Member Nations’ News
In this Issue: Member Nations’ News
The 1st e-Sports Paralympics takes place in Korea
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
edited by Alex Lim
Trend in the World Today
Korea e-Sports Association for the Disabled, Investment in Game and Habitus
who
is
officially
approved
by
Korea
People of the month
Paralympics Committee, is preparing to host
Notice
“IeSMoD (International e-Sports Meets of the Disabled) 2011 World Championship. This event is to promote friendship among the disabled with e-sports as the vehicle, and to promulgate the positive functions of e-sports such as leisure for the disabled and vocational rehabilitation. Moreover, with the vitalization of e-sports for the disabled, it is expected to refine the social perception toward the disability. The 1st IeSMoD World Championship is will be held in Jeju Island from 20th to 24th of September for 5days. It is also expected that approximately 300 people from more than 30 nations are going to participate at this time. On this March, the official letters asking RSVP have been sent to 165 nations in the world, and 22 nations have responded with their intent of participation. Since there are some more nations sounding out the intent of participation, more than 40 nations are
expected to be attended. StarCraft2, WarCraft3, Counterstrike Online, FIFA Online, Cart Rider, as considering of popularity, have been selected as the official titles of this event. Besides the competition, the event consists of special events such as jazz festival and power walking competition, and prepares to launch International Federation of e-Sports for the Disabled as organizing related events such as international symposium of e-sports for the disabled and launching ceremony for preparatory committee of International Federation of e-Sports for the Disabled. The Secretary General of the Association said “Since the e-sports activities are considered as positive as any sports activity for the disabled, this event will be the fine place for the communication among the disabled in the world,” and added “it will be also the opportunity to promote Korea as the leading country of e-sports throughout the world.”
by Kim, Jin Wook jwkim@sportseoul.com
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In this Issue:
National Championship of console-games
Member Nations’ News
by Elisabeth Haider
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC Trend in the World Today Investment in Game and Habitus People of the month Notice
National Championship of console-games
2011
is
fixed.
The
Austrian
eSport
association ESVOE hosts the third round for the National Championship of consoles. All active players are cordially invited to join. They will compete in six exciting disciplines: Call of Duty, FIFA11, Formula One, Guitar Hero 6, PES 2011 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. From action to high score to sport – there is a wide range of genres, in which you can win the good-sounding title of "Austrian Console Champion 2011”. For the first time the competition will also include the PlayStation 3 and the Wii. By tradition the Grand Finals will take place at the “Game City”, Austria‟s biggest eSport event.
A Series of e-Sport Workshops for University by Elisabeth Haider
In cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and
Youth the ESVOE offers introductions for students in eSport- issues. Within the scope of the subject “Game Studies” the eSport specialist Gerhard Hauser from the ESVOE held four workshops for the students, which was intended to
supplement an introduction of national and international eSport. The program offered a theoretically grounded education in history and youth culture. This workshop also contained a practical part, in which the students could give games a try under professional help.
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In this Issue:
Ural Steel Championship Great Final
Member Nations’ News
by Constantine Surkont
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
May 6-9, 2011 in Moscow there will Trend in the World Today
take place The Grand Finals of Ural Steel Investment in Game and Habitus
Championship. Competitions a based on
People of the month
the
Notice
(www.worldoftanks.eu) and will gather
World
of
Tanks
videogame
participants from all over the world. The date of GF is timed to annual celebration
of the Victory in Great Patriotic War (World War II), whereas the tournament is dedicated to the 75-th anniversary of the UralVagonZavod factory, one of the biggest tanks manufacturer in the World. Which is the main sponsor of the event. Ural Steel Championship is the first large-scale international tournament held within World of Tanks and this is the first contest to unite players of Russian, European and North American servers. The participants of the tournament were divided into three divisions on each server: 6/60 is a division which participants are allowed to use vehicles that do not exceed tier 6 and the total number of tier points per team cannot exceed 60; the second division - 8/90 - combines members who can use vehicles that do not exceed tier 8 and the total number of tier points per team must not exceed 90; as
for the last division - 10/140 - there are no restrictions on vehicles there. The tournament has already detected the winners on both European and American servers in all three divisions. The Russian fighters are still struggling for the right to represent their server in Grand Finals. Nine teams (each is of 20 persons) from very different countries (flight and accommodation provided) will meet in Moscow to fight for prizes: 1st place powerful gaming HP laptops, 2nd place - 10-inch Archos tablets, 3rd place Asus net books. The World of Tanks videogame is one of the most played game
in the World. On the 24th of January this year it set up a World Guinness Record™ in the category of Most Players Online Simultaneously on One MMO Server. It was 93311 players (now sometimes it exceeds 120000 players simultaneously.
