Ipower Games 2007, Packard Bell, Lisbon Portugal

[BattleMoose]

It has recently come to my attention. (It barely came to may attention) That there was firstly a tournament in Portugal for Supreme Commander and some other games and that there was a South African team present.

This seems to be have kept very hush hush and is even now very hard to find any details.

The south african team that was present consisted ONLY of employees of Incredible Connection. Incredible Connectiom ran a tournament between its stores to find their team that was sent to Portugal to represent South Africa.

While other countries such as UK and Germnay actually had proper qualifers that were open to the public.

It is unclear if incredible connection payed for it but it is assumed that they did not as all the other teams were sponsred by packard bell, the tourney organiser. I've busted a nut to try and find out, but just cant.

The tourney was Ipower Games 2007, Packard Bell, Lisbon Portugal.

Even if incredible connection did pay for this, and its assumed they did not, there is still a serious issue. It is illegal for a team or individual, under south african law, to represent south africa in an event, UNLESS qualifications are open to the public!

Not only am i very upset about this, but also it games SA gaming a bad reputation. Apparently they made asses out of themselves, a substandard team competing Vs the worlds best. :/

Especially when South Afirca has MUCH better gamers to offer.

I am trying to make this as public as possible and desperately trying to find out if its legitmate ( I doubt it ) or if something very very fishy is going on.

BattleMoose

[Miktar]

This is the first I heard of it myself, and frankly if all this is true, I'm rather disgusted at Incredible Connection and Packard Bell.

Can anyone else add more to this?

[GeometriX]

What a bizarre move on IC's part. I can understand any company doing secret things for the purpose of market research, but what could they possible have gained from keeping it completely internal? If they were going to spend the time and effort, might as well scream and shout about it from the rooftops, it would've given them a decent boost of the "Well, IC aren't that bad" variety, and they might have actually had a team worth sending.

Silly, really very silly, unless I'm completely missing something here.

[BattleMoose]

What is absolutely true, is that a team of 6 incredible connection employees ( I have their names even, but feel that I should not post them here ) did go to the Ipower Games in Lisbon to compete. The team was composed only of IC employees. They also came last in every section, by a large margin too. :-(

Every other details is very hard to get.

This might be a good story to reserach and run in the next NAG? Not sure how IC might feel about this tho. Tho I am sure you at NAG know much more about that sort of thing than I do. I'm just a disgruntled gamer.

BattleMoose

[Miktar]

We know nothing about this, we'd not even heard about it until you made your post. Unfortunately, the only writer who would cover this kind of thing has moved out of the country, so I'm unsure what we could do about it.

[CaptainCrunch]

Info (http://www.quadv.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214&Itemid=59)
Day 1 results (http://www.quadv.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=219&Itemid=59)
Day 2 results (http://www.quadv.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=220&Itemid=1)
Day 3 results (http://www.quadv.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=221&Itemid=59)

Cloak and dagger, eh?

[Miktar]

What are you trying to say, CC?

[CaptainCrunch]

Amazed at how they somehow managed to sneak their way (cloak and dagger) to an international gaming event with hardly anyone noticing.

[Miktar]

I'm not that amazed - it's quite easy to do. I'm just aghast they did it.

[dislekcia]

If the local Packard Bell distributor didn't do their bit to popularise the tournament, or purposefully kept back the information in order to - say - send their own team, for instance. I'd expect to hear nothing about the competition through official channels at all.

Oh, wait.

So. How do we go about getting the full story here?

-D

[Miktar]

Calling someone at IC and asking them.

[BattleMoose]

How we came across the story?

I am a very active Supreme Commander player, and while I knew the tournament was happening, I had no idea that South Africa was at all involved. I came across a thread at www.supcom-live.com taht mentioned taht South Africa might be involved, I then did some googling and digging and found further details.

Also I was in limited contact with people at the event, who confirmed that the South African team was there.

The link to the thread that started it all:

http://www.supcom-live.com/nc/news/details/article/ipower-supcom-competition-update-207.html

Please bear in mind my comments in that thread, I was exceptionally angry when I wrote those things. :/

It would also be worth while checking this article too.

http://196.30.226.221/sections/computing/2007/0706052113.asp?S=Gaming&A=GAM&O=TB

[BattleMoose]

Did you phone IC, what did they say?

[Miktar]

I never said I would call IC (dislekcia asked how one would go about sorting this out, and I made the suggestion that calling IC would be the right path to take - not that I would do it). This is not something I can take upon myself right now in the middle of the September issue production cycle. It is also not the type of thing I want to do, as I have no interest in competitive gaming.

[dislekcia]

I might take this on as a story, but right now I'm also completely swamped in work. Moose, I suggest calling them and seeing what happened from their end. Try not to get too upset, remember they played more than just SupCom ;)

-D

[extremist]

I read over the stuff you linked to, Moose.

Making a few assumptions, this is my take.

From what I read it would seem that the Packard Bell branches in the various countries that were represented got to promote the event (and hence select teams) as they saw fit.

It's puzzling though that reportedly the whole competition was to promote Packard Bell's new iPower gaming computer. Not very successful from the South African perspective, if you ask me. Doubly so since half our gaming press wasn't told anything about it (I can't really say anything about the other half). We do, of course, represent but a fraction of a fraction of the market.

I'm no lawyer but, once again, from what I read the competition is nothing but a publicity/marketing drive by Packard Bell which means they can invite anyone the want to. They didn't ask for a South African team, just a team from South Africa. From the sounds of it the UK contestants were also pulled from stores (somehow related to Packard Bell) last year. I also noticed a Swedish guy complaining that Sweden isn't represented and being told that "Sweden said no." I doubt that Packard Bell approached the Swedish government and asked for a Swedish gaming team -- it was Packard Bell Sverige that declined the responsibility/opportunity of pulling together a team.

Also, just so I'm clear: I'm not advocating what they did. I'm also not saying that the letter of the law is what determines what is right. But on the other hand I also understand that it is their tournament for their marketing purposes and they can **** it up organise it however they want.

As a point of interest, do you know anything about how Packard Bell publicised the competition in countries with a greater market share (UK, US)?

[BattleMoose]

I have been learning more in past days, got into contact with some people who were actually at the event. And while it was largely generally considered to be badly organised, it was however considered to be a test event, and I think another event will be held next year, hopefully one that I might be able to qualify for.

The UK and German teams both had national qualifiers. The UK event has the I31 lan tournament, quite a big deal in the UK. I know people who competed and qualifed at bothe events. France and Sweden were both indeed asked if they would send teams and very surprisingly they did say no, there are some ****ed swiss and french players about that too.

The Swiss team just sent a Pro Battlefield 2142 team, which was one of the games being played.

The Belgium team, umm, SupCom-live, I well known website in the SupCom community, the organiser of that website got phoned, and he selected the team, he did however select the world #2 SupCom player, among others.

I'm not sure what happened with the US, but they were not involved.

And while it is Packard Bells event, and although they asked for a team, it is still illegal to represent South Africa without qualifers open to the public, period. As far as I understand it.
Selecting top players, is also wether strictly legal or not, is also considered an acceptable method of obtaining a team, this is largely for countries, with some quality gamers but without a strong gaming community.

South Africa remains the only country that sent a sub standardteam. I they only way I know of viewing this, is that IC took this as an oppertuinity to give some perks to their employees and win some points with them. Its appaling IMHO.

There are large lans around teh country already running, it would not have been hard at all to run a tournament at one of those, and hey, the IC staff could have gone too. Hell I would have flown to Cape Town if they even just held it in one place.