GGL Wire

The World Cyber Games is the greatest and most respected videogames event in the world. But under all of its gloss hides a decaying structure with problems that have not been fixed for years.

This is not about the digraceful behavior of the players at the finals in Seattle last week. The disputes, throwing games to fix the playoffs and most of the controversy during the event are just the surface of an underlying problem – the very poor rules and regulations structure and the bad execution of the competitions.

The complete lack of seeding and a very bad schedule are to blame for players throwing games in group play to get a better playoff bracket. Bad tournament regulations turned the Counter-Strike competition into a circus, where teams did their very best to win matches by disputing rather than planting bombs.

Players cannot be blamed for trying to exploit the loopholes. They always have and they always will. The only culpable party here is the WCG staff, with their lack of knowledge and their inability to predict or notice more than obvious exploits and prevent them from being taken advantage of. And the terrible referees for Counter-Strike.

The very same shortcomings of the staff produced random results in the finals event. Those were a completely avoidable rotten cherry on top of this cake of problems.

PROBLEM 1 – LACK OF SEEDING
Why does the WCG choose not to use seeding in their finals event is inexplicable. The very best players should meet each other at as late a stage as possible in order for the event to be interesting and have accurate results.

It is not about protecting the favorites and making sure they go through. It is about protecting the unknown players. Is it really fair when the toughest opponent in Warcraft 3 for PC-MA from Martinique is XlorD, while NA-JA from Jamaica has to face five professional gamers (Ciara, Zeus, Lyn, SoJu and Sky) in his group?

Seeding players is about giving everyone an equal chance. As simple a solution as creating a ranking of countries from the past two or three WCG’s based on their results in a given game would fix it. The seeding will never be spot on, but it can spread out the skill level in groups much more evenly and produce a tournament that actually culminates in its very final stages.

PROBLEM 2 – RANDOMNESS
Just like everyone that follows tennis knows that a single set is not a long enough distance to show who the better player is, everyone in gaming knows that one map is hardly enough too. In fact, it is even more random in gaming – maps have a very strong influence on the results, especially in games like Warcraft 3 where the race also comes into play.

What does the WCG do about it? The WCG decides that the best way to determine who should go through to the next round of games is to have the teams and players play each other once, on a map determined by the WCG (which may be one player’s favorite and another’s worst map). As a result, the more skilled player will not always go through, with random factors to blame for his loss.

With four days for tournament play and ample tournament machines, I think the players deserve better than that.

PROBLEM 3 – DODGING OPPONENTS
Another major disappointment at the event in Seattle was the fact that many players, including the WCG champion in StarCraft (his confession at the press conference was not translated into English by the Koreans, by the way), threw games in order to put themselves where they wanted in the playoff bracket. All because the person that made the schedule was not competent enough for the task.

The key for the elimination bracket was simple – the winner of Group A faced the runner up of Group E, the winner of Group E faced the runner up of Group A, and so on. The simplest thing to do to avoid match fixing would have been to have matches from Group A and Group E played at the same time.

What happened at the WCG? Groups A, B, C, and D played their matches fair and square while the other half of the tournament was able manipulate the brackets in whichever way they pleased on day two. What this led to everyone is more than aware of.

PROBLEM 4 – STUPID RULES, BAD ADMINS
The 2007 WCG CS 1.6 tournament will not be remembered as the tournament of the underdogs - sadly. It will be remembered as the dispute tournament. When facing defeat, teams found themselves claiming rule infringement by their opponents in hope of finding something that could have the match replayed.

Appeals, interventions of people with VIP badges, overruled game results and more ugly drama overshadowed the competition completely. eSTRO lost 16-9 to Meet Your Makers, yet after a couple of hours of searching an excuse to give them a win was found. I will not even ask how it is possible that a minor infringement of the rules is worth eight rounds (50% of what you need to win a game).

Instead, the MAJOR question is: what were the referees there for?

Shouldn’t they have been watching the games for illegal maneuvers in the first place? Isn’t that what referees are for? And if they were there and saw the matches, failing to see players breaking rules, then how can players be allowed to argue?

The refereeing in Seattle was terrible. The fact that the head referee told the press he would not comment on the eSTRO – MYM issue, where he allegedly changed his “final decision” after the intervention of Korean VIP’s, only adds to the overall feeling that something may have been less than fair.

I hope this man does not get to run a WCG finals again, because he left more than one team feeling they were treated unfairly and allowed his competition to be turned into a mockery.

It is surprising that the World Cyber Games event cannot identify and eliminate problems that have existed for a long time. More so because the above are all issues that can be fixed without spending a single dollar.

Let us hope the next events will be fixed. How difficult can it be?