 Panel for selection of Online Game Global Test Bed - 2003 Panel for Game Professional Investment Union - 2001 Panel for Title selection at WCG 1. Please briefly tell us if you have a new goal or plan for 2011. Although it is not quite easy to manage an e-Sports oriented medium in Korea, in 2011, I am planning to extend it on external manner. Especially, through partnership with domestic and foreign sites, we intend to expand readership as globally wide range. 2. Please explain little bit about past and present of Korean e-sports. I think the e-Sports in Korea have been stably set as new leisure culture, and the government has been paying careful attention on it as well. Also, from the point that e-Sports is on process to be promoted as one of the true regular sports, we might be able to tell that Korean e-Sports have taken a big step forward. On the other hand, I still feel hungry for although leading organizations in e-sports field have put efforts somehow to make e-sports as systematic. 3. How do you anticipate the e-Sports market in and outside Korea? Not inconsiderable number of things predominant has vanished from public interests afterwards such as boxing. I used to worry about e-Sports market in the same manner. If one ends with onetime trend, all the trades of the business lose their sphere of action. Besides, for the recent controversial issue in Korean eSports market, I think that Korean e-Sports might have progressed globally with StarCraft2 as turning point if the StarCraft2 league had been operated with amicable agreement between Blizzard and Korean e-Sports Association. It is very natural phenomenon that popularity is concentrated on certain titles such as baseball in U.S. and soccer in Europe. Likewise, StarCraft is one of the most popular titles in Korean e-Sports. 4. Please explain the relationship between e-Sports and Media? I have faith that people working in e-Sports media are support troops which back up and give directions for e-Sports. Every successful sport takes a large number of media and sponsors to be supported. The e-Sports today crucially need to competitiveness to grasp all these. 5. If you have things to add for IeSF, please announce in conclusion. I wish that IeSF hold e-Sports Olympic with the authority such as IOC. Also, it will be really nice if IeSF can grow up to be a representative international organization acknowledged. In addition, in the short term, I would like IeSF to put continuous and practical effort to enhance global support model and to globalize Korean e-Sports at the same time.

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In this Issue: Member Nations‟ News The Trend in the World Today 8th International Abilympics Seoul People of the Month

1. Addition to recent discussion on Player Registration Management System. We really appreciate our members‟ enthusiasm to participate in IeSF business and to make it better and properly. There has recently been quite intensive discussion on PRMS among members. So, we would like to give some information to share our vision for PRMS, which may help you understand the scheme, and also notify you the future plan for the discussion.

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1) The core reason for IeSF collecting data of players is to efficiently operate both on and offline matches. Especially, the benefits are reduction of expense by having global online matches, and smooth operation by using database. 2) The privacy and legal range of player data has been discussed from the beginning of production, and it is set to fill the very basic info. Also, since it is set to facilitate the modification, the data collection must be made in the legal range.

3) Definitely, PRMS is “NOT” to central-manage players in each member nation. Even though IeSF initiates and leads developing it for now, it will be shared by all members to create and operate any national/international matches as common property once it becomes settled. As creating more contents by more efficient and more number of competition events, both media and sponsors would naturally be attracted, then IeSF and each member will surely be able to grasp autogenous power financially. 4) This issues will be continuously shared and discussed in details with all members as agenda at the IeSF Euro and Asia Conferences.

2. Facebook Page & Forum In order to support frequent and convenient communication for all members and others giving IeSF huge interest, we just opened fan page of IeSF on Facebook. It does not have contents yet since it is still at the first step, we would like you to visit it and casually share ideas about IeSF and e-Sports. Link: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/IeSF-International-e-SportsFederation/147972081925620 Also, we are planning to create a place for formal discussions among members on IeSF website. So, please be patient little bit.

[Contact] General Manager Noha Park noha@ie-sf.org

Deputy Manager Sungchul Byun byunsch@ie-sf.org

Editor Alex Lim limcw@ie-sf.org

webpage: www.ie-sf.org