World Cyber Games

» see wcg.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

counter-strike in turkish internet cafes around 2002 to 2005 was the closest most of us got to the wcg conversation. cs 1.6 was the main game in every cafe i ever paid for an hour at, the same game wcg ran as its flagship title for over a decade. the actual world cyber games happened on a scale i never touched (national qualifiers and sponsored team travel and flag parades on tv) but the source material was the same set of maps we played dust2 and inferno on in ankara.

wcg started october 2000 as the world cyber games challenge in yongin, korea. yooseop oh, the ceo of international cyber marketing, had pitched samsung electronics on the idea of an esports olympics. samsung put up the money. the 2000 challenge ran age of empires 2, fifa 2000, quake iii arena and starcraft: brood war. brood war was the dominant esport in korea by then, the rest of the lineup was a hedge on international appeal.

the proper world cyber games launched 2001 in seoul with a 300,000 usd prize pool. the format borrowed heavily from the olympic playbook: national qualifiers, an opening ceremony with the player teams marching under their flags, an athlete village, gold and silver medals for each game title (bronze too). counter-strike entered the lineup in 2001, warcraft iii in 2003. by 2004 the grand final moved to san francisco and the prize pool hit 2.5 million usd.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the samsung years ~

samsung as title sponsor was the structural fact about wcg. every venue had samsung branding and the players sat at samsung monitors, the press releases ran out of samsung's marketing budget. the deal made sense for samsung at a moment when the company was selling lcd panels to a young male global demographic that watched competitive starcraft. wcg's job was to put samsung logos in front of that audience worldwide.

microsoft signed on as an additional sponsor in 2006 for the monza italy grand final, providing software and hardware through to the 2008 cologne event. cologne 2008 was the format at its widest: 14 game titles on the program, around 800 players from 70 countries, broadcast partners across asia and europe. the dota / lol generation had not arrived yet, the multi-title olympics format still made sense to the publishers involved.

~ what killed it ~

the cracks showed by 2010. valve's growing involvement in counter-strike: source and later cs:go made the wcg cs lineup feel like the older generation's tournament. blizzard's starcraft ii launched 2010 with the kespa-affiliated proleague absorbing the korean scene. riot launched the league of legends championship series 2013 with its own publisher-run circuit. valve announced the dota 2 international in 2011 with prize pools that overshadowed anything wcg could put together.

samsung's marketing priorities shifted toward galaxy phones, the wcg sponsorship moved further down the budget line each year. the 2013 grand final in kunshan china happened, the audience and prize pool were below the 2008 peak. february 2014 ceo brad lee announced wcg was closing. no 2014 event ran. march 2017 the wcg trademark transferred to smilegate, the korean publisher behind crossfire, with vague plans for a relaunch that produced a 2019 xian event and not much after.

~ what got buried with it ~

wcg is the cleanest pre-twitch esports format on record. the olympics-style multi-title structure with flag parades did not survive the transition to publisher-run circuits, but a generation of korean and chinese pro players came up through wcg national qualifiers. the wcg name still circulates in old footage of jaedong starcraft matches and fatal1ty quake iii runs from the early 2000s. samsung walked away from the format, the format never came back at the same scale.

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