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In this Issue:
Wings of the Victory 2011 International tournament
Member Nations’ News
by Constantine Surkont Titles of IeSF 2011 WC Trend in the World Today Investment in Game and Habitus
For the second time Aviachamp.ru together with Russian e-sport Federation and 1C Company have been holding the international competition on IL-2 Sturmovik video game, Wings of the Victory.
People of the month Notice
IL-2 Sturmovik (Ил-2 Штурмовик) is a World War II combat flight simulator video game, focused on the air battles of the Eastern Front. It is named after the Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack fighter, which played a prominent role in this theatre and is the single most produced military aircraft design to date. Along with its sequels, IL-2 Sturmovik is considered one of the leading World War II flight simulators (Wikipedia.org). Last year the tournament brought together 734 players from 10 countries. After online qualifiers 32 virtual pilots came to Moscow final tournament. This year the plan is almost the same. Online play-off qualifier (May 7) selects 16
players qualify for the Final which is taking place in Moscow on 13-15 August (right before MAKS-2011 Airshow, www.aviasalon.com/en/). Registration has started at www.aviachamp.ru. The web is in Russian, so if anybody who is interested in participating needs help with it, email to Russian e-Sport Federation at resf@list.ru.
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In this Issue:
Titles of IeSF 2011World Championship
Member Nations’ News Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
by Alex Lim
The international e-Sports Federation (IeSF) hereby announces the official titles
Trend in the World Today
and the exhibition titles for IeSF 2011 World Championship. The process of
Investment in Game and Habitus
screening e-sports titles is based on the polling figures that 25 members of IeSF
People of the month
recommend. Grounded on the figures, IeSF arranges most well-received games in order and discusses with game publishers of the games. After consulting with
Notice
them about terms and condition, final decision for titles are made. In accordance with this process, most beloved game titles by worldwide fans, “StarCraft 2”, “A.V.A” and “FIFA Online 2 have tentatively been selected as three official titles of IeSF 2011 World Championship. The announcement of exhibition titles remains unrevealed yet. IeSF will disclose additional e-sports titles as soon as the necessary conditions with the related publishers finalized. Please stay tuned for additional announcement.
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In this Issue: Member Nations’ News
Trend in the World Today Games saving lives edited by Alex Lim
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
Puzzles, memory tasks and Brain ability enhancement games, there are, in fact, Trend in the World Today
good video games exist. University of Maryland conducts academic seminars
Investment in Game and Habitus
with the subject of „Games and Health‟, in which provides a forum between
People of the month
game developers and health care professionals. At the last seminar, the games
Notice
which provide health care and education program at the same time have been introduced. „Care Connection‟, an educational game for nursing, teaches the health care method at nursing home or hospitals. Also, the other surgical operation simulation game shows potential as a device providing more accurate
prediction on how life or death of patients is distinguished by the doctor‟s decision through the simulation when making decisions on surgical operations. These games are called as „Serious Games‟, which entertains and educates at the same time as their functions. „America‟s Army‟, the origin of serious games, in fact, was developed to recruit new soldiers. This game actually contains all of recruit training programs for all the branches of services. Once, there was a user saved a life because of this game. This guy completed training program of the medic branch and learned how to do the first aid and CPR (Cardiopulmonary
Resuscitation). Then, when his brother passed out with accident, he could save his brother‟s life. Lucas Art introduced a game for young cancer patients, which developed Medic Training at ‘America’s Army’
under sponsorship of „MAW Foundation‟. MAW (Make-A-Wish) Foundation listens and makes wishes of hard cases between 2 to 8 years old. Ben Dustin, 8 years old leukemia patient, had a somewhat special wish to develop a game and give it to other children struggling with disease. He wanted to let them know what is happening inside their body and how the medications effect. He went to
Lucas Art on every Tuesday and ideated for 2 hours with developers and finally accomplished the mission 6months later. MAW Foundation provided Ben‟s game for free in 2004, and it became nice huge gift for young cancer patients. A user commented on Ben‟s game as „cool game in which fights with cancer cells and wins in one‟s body‟, and added that it refreshed his feeling a lot better even though anticancer treatment is too hard. It recorded 200,000 times downloads from MAW Foundation‟s web site, and even supports in 9 languages. Quote: http://sbscnbc.sbs.co.kr/read.jsp?pmArticleId=10000127583
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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
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
informs the very new game products to help you keep you health. The article
Trend in the World Today
below is the posting of the news article that we want to share with you all. We
Investment in Game and Habitus
beg to inform you that the Article below is quoted out of Asia edition of „ The Wall Street Journal‟ on March 30th, 2011.
