[Cyanide]

Day 1
WCS Singapore Day 1 kicked off without a hitch today. Other than the lack of sitting in the area (it is a shopping mall atrium after all and there are many matches going on concurrently), there really isn't much that I can comment on regarding the games being played. I only managed to catch glimpses of games here and there.

All in all, the players going through to the round of 16 isn't quite unexpected. With Team Eve and Team Flash making up the bulk of the players (7 of 16).

Revenant has so far kept to his goal of making a clean sweep in this competition by going 2-0 all the way to the Round of 16. Tomorrow's match against Sweet looks to be an exciting ZvZ (don't we love ZvZ's?!?!).

Fade's Venosaur deserves a special mention in my opinion. This kid is only 14! He managed to beat FlashHelio to make it to the Round of 32, but unfortunately, lost to EveEase. He's young, so he still has a long road ahead of him. It's nice to see the young ones performing well. Future of Singapore e-sports perhaps?

Dempsey (Terran) is another one that I'd like to highlight. Prior to the matches, none of us had really any idea who he was. He has been practising hard in the NA servers for the last 2 months. His solid early game pressure against Cure secured him a place in the Round of 16.

The match that drew the biggest crowd of the day was eehannPolaris vs FlashKyzer. Everyone was crowded behind Polaris, curious to see who this girl was. It was a close 2nd game in this ZvZ matchup, but unfortunately for her, Kyzer took the game to end her road to the Round of 16.

I apologize for the lack of a more in-depth recap of the day because it really was quite difficult to catch everything. Sunday's Round of 16 and up promises to be an easier time for me to be able to catch everything! So I will do my best and cover as much as I can!

Tune in to the stream and support the Singapore scene as much as you can!

P.S. nirvAnA was mistaken as stuffybear and Ginormous, I wonder why?

Day 2

We all know the results already. FlashRevz takes home US$4,000 and a trip to China to represent Singapore for WCS Asia. Good luck to him! It is not going to be easy at all considering that we have China, Taiwan and Korea to contend with.

As nirvAnA has already covered the results, I think I'd like to point out certain things that could have been better handled.

First and foremost, I think the stage was a huge letdown and waste of resources.

The casters are sit in front, while the players are behind. As you can see there are no booths. The sound is fed into the speakers around the area. Meaning that there is a very high chance that what the casters say can be picked up by the players. Hence the casting from replays. But I will move on to that later.

That said, while the casters did indeed cast from replays or delayed the stream (not sure if they did delay stream casting), whilst Jabito and RedArchon (I think), was playing on stage. It did manage to gather up a crowd at the front of the stage to watch the pseudo-live casted games. I think once they realized it wasn't exactly LIVE, the crowd kinda dispersed again.

This, in my opinion, was a huge waste. The event could have drawn AND sustained a crowd, and that would have been awesome to see!

Moving on to technical difficulties.

You Tube

You Tube

Music to keep you company!

The game between Kyzer and Yekke saw a sudden power failure for the entire atrium section. This happened in the Loser Bracket finals. The Grand Finals between Rev and Yekke saw another set-back. Yekke's screen turned black suddenly and there was nothing he could do. There wasn't any marshall on hand to see it happening either.

Rather unfortunate. I guess this is what you get in a "make-shift" setup. I say "make-shift" because this event is set up in the atrium of a shopping mall. With shoppers milling around the area, and having to run extension power cables around, it was probably a problem waiting to occur (just my hypothesis). A proper exhibition hall venue would have been more ideal in my opinion, but obviously, would have cost more.

The Venue

I think it's great that they picked a shopping mall that was specially dedicated to computers and games. The place was called Funan Digital Life Mall, it houses a huge collection of shops selling computer products, video games, cameras and other computer related products.

What was lacking though, was a seated area to allow people to watch the "live" matches. Or an area or method for team members and supporters to watch the matches without having to crowd behind the players. Understandably, some players dislike people watching over their shoulders (Cure, LOL).

This resulted in people standing for hours on end! The event was 9am to 9pm. So you can imagine how long you'd had to stand if you wanted to watch the games in a less than perfect spot (behind the players). Pretty darn tiring 2 days if you ask me.

The stream

Not being able to live stream was pretty unfortunate too. Because of the way it was set up, it was decided that they had to cast from replays. Had there been no fancy stage and the resources went to a sound proof box, it would have been more useful. No one really played on stage, only the 4 foreigners who came here played up there.

I'm pretty sure playing in a box would have gotten more attention too.

Final Note
Finally, I'd like to ask for people not to take my Day 2 recap too negatively. I feel these are all things that the Singapore scene can do to improve upon. We have the advantage of being a small country, so getting fans to gather in a central location and watch good games being played is easy.

If we had a better venue, central stage with seating for viewers, games being played and live casted. We could have done a lot better. I understand that a shopping mall atrium would be better for the sponsors, because shoppers will be able to see the products on display. But I'm sure there are easy solutions to those.

[NDG.Stitch]

Woot!!! GOGO EVE!