Bonus Criteria

Now here's something you don't see in the papers everyday:


____________________________________________________________________

GAMERS CRY FOUL OVER CHOICE OF CYBERGAMING TEAM
Winners at qualifiers, not picked for the team, losing out on US$30,000 a year and chance to turn pro

The Straits Times, Tuesday September 11 2007, by Oo Gin Lee


It was meant to be a dream chance for cybergamers here: the opportunity to turn professional and be paid US$30,000 (S$45,700) a year to play in an international league - plus any prize money they win.

But the local qualifying round of the Championship Gaming Series ended on a sour note on Sunday with top local gamers crying foul over the final selection for the Singapore team.

The five-man Titans team, who won the overall Counter-strike game competition; Mr Marcus Choy, 22, who won his Fifa 2007 game category and Mis Goh Sze Lin, 27, who emerged victorious in the the Dead or Alive 4 game were all passed over.

In fact, in was the runners-up - and in the case of Fifa 2007, a semi-finalist who were selected instead.

Mr Choy said: "I worked my guts out and played my best virtual football. It's hard for me to take this - it feels like my win amounted to nothing at all."

It was a particularly bitter pill for the Titans. Despite beating the relatively unknown team XTC, including by margins of 10-4 and 10-5, it was the losers who were eventually chosen for the CGS team. The Titans are currently the national champions.

Disappointment aside, the detail that has got the local gaming community talking is that the XTC team has been officially sponsored by the Singapore Gamers' Association (SGA) since July.

Mr Chris Soh, the founder and president of this association, is also the newly appointed manager of the Singapore CGS team.

This means that he was the one making the final choice on who would make it to the Singapore team over the weekend.

The Straits Times understands that that Mr Soh has pumped some $30,000 of his own money into the association.

Also, under the terms of the SGS sponsorship, the gamer or gaming team must pay to SGA "50 per cent of all prize money as received from all approved events and tournaments".

Said one gamer: "We just don't know if the person who chooses the final team should also be so involved with one of the contenders. "

Some gamers also alleged that they felt pressurised to join Mr Soh's association.

Mr Prasad Paramajothi, 22, captain of the Titans, said: "We and other gamers felt that there were hints that we had to join - otherwise we would not get drafted into the dream team to compete in the world league."

Mr Soh yesterday dismissed the talk of a conflict of interest.

While he did try to get players to join the association, he said there was simply no link between joining up and getting chosen for the major league.

He told the Straits Times: "The best players are not necessarily chosen for CGS. We look for a combination of skills, sportsmanship and how well the players can carry themselves on TV."

Three winners in the qualifying round, however, did make it into the CGS team. They are Wilson Chia, 25, (Dead Or Alive 4, men's slot); and Aaron Aw, 27, and Jonathan Lee, 26, (the winner and runner-up for Project Gotham Racing 3, for which two slots were available.

The Singapore team will now take part in the Pan-Asian CGS competition in Kuala Lumpur next month.

Only the top four teams will get drafted and win the US$300,000 contract - which will mean an annual US$30,000 for each team member.

As for Mr Soh, as manager of the Singapore team, he stands to gain a US$50,000 contract if the team qualifies. He also plans to devote more time to the SGA and CGS.

He is currently serving out his notice period as a manger with the Infocomm Development Authority.
____________________________________________________________________



Much has been made about the 50% donation that gamers signed up with the SGA have been told to make, if they want to compete in the global arena. There have been several who have charged that this is going into the pocket of Mr Soh, and there have been others who have spoken up to defend him against that. Since I can't tell at this point whether Mr Soh is a genuine Care Bear or another Durai in the making, this aspect does seem rather irrelevant to me. Something does bear asking though: if Mr Soh was indeed such an altruistic man who didn't take a cent from the 50% donated, why didn't he personally mention this during the ST interview?

As for XTC being an SGA-sponsored team, this effectively makes SGA a competitor in the same competition that it is judging. In the face of such glaring conflict of interest, how can Mr Soh hope to deny its non-existence? If anything, this story serves as a great negative example to those out there with Machiavellian tendencies. Ultimately, all this positioning will be pointless, if the chosen team, which is twice as likely to lose as the more deserving one, doesn't bring a trophy home.

What I find most amusing is his statement to the press that criteria other than gaming skill were being used to decide who would ultimately represent the country in upcoming tournaments. Sportsmanship and TV presence were cited. The only reason why local gamers are making such a ruckus about this now is that this was not told to them beforehand. If this had been known all along, the disillusionment would have been significantly lower, if it was there at all.

In the end, professional sports of any kind is about playing skill. The most egregious of unsportsmanlike behaviour, like cheating or player violence, typically has rules and penalties put in place to discourage it. Lesser offences, like arrogance or rudeness, having no rules and penalties of their own, can reasonably be assumed to be things that can be put up with. It is only fair to conclude, that what Mr Soh is really concerned about is the latter, and not the former.

In the first place, why else would a local tournment be described as a qualifier? Considering that the Titans beat XTC by such a large margin, they're either very good at cheating, or they're genuinely twice as good as XTC. If the winning team isn't chosen to be taken up by the SGA, it makes the point of being a full-time gamer rather pointless. The transition of anything from pastime to professional sport is the same. It involves devotion, and the thorough running through of drill after drill, as they think through and rehearse the execution of strategies designed to achieve various defined objectives in the most efficient way possible. In the end, it's no longer just about doing something for fun, but also largely matter of answering the question: how good are you? If TV presence and sportsmanship had indeed been announced beforehand as criteria upon which players would be judged, you can be sure the competing teams would have invented drills for them as well. Mr Soh's sacrificing of all this hard work to for secondary things like sportsmanship and how players carry themselves on TV puts the cart squarely before the horse.