Early 2004 LG Electronics organized what they denominate the biggest Electronic games tournament in the American Continent with 700 hundred participants in Panama alone. The games of choice where Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne Expansion, Starcraft Brood wars Expansion, FIFA, and Quake 3.

     The four countries participating were: Panama –Host of the finals celebrated in Next-, Guatemala, Ecuador and Venezuela.

     Here are the proud representatives of each nation:

     Panama:

     naltron: José Brid (Q3)
     Mordack: Mario Mendizábal (WC)
     CCC..: Cesar Robles (SC)
     [V]007: José Manuel Calvo (FF)

     Ecuador:

     Power_Lord: Santos, Efraín (Q3)
     §@r@guro: Jacome, Michael (WC)
     PsYChO: Sánchez, Sebastián (SC)
     Metal: Holguin, Sebastián (FF)

     Guatemala:

     !vannovich: Luis Ivan Alfaro (Q3)
     kno410: Joon Ho Park (WC)
     Chivu.gt: Mauro Castañeda (SC)
     carnage: Mauricio Reyes (FF)

     Venezuela:

     ve-elpajuo: Alejandro González (Q3)
     LamWilliam: William Lam Wong (WC)
     GambitO: Kevin García (SC)
     omarelrojo: Omar Irazábal (FF)

     Here are the results of the international final celebrated August 27th in the night club Next:

     Venezuela: Starcraft and Quake 3 champion titles
     Panama: FIFA
     Guatemala: Warcraft 3

     The final event hosted in Panama was one of the most fancy spectacles I had seen with my eyes. There were models, daily prizes, free subscriptions, great machines and excellent prizes for winners and a good scoring and brackets systems. However I need to stress the fact that through the tournament I noticed the lack of experience of the organisers. The games did not started at the scheduled time and this affected negatively the players who arrived on time sometimes causing frustration therefore decreasing their performance. The games where not properly researched, the referees did not fully understood the complexity of the scores or tactics therefore they could not appreciate the games or the skill of the players. Imagine hiring a soccer referee to watch over a baseball game: he/she understand that the farther the player hit the ball the best and that the team with the highest score wins but he does not understand its complexity and is unable to do a proper job as game authority.

     The final celebrated in Next was easily one of the most important events for the E-game community in Panama. Only invited guests, press and political elite were allowed. I need to congratulate LG for its vision; PC games are the engine which moves the development of better and faster computers and peripheral devices. E-gamers are an unexploited marketing resource in Panama and LG saw this and quickly started working on it. On the other hand I also need to state that the finals were not properly organized, at least for the Warcraft and Starcraft finals the champions were decided on one game instead of the best of three or winner-losers brackets, so the results were not representative of the players’ true skill.

     Anyway this type of issue is easily solved and LG will celebrate the tournament next year. Next time, the online games community in Panama including myself will be waiting for it. Kudos to LG for this great and pioneering event worthy of becoming as important as the Olympics, Baseball World Series and the Soccer World Championships.


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