WCG 2004: Day 1 begins
by Kit

Thursday, October 7 2004

Over 60 countries represented in today's games.

Players from more than 60 countries gathered in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium today for Round One of the 2004 World Cyber Games Grand Final.

Today’s matches decided which players advance to the single elimination tournaments that will crown the champions of Grand Final 2004.

Defending CounterStrike Champions from Sweden, SKGaming, advanced to the next stage of play, as did Halo players David Walsh of the USA and Raoul Jaeremie from France.

Warcraft players Chanin Tingruttanasuwan of Thailand and JaeHo Jang of Korea both qualified for the next round. In Starcraft, Jihoon Seo prevailed over Zygmunt Tarantowicz of Poland and will continue on to the next round of competition.

Full results for all matches, as well as highlights, pictures and instant replay files of key games are available online at http://www.worldcybergames.com.

“Today featured a combination of competitive spirit, public entertainment and industry discourse that we envisioned when bringing the Grand Final to San Francisco,” commented World Cyber Games CEO Hank Jeong.

Outside of tournament play, the World Cyber Games Exhibition and Game Conference showcased some of the top names and games in the industry.

At the conference, David Jones, creator of video game hits Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings, spoke about the challenges of enabling multiplatform gaming. Mark Terrano of Microsoft and Steve Gray of Electronic Arts discussed the future of games and offered a sneak peak at EA’s The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, scheduled to be released this fall.

Visitors to the Exhibition tried their hand at the tournament games on Shuttle’s small form factor PC and participated in nVidia’s LAN party, going head-to-head in Star Wars: Battlefront by LucasArts and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. And aspiring game wizards got the chance to take on game legend Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel in ABIT Computer Corporation’s Fatal1ty Shootout.

The BYOC party continued and in the Civic Plaza the public enjoyed BMX & Skateboard Demos, Trapeze and Interactive Games and a cultural performance from Dance-a-Vision and the Shabaz Band & Aspara Fire Dancers.

For more information, go to: http://www.worldcybergames.com.

--- Kit