Grenades were flying and students were dying at the inaugural cyber-athletics tournament held during Intervarsity.
Grenades were flying and students were dying at the inaugural cyber-athletics tournament held during Intervarsity.
“I have been hit!” “Man down!” and “I owned you!” shouted fighting opponents. Sweaty fingers hit sticky keyboards as the contest took place in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University computer labs.
Rhodes University won the tournament, beating NMMU 5 – 2. NMMU outnumbered the Rhodes team’s nine players by 15. Like a game of cricket, proceedings ran from 10am till 6pm.
Before the tournament began, players cracked their knuckles with warm-up games to get their eye steady.
Three games were played; Counter-Strike 1.6, StarCraft and Defence of the Ancients (DoTA), with teams having experts specialising in each.
Counter-Strike is a tactical firstperson shooter game, where teams choose to be counter-terrorists or terrorists. Each round is won by eliminating the opposing force. StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time army strategy game.
Set in the 26th century, the game revolves around three species fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way.
Dota, (Defense of the Ancients) is another realtime strategy game where players create heroes and use gold to buy equipment.
Garrett Eriksen, who goes by the alias of Flangenimblick, organised the tournament on behalf of Rhodes Games Society (GameSoc).
He said that the rules were strictly outlined at the beginning of the day and designated marshals oversaw the tournament to watch out for any cheating and quell bad sportsmanship.
Cheating is defined as using software or hacking the game programme codes to gain an advantage. “You’ve been beaten by a girl,” jeered Eriksen, at some of his comrades.
Two women took part in the tournament, Pamela Kunene, head of the Computer Users Society at NMMU and Pascalene Houseman from Rhodes who goes by the gaming name of xxArtemisxx.
“She was a last minute addition to the team who quickly proved herself one of the top players in the tournament, easily outpacing many of her male counterparts,” said an impressed Eriksen.
Due to the last minute decision to run the event, Fort Hare and Walter Sisulu could not assemble a team in time but hope to participate next year.
They don’t have computer societies at this stage but the event has spurred them on to create a gaming society based on the Rhodes GameSoc model.
“The winning team received bragging rights, customised posters and a copy of Frontline: Fuels of War for each member, donated by GameSoc,” said Eriksen.
“Overall, it was a great success and we’re all very happy with the way it turned out. Everyone had a great time and spirits were high right up until the end of the day! Games Society is very proud to have been a part of the first annual Inter-Varsity.”
