Scattered boos for China during World Cyber Games opening ceremony |
Loading ...Spent most yesterday at the opening day of the World Cyber Games being held at the Qwest event center in Seattle where 700 best gamers from all over the world gather to compete for the crown in 12 different games: eight for the PC, four for the Xbox 360.
We arrived just after 11am and didn’t leave until almost 8pm. In the back of the first floor area, Guitar Hero III was being demoed. There were a dozen or so booths setup in typical convention style offering advance play of games either newly released or in beta. 
Valve was handing out serial codes for Day of Defeat: Source, a team-based online war game set in Europe during WWII.
On the main stage we caught a couple Warcraft III matches, complete with live play-by-play commentary, fireworks and dry ice. A first class presentation watching the world’s best gamers with three huge monitors, a camera on a boom crane and more. The last time the World Cyber Games was held in the U.S. was 2004. Last year it was held in Italy.
Low point
The low point of the WCG for me was during the open ceremony when all the countries were being announced including their flags of origin and scattered boos were issued for China. USA got the loudest applause with Germany and Russia not far behind. It was neat seeing the flags of 74 different countries and I wish fans and gamers wouldn’t have booed China. Despite the political climate in China and even though we enjoy free speech here, and others may feel to disagree in the comments, it was an inappropriate venue to boo. The World Cyber Games is supposed to be about fair play and showing respect to fellow players, not a forum for airing out political dissatisfaction.
I didn’t hear boos for any other country announced except China. Looking at the picture atop this post you can get some idea where we sat during the opening ceremony.
High point
The WCG will be continuing today through Sunday. There are daily drawings for those who visit and obtain at least six stamps from the various vendor booths. At the Samsung booth you need to get your picture taken with a tightly dressed female model to earn a stamp. At other vendors, all you have to do is ask for the stamp. The usual assortment of t-shirt and bag swag is there in full force.
After the opening ceremony prizes were drawn from the box of stamped cards filled out. The prizes included a few Samsung phones, Halo 3 Xbox 360, several Novint Falcons (3D game controller), and the top prize for the night: a Samsung NV20 digital camera. Guess who’s name got drawn for the camera?
Woohoo! Been so busy this morning that I haven’t had time to unbox this badboy and take it for a test drive. My days of being able to say “I’m not that lucky” are going away after this and winning Visual Studio 2003 .NET Professional at a local developer meeting.
Any readers attending the World Cyber Games this weekend? Know anybody in the competition?
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The China boo’ers were a bunch of tards probably. I mean seriously. Just goes to show American arrogance and justifies what others have been saying about Americans… (just read or watch some of the backchannel things about American behavior due to American foreign policy). The cowboy antics move forward! What a bunch of morons. Makes the rest of us look bad.
Comment by darkmoon — October 5, 2007 @ 12:55 pm PST
Hey now, I didn’t say it was only or even primarily Americans booing. I’m sure some were Americans, but to assume it was all or even mostly Americans booing in a crowd of players representing 74 different countries could be wrong — and is part of the problem. The assumption from the crowd had to be that it was mostly Americans, even if it wasn’t
I do know that most the people in the audience seemed to be the gamers, vendors and sponsors. There was not a significant amount of non-gamer attendees (presumably all/most Americans).
Just found these idiots booing were being very disrespectful, whatever nationality they were made up from.
Comment by TDavid — October 5, 2007 @ 1:41 pm PST
Yeah.. I know you didn’t say it was Americans booing… but I’ll go the other way and say that it was probably all or mainly Americans booing. Having watched a lot of British and Asian news via satellite, you’d see a lot of… hate towards Americans.
Hell… costume I saw last night… It said “Tacky Tourists” as the English version, but right under it, it read in French: American Tourists. Go figure that.
Comment by darkmoon — October 5, 2007 @ 2:15 pm PST
Studying Chinese I found this article to be rather interesting. But I’m a little puzzled, beyond the friction between the two countries(polliticaly..or whatever) would the booing have any relationship to Chinese gaming or anything like that?
Comment by Daniel Primed — October 7, 2007 @ 6:58 am PST
It’s probably politics. It’s not just Americans that don’t understand China though. I explained to Tdavid couple days ago, the difference between China, and Chinese Taipei (why they didn’t use Taiwan, I don’t know) in the Cyber World Games. Most people don’t understand the whole Taiwan independence thing completely. They think that it’s no more than the mainland oppressing a small island-state, but they don’t understand the KMT and other factors.
Problem is mainly because of politics. I would imagine the booing is resulting from politics also instead of the actual gaming. Oh well.
Comment by darkmoon — October 7, 2007 @ 7:30 am PST
For answering your question “(why they didn’t use Taiwan instead of Chinese Taipei)”: the mainland Chinese tells that if the Taiwanese flag was ever raised at the world competitions(sports or whatever), they would pull their players out of the competition for good; if the Taiwanese uses “Taiwan” as their national title or claims any hint of independence, they would just invade Taiwan. This is the same reason why Taiwan doesn’t have a flag (or even a name) when they participate in the Olympics.
Comment by Yellowing — October 9, 2007 @ 5:00 pm PST
And while we’re on the topic of history lessons.. let’s be frank here… why is this? It’s because Taiwan pulled itself out of the United Nations back in the day. Was offered to share seats with China by UN, but refused that offer. Ever since then, they’ve not been seen on the world order as a nation.
Personally… if they’re so much about independence, then fly the flag and quit being wussies. You’ll never have independence if you talk a lot, and then whimper at the threat of invasion. Fight for it. All I’ve heard all my life is… Taiwan wants independence, blah blah blah. Boo hoo.
Comment by darkmoon — October 9, 2007 @ 7:16 pm PST