Claire Bezuidenhout
It’s a blistering Sunday morning and the sun is sapping any chance of physical comfort as we drive into the MTN Sundome in Randburg.
We’re greeted by an array of about 300 kids dressed in the oversized clobber of this generation, consisting of hoodies, three-quarter pants, trainers and awkwardly positioned skater caps. As we approach the entrance into the TML Reed and Incredible Connection’s Computer Faire we realise that the kids are not merely spotty computer geeks with nothing better to do with their Sundays except talk html or compare their multi-media packages to the ones on show (and believe me you feel seriously sorry for the stand assistants with some of the questions they are forced to answer) but warlords of the universe and virtual heroes.
The Gamer’s League of South Africa (GLSA) is out in full force to promote computer gaming to the level of a sport. It arranges not only huge competitions annually that serving up some quality prizes worth over R100 000 to the teams and individuals willing to strain their eyes and index finger for hours, but also serving as almost a research facility to develop computer software that records and processes facts and figures from the generalised games in order to attain a more conclusive rapport with South African gamers’ abilities.
The computers supplied by Computer Warehouse sit patiently waiting for the sweaty fingers of their users while Alex, the main dude from GLSA, walks me round the Sundome. The huge projectors will display the current top player for everyone to take note of his or her (there is a distinct lack of female gamers) reflex reactions and when the doors open there is a rush to get good seats by friends and family.
Unfortunately gamers are not the most talkative people and any attempts to uncover the hidden mythical philosophies surrounding these strange untanned kinds were greeted with shakes of the head, with the favourite answer being to check out some or other website.
In total more than 500 competitiors have battled either the StarCraft or Quake III games over the weekend. The doors open and in flood the over-excitable crowds. The teams are particularly organised with their own logos and t-shirts and crowd support is phenomenal, with friends spilling into the surrounding creative stands.
One disappointing fact was the lack of local game developers’ stands, which could be due directly to the pricing of the stands. There is a lot of active and aggressive local content on the market and this would have been the perfect arena to test their wares.
The emphasis this year is on spectatorship and while the players are provided with microphones and headsets to communicate with their teammates in the heat of the moment the kids resort to screaming directions and insults at their opponents and allies.
Referees walk sedately around quietly monitoring the mayhem while computer chips, I mean chicks, sporting lycra boob-tubes and micro-minis hand out Spiked Silver energy drinks.
For a person who only plays the first 40 seconds of the old Half-Life or Alien vs Predator when on deadline I was suitably impressed at the speed and precision of the players but after two hours of watching cyber antics and incredible leaps and bounds of well-built virtual machoism I settled for the real thing and got into the car to beat the highways and byways of the city and fight with the landlady who could put Lara Croft in her place any day.
To check out the results of Worfaire 2000 visit www.glsa.co.za or www.worfaire.co.za