SA Gamers Hit Steep Learning Curve in Taipei
Johann Von Backström, the team’s manager, says Singapore emerged victorious from the BF 2142 competition, with Australia coming second and Korea third. SA managed to stay ahead of Thailand to come seventh.
“The team’s individual skills were definitely on par with the rest of the teams, but it was on the strategy side that the SA fell short. As with many other SA sports, our gamers seem to favour rush tactics which just did not work against the other sides,” he says. “The other sides were far more strategic, taking care of their players more, while the SA team invariably resorted to all our attack.”
However, it was perhaps closer than the score reflects, Von Backström says. In its first match, SA was thumped by Korea, who also trounced New Zealand. When South Africa played New Zealand, the two sides won one round each and the result therefore went down to the number of tickets collected, which were almost equal. However, New Zealand held out for the win. Had South Africa won they would have been placed higher, he says.
South Africa then played Japan and once again shared the rounds, with the game being decided in favour of Japan based on the number of tickets collected. That left Thailand and South Africa finally managed to pull off a win.
Upside:
“The experience gained by the team was invaluable. When the team returned to SA, they shared their experiences on the SGS forums (games.saix.net), helping to deposit what they had learned back into the community,” Von Backström says. It’s the first time a team returning from an international competition has every really done this.
Furthermore, the SA team had good interactions with the winning team from Singapore who said they would be happy to play against the SA team in 2007.
“The difficulty for SA is that the team we sent to Taipei was our best. They were unbeaten at the Rage Gaming Expo and in the local leg of the BF 2142 league. Prior to Taipei they were untouchable, which makes it harder for them to get better.
“We are therefore seeing if we can find ways to overcome the poor international ping times to get the SA team to play against international teams like Singapore in 2007,” he says.
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