Korea wins at 2011 World Cyber Games

Korean competitors took home four gold medals, two silver medals, and one bronze medal at this year's World Cyber Games (WCG), the world's largest electronic sports tournament. Eight years after Korea hosted the event in 2003, the 11th WCG returned to Korea from December 8 to 11 in BEXCO, Busan. A total of 600 gamers from 60 countries including China, Russia, and Germany participated in the 1,300 competitions during the event.

Korea was awarded a trophy for its wins, dominating such games as StarCraft II and World of Warcraft III at this year's event, recording fourth consecutive victory years. Poland and China tied for second with one gold medal, two silvers, and three bronze medals each.

The WCG were established in 2001 with support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to lead digital entertainment culture through electronic sports, and has been considered the e-sports Olympics. The very first WCG tournament was held in Seoul with official games including FIFA 2001, Age of Empires II, Quake III, and Counter-Strike.

At this year's event some 40,000 spectators came to the e-sports tournaments and players competed against each other for a prize pool of USD 500,000. Visitors and players reacted positively to the addition of some new official games including CrossFire and Special Force.

During the event, some special competitions including the Amateur e-Sports Competition and Special Force 2 Proleague were also held along with signing events by famous game players.

However, the lack of variety of game genres was pointed out since most of the events were for online games, with only one event for mobile games and video games each.

Kunshan, China will host the tournament for the next two years.

For more information including the results from the grand finals, please visit the official website of the WCG at http://www.wcg.com.

By Jessica Seoyoung Choi
Korea.net Staff Writer