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ACON4 Shanghai Tournament August 10, 2004 |
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Summary: Lyle "I could sell ice to Eskimos" Wagner, FiringSquad's Asian representative had the pleasure of visiting bustling Shanghai and witnessing the Abit ACON4 tournament held there, not to mention a factory tour of Abit's facilities. Check out the report and sexy pictures herein.
 Shanghai | Page:: ( 1 / 3 ) |
As many readers are aware, many hardware companies now look to gamers as a key market to drive sales and build brand image. Thus many hardware companies have recently developed gaming inspired products and LAN party sponsorships in order to distance themselves even further from their competition in the motherboard and video card market. Competition in this market is extremely tough, with little differentiation between competitor’s products due to the nature of working with chipsets and GPUs from only a handful of vendor companies. With motherboards and video cards having reached almost a commodity status and the overclocker and enthusiast market probably having reached their limits in the more mature markets in Europe and North America, hardware companies are looking to the huge and influential PC gaming community to expand market share and build brand loyalty.
Having established a globally aware marketing department long before other motherboard companies and thus a solid brand image in the PC enthusiast and gamer community, ABIT felt they needed to take their support of gaming to the next level. ACON4 was intended to bring the world’s best WC3 gamers together to Shanghai in the spirit of friendly competition to battle for ultimate supremacy. With ACON4, ABIT has made quite an effort to establish themselves as the most supportive motherboard company in terms of promoting gamers and gaming. While many other companies have sponsored LAN parties and gaming tournaments for some time, no other PC hardware company has come close to organizing an event of this magnitude. This goes hand in hand with ABIT’s overall strategy of expanding their retail presence even further. ABIT has recently teamed up with Jonathan “Fatality” Wendell to manufacture high end Fatality branded gaming PCs using ABIT hardware
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Shanghai proved to be an exceptional host for the event, and an interesting contrast to the general madness of Taipei. The urbanized core of the city is at least 10 km across, containing somewhere around 16 million people. This compares with Taipei’s 6 million people who are packed like sardines into a concrete jungle of a city that never seems to stop moving, wherever you are: depending on who you talk to, Taipei is either the second or third most densely populated city in the world (first is Hong Kong). In comparison, Shanghai is like the calm before the storm, much more spread out (relatively), with fewer motorcycles and cars and many more bicycles, due to the relative poverty of the people in comparison. However, the signs of Shanghai’s destiny to be one day the largest city in the world are everywhere: brand new skyscrapers and residential towers under construction sprout everywhere, as far as the eye can see.
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| The Event | Page:: ( 2 / 3 ) |
If the phenomenal economic growth of China continues at the same rate, expect all eyes to be on this city within the next decade as once again the place to be, at least in Asia. At the beginning of the last century, Shanghai was said to be the most cosmopolitan city in the world, but lost its place during the maelstrom of the Chinese civil war and the aftermath of Mao Ze Dong’s reforms. From 1949 to 1977 China was off limits to foreigners, and the phenomenal growth of Shanghai that we witnessed has only occurred since the early 1980’s, when China began abandoning most of their communist economic policies. Nevertheless, the Shanghai seems to have recaptured much of its cosmopolitan flair. There are European restaurants everywhere to match the turn of the century European architecture that never left, having successfully waited out the quarter century of Communism’s dour rule in order to welcome back the foreigners that have always given Shanghai such a unique flavour.
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On Sunday, we were taken to a huge exhibition trade mart for the tournament. ABIT had rented a huge multistory exhibition hall for the competition, complete with stage, audience seating area, press area, sponsor exhibit area and gaming area. After a Kung Fu demonstration and the required models showing off the latest hardware, the competition got under way. The excitement level was high, as most of the local audience was WC3 fans that had come from all over China to see their hero Hao Su a.k.a. Yoliny.suhO compete against the best of the best from around the world. The fact that over 400 people showed up is either a testament to the popularity of WC3 in China, or the lack of anything else to do on a smoggy Sunday afternoon.
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As you can see in this photo, the audience area was packed in front of a big screen which showed each match being played out, with a narrator (in Chinese) calling the action on the screen as the audience screamed wildly after each key move. As spectator sports go, it was a cut above golf, billiards and bowling, yet not quite as dramatic as ski jumping or freestyle skateboarding.
The final match up turned out to be a classic for the ages: Mathew Anderson a.k.a. mTw-Wizard from Lexington, South Carolina, USA versus Andrey Sobolev a.k.a. DeaDman from Moscow, Russia, a Cold War match up that ironically occurred the day after the death of Ronald Reagan, a name synonymous with the end of the Cold War. In the end, the young Russian was simply outmatched by the American in the end. Wizard beat his opponent handily in two straight games to win the match and the ACON4 championship. The local hero Yoliny.suhO had to contend with 4th place after being defeated by the tournament favorite, the Korean Chun Jung Hee a.k.a. SK.Sweet, who is a sponsored professional gamer in his native Korea.
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| Factory tours | Page:: ( 3 / 3 ) |
Unlike the design stages, the actual manufacturing of motherboards is no longer rocket science. The key to building reliable components is good design, good parts and solid quality control. About a year ago, Abit learned the hard way that using cheap capacitors for their motherboards could quickly lead to financial ruin and from that day forward has only used the best components available for manufacturing. Abit was not the only company who had gone to the bargain bin for parts, but they were the only ones who admitted it and vowed never to do so again. Some of you may have recently read that a class action lawsuit was filed against another major motherboard manufacturer for not handling the situation in such a forthcoming manner.
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I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but just about everything you buy these days has a “Made in China” label affixed. Motherboards and memory chips are no exception. China has an abundance of low cost labor and manufacturers around the world have moved in to take advantage of the cost savings. The benefit to the consumer is obvious with items like DVD players now costing about $35 retail. Not everything is manufactured in China, but with the wave of industrialization taking place throughout the country it is obvious to me that China will be the next super power. Lets keep our fingers crossed that their political reforms start to outpace their industrial reforms.
Kudos to ABIT for such a well-organized event. A lot of the competitors have known each other online for a long time, and although many of them belong to the same clan, SK, this was their first time to hang out in person. From what we could see, all the gamers hung out and partied together like old friends and had a great time. Word has it that next year’s tournament finals could be held in Beijing, Seoul, or even Hawaii, so stay tuned for more updates as they become available.
We believe that everyone who attended ACON4 will be forever grateful to Abit, Kingston and the other sponsors for putting on such a great event and we all look forward to ACON5.