People of the month Notice
Games to flex your brain
By Katherine Boehret
For anyone fearing mental decline as they age, two new products offer to help keep minds nimble. This week, I've been testing Dakim BrainFitness (dakim.com)and Lumosity by Lumos Labs Inc. (lumosity.com). Dakim BrainFitness costs $250 and installs on Windows PCs and Macs from a DVD; a free trial can be downloaded onto Windows PCs at dakim.com/freetrial. Since I'm not in the age-60-and-over category targeted by Dakim BrainFitness, I asked a friend in his early 60s to also try the home software program. Lumosity is a Web-based series of brain exercises that is geared toward a wider audience and compares your progress with other users. Its tiered billing plans include a $15-a-month option and a $300 lifetime membership. My friend and I found Dakim BrainFitness's clearly explained approach inviting and entertaining. BrainFitness comes with enough 20-minute sessions to last for over 300 hours and includes puzzles, memory challenges, trivia, music, computation and images. The sessions are geared toward exercising six cognitive areas: short- and long-term memory; language; computation; visuospatial orientation; and critical thinking. Dakim touts on its home page that it is advised by scientists, including the director of the UCLA Center on Aging. It also cites a UCLA study funded by Dakim showing that people who used BrainFitness experienced significant improvements in memory retention and delayed recall. The narrator of each session uses hokey phrases like "mighty fine," and sessions reference actors and celebrities who have long since died. My friend said it reminded him of an episode of "The Lawrence Welk Show" and that it would drive most baby boomers nuts. Dan Michel, CEO of Dakim and a boomer himself, said BrainFitness was originally designed for his father—who was in his 80s at the time and struggling with Alzheimer's—which explains the older-generation pop culture references. Mr. Michel says Dakim is expanding the time frame for these references and aims to include a cross section of material from several generations. The software receives new content in every session, while a user plays, and is installed when the program is closed.
Cont. on next page. 7
In this Issue: Member Nations’ News
Games to Flex Your Brain (Cont.) BrainFitness took both of us between 30 and 40 minutes—an eternity in the tech world—to install from a DVD onto two Windows desktop PCs. Attempts to install it
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
on a relatively new MacBook and a Lenovo laptop also failed. A company spokesman
Trend in the World Today
said I may have had a faulty Mac DVD. He couldn't explain what went wrong with
Investment in Game and Habitus
the Windows laptop installation.
People of the month Notice
BrainFitness's five levels include one for those who have no cognitive decline; two levels for age-related decline; and two levels for mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment or dementia. The program starts every user at level 2, and then adjusts to your performance as you play. These adjustments—including fewer instructional videos per session and noticeably harder activities—were enough for me to notice. One example was a puzzle with missing pieces. In my first session, it showed me a finished photo of the puzzle, but in my third session, it didn't display the photo before telling me to select the missing piece. Lumosity aims to improve users' memory, attention and speed by enhancing cognitive skills. Three basic-training sessions are free to try. The company's site also notes its scientific advisory board on its site. I liked two things about Lumosity that I didn't find in BrainFitness. First, it sent me questions according to things I told it during a set-up process, like if I was using it to improve test-taking skills. This differs from BrainFitness, which sets users into a level and adjusts their session content in the background. Second, each exercise includes a sidebar of details about what skill is being exercised in a session, what that skill is used for and an example of those skills at work. In a session called Birdwatching, I learned I was exercising my visual field, that this skill could be used in peripheral vision, sports and driving safely. An example of this was a person who wants to get home quickly in busy traffic. The game involved watching for letters and birds to flash on the screen at the same time. I got points for remembering where the bird appeared; remembering the letters helped me eventually spell out the name of a bird. Still, BrainFitness felt more comfortable and personalized than Lumosity, especially thanks to its narrated sessions. These made me feel like someone else was guiding me through each session and this narration could be a motivator of sorts.
