SA teams gain experience at world e-games event

THE island of Hainan in the south of China recently hosted one of the biggest e-sports events of the year, the World Electronic Sports Games (WESG), from March 13 to 18.

The event, organised by AliSports, comprised four online multiplayer games: competitive first-person shooter CounterStrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), the widely popular Moba (multiplayer online battle arena) DOTA 2, real-time sci-fi strategy game Starcraft 2 and online trading card game Hearthstone.

South African e-sports hero and qualifying event organiser, Barry Louzada said: “It was quite a new experience. AliSports did a great job organising the event, and there were over 50 teams from all over the world. There was a lot of hype around it.”

The competitors vied for a grand prize of $5.5 million (R65.6m) and two of the best local teams in their respective games were competing for their share of the prize – Bravado Gaming’s CS: GO squad and White Rabbit Gaming’s DOTA 2 squad.

Louzada said the SA teams were largely considered to be the underdogs of the competition. “Being from South Africa, we’re not often able to get ourselves out to the rest of the world when it comes to e-sports, so competing at international events like the WESG can really help with the exposure,” he said.

South African team Bravado Gaming, particularly, rose to the occasion – after burning through the qualifying stages, the