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The World Cyber Games 2008 (Asian Championship) came to town over the weekend and I spent Saturday afternoon at the competition venue to check out the proceedings.

Adopting a racing theme this year, WCG2008 is the Game Festival of the year here in Singapore. The event is more than just watching top gamers from the region fight it out in popular games like DOTA All-Stars, FIFA08, and Virtual Fighter 5, among others.

There were exciting fringe activities like Fastest Geek competition, CosCon 2008 and Racing Kiddo contest. WCG 2008 Asian Championship was not just for the gamers, visitors young and old were not forgotten by the organizers.

I remembered when the WCG2005 Grand Final was here back in 2005, I had a very enjoyable experience watching top gamers pitting their skills against each other on stage and the online actions were beamed live on giant screens.

Hence, it was with high expectations that I went to this year’s WCG but came back with a few disappointments. First and the most visual gripe, the venue suffered from very poor lighting. As you can see from the video, the competition zone and the main stage area were very dark and it wasn’t the most ideal of conditions for my low-end video camera. On the other hand, the sponsor’s booth over at Samsung was too brightly lit and the lighting contrast really shows up in the video.

Secondly, I didn’t get to see any game’s final being played out on stage during the afternoon I was there. It was a disappointing irony indeed.

Thirdly, and due entirely my fault in getting the timing wrong, I missed the Cosplay competition and can only record the video of the Cosplayers mingling and enjoying their own little party outside the exhibition halls. It was the first time I’ve seen so many non-press photographers out in full force trying to get their best shots of the Cosplayers and their colorful costumes. Their DSLRs and high-end prosumers made me feel so inferior with my out dated point-and-shoot digital camera.