Though Dakim BrainFitness is expensive and can be a challenge to install, the software is simple to use for people who don't spend all day on the computer. If I set up BrainFitness for my grandparents, who are in their 80s, I know they would be at ease with its easy-to-navigate menus and style. Quote: Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com
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In this Issue:
Investment in Game and Habitus
Member Nations’ News
edited by Alex Lim Titles of IeSF 2011 WC Trend in the World Today
Virginia Heffernan, a digital pop culture expertise, through the contribution to New York Times on April 9th which subjected daily life of 20 years old female
Investment in Game and Habitus
college student, Miss Gabriela, severely criticized the prejudice of our society People of the month Notice
looking at internet usage. Gabriela googles till 4 in the morning, and posts on Facebook and Twitter. She reads cartoons from Web Comics and enjoys Neo Pet game, then falls asleep with her lab top in her arms. Heffernan claims that there is no need for Gabriela to keep the internet away
although she might neglect chores or have somewhat sleepless night, and also contends the approach is irrational and unscientific that people stereotype people like opera or poem as „passionate‟, but enjoy games instead of chess, Frisbee or George Orwell‟s novel as „need to check for addiction‟. As the examples from the past which admitted the indulgence in movie or novel used to be taboo, it means the phenomena which people indulge in internet surfing should not be treated as serious social event. Donald Marinelli, the founder of ETC (Entertainment Technology Center) at Carnegie Mellon University, famous for making business achievement by combining science technology and cultural art, has recently been interviewed by a newspaper. He said on the interview, “All the world‟s a stage and all the people are players. By the way, our existence is rather likely a video game than a play.” He also commented on the question asking possibility of digital web technology to cause virtual reality addiction, vicious rumor or invasion of privacy, “ Regardless
of
new technologies,
addiction or slandering people is rather vice that human beings have had in their nature. Why don‟t we scold children addicted to reading while we scold one addicted to games? It does not make any sense that we judge high technology as Pandora‟s Box which
produces evils.
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In this Issue:
Investment in Game and Habitus (cont.)
Member Nations’ News
Recently, Korean society is into the fierce argument with regulation on over-
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC
absorption into games. It is natural phenomenon occurred as the online and
Trend in the World Today
mobile games have grown to become representative mass recreation content with
Investment in Game and Habitus
more than 20 millions of users. Especially, as the legislation for regulation on game usage of the youth has passed the judiciary committee, the dispute has
People of the month Notice
become even more controversial. The core of the legislation is article specifying to prohibit the youth under 16 playing online games from midnight to 6 am. Although it is inevitable compulsory action, it is worried there must be side effects, underground action and expedient. In 2009, approximately 980 thousands of car accidents had occurred, and 5,838 people died and 1,498,344 people injured. It means 1person had injured per 1.5 minutes and 1person had died per 1.5 hours. However, there is no such regulation to ban traffic from 18:00 to 20:00 on Friday evening when the rate of car accident
is the highest. We just conduct campaigns and continuous education for traffic safety, and just impose ex post sanction. The Heffernan‟s contribution and Marinelli‟s interview are full of suggestions. What is difference between the vehicle, the necessity made by analog period, and the game, the necessity made by digital period? The metaphor in between them is just same. We need to face the attribute and the fate of digital society which has already penetrated somewhat far, and admit it. We need to invest, in haste, for our youths
to have healthy digital consumption, even if it takes time and lots of effort or it is not visible for the moment. The compulsion by law might take affordable price and immediate effect. You get what you pay for. It is necessary to teach healthy game consumption since childhood, and to enlighten people that game is a companion for life. It is moment for us to look back whether we neglected systematic preparation for establishment of desirable Habitus in the needs with advent of „Digital Contents Period‟ Quote: Kim, Jong Min, Chairman of the Board at Game Culture Foundation kimjongmin@gameculture.or.kr .
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In this Issue:
People of the month
Member Nations’ News
edited by Alex Lim
Silviu Stroie
is President of Professional Gamers League in Romania. IeSF interviewed him to introduce him and what he has been doing in e-sports field.
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC Trend in the World Today Investment in Game and Habitus People of the month Notice
1. How long have you been working in e-sports field and what motivation brought you into this field? I became part of the e-sports field since 2001, when my journey with PGL began. I used to play games since 1991 and the first “e-sports” events that I‟ve participated in were for Mortal Kombat and Quake1, in 19941996. After 2000, when Counter-Strike became a huge hit everywhere and international e-sports competitions came up, I‟ve decided its something that we need something similar in Romania. I am very proud of my work all these 10 years, I am proud that Romania is a country where everybody knows what online-gaming, e-sports and Counter-Strike is. 2. Please tell us about history and current status of e-sports in Romania. PGL was formed in late 2001, and we got the formal government approval in February 2002. All the people that at that time were involved in the newly formed e-sports and all the major gaming websites, magazines, cybercafés came together and we all formed the Professional Gamers League. I was elected president and I am running it since then. We‟ve started to build up the national championships for Counter-Strike, FIFA and StarCraft, championships that still exists and happening 2-3 times/year. Afterwards we‟ve started to organize national qualifiers for most of the international events : World Cyber Games (we are the veteran partner of WCG in the world, we will do it this year for the 10th time in a row), Electronic Sports World Cup (we did qualifiers in 2003,2005,2007,2010), KODE5 (2007, 2008, 2009), SEC/ECG (2005-2008, 2010), World Gaming Tournament with ASUS (2006-2009). From 2011, we will also start to organize DreamHack qualifiers. PGL became full member of IeSF in 2009, and since then, we are competing in the IeSF tournaments, with very good results in nations ranking: 3rd place in 2009, 2nd place in 2010.
3. Please introduce us Professional Gamers League and major projects of it. PGL is the only Romanian organization that is doing day-to-day e-sports operation, one of the most active organization on European level. PGL members spend around 40 weeks/year playing in our competition. I think we are one of the only organizations in the world that provides access to almost all international events out there: IeSF, WCG, SEC, ESWC, KODE5, DreamHack. We are now investing a lot of money in our future online platform for online competitions, we plan to launch it later this year. Once its operational we will have an state-of-theart platform where any kind of game can be played in any kind of tournament method. Also we are in process of getting e-sports officially recognized as an sport in Romania, we hope we can made it by the year end. We are working closely with Sport Agency in order to have it recognized.
Cont. on next page. 11
In this Issue: Member Nations’ News Titles of IeSF 2011 WC Trend in the World Today Investment in Game and Habitus People of the month Notice
People of the Month (Cont.) 4. If there is any difficulties or obstacles to operate national league and manage a national federation? I am a true believer in e-sports and this is one of the main things that kept me going for past 10 years. Without proper enthusiasm and proper ways to get funding, its almost impossible to survive in today‟s e-sport. There are a lot of obstacles out there, because there are too many competitions, too many companies that are trying to do e-sports events and there is no coordination, standardization, which are basic needs for corporations that want to put their names along ESport events. Its very hard to get proper funding in order to have an ongoing ESport operation. I hope in the near future the entire e-sports scene wont be so fragmented and true international events will make big influence all over the world. 5. What do you think is crucial and necessary to make a national federation better? There are three crucial things that any national federation needs in order to improve their activities: 1. Government support – funding, access to governmental facilities, easy access to press/media 2. Dedicated board members – people that are running each federation have to be either proven gamers or individuals with skills that gaming/e-sports require. 3. Media – since most of the players now are from YouTube / Facebook generation, all federations must build strong ties with media, and should start broadcasting on TV/online their events 6. What do you think should necessarily be taken to raise and develop global e-sports? Right now there are way too many competitions for e-sports, most of them have trouble paying the prizes, a lot of them run into operational problems. I think it‟s the right time that a very strong international organization must step in and organize everything on global level – same titles everywhere, same rules everywhere, international referees, continuous communication with members, audience, media, governments. 7. If there is any recommendation or supplement point that you want to comment on IeSF for being the global leader of e-sports, please tell us. I hope there will be more members of IeSF that will play an active role both in their countries and also in IeSF. The foundation of a very large, stable and growing international organization was laid when IeSF was born. Now, when most of the international / local events are suffering and are making a lousy job, its time for IeSF to step forward and present to the world in the proper way their goals. Now its time that all IeSF members should start work together on implementing the standardization of proposed rules, ranking, etc.
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In this Issue:
Notice
Member Nations’ News
1. 2011 Event Schedule of Member Nations
Titles of IeSF 2011 WC Trend in the World Today Investment in Game and Habitus People of the month
As noticed since March, IeSF is still collecting the 2011 business schedule of our members. With all these schedule, IeSF attempts to overlook what is going on
with member nations. Then, we will look for something to tie up your events with IeSF business plan to make better performances and effective synergy. It would be really appreciated if you could send them by 27th of May.
Notice
2. Auto mailing service is ready to open. IeSF has just established the auto mailing service for all of our members. When a new article is posted on member nation news section or forum board at IeSF web site, the notification mail will be sent to all members. If you get notification mail, please visit IeSF web site and check out what is new. 3. IeSF 2011 Euro Conference We inform all of you that the schedule of IeSF 2011 Euro Conference is postponed to August due to the issues which we need to negotiate with the host city, Copenhagen. We will disclose additional information and detailed schedule as soon as it fixed. Please stay tuned for additional announcement. 4. A.V.A Online Test A-Match (Germany & Romania)
On May 6 Friday at 18:00 CET, there was online test A-match conducted successfully with A.V.A, which is one of official titles this year, between team Germany and team Romania. There was no noticeable server problems or lags, and everything else was fine. Pings of all players were between 1 to 46 as maximum. This test match result is very inspiring that we are so much ready for the base to build the IeSF Global Online League and Online A-matches as we have dreamed .
[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
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