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MIND SPORTS SOUTH AFRICA COMPUTER GAMING
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NEWS
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Call
Open for Leg 2 Registration
Players
can now register for the games that are to be played
in Leg 2 from 12 May 2008 to 8 June 2008, which are as follows:
Players
must please make certain that you follow all the steps in the registration checklist.
All
players/teams that participated in Leg 1 are automatically seeded to Leg 2. Do
not re-register if you registered in Leg 1, unless you are playing a new game.
Please note that the CGBOC increased the maximum number of reserves in a team,
due to public request. Additional team members must register in this
registration period. Please also view the Online League Bylaws, Schedule 4.3
regarding player transfers and Schedule 11.9 regarding Team Availability
Schedules.
The
following players/teams qualify for automatic seeded in Leg 2 based on their
achieved rankings in 2007. These players/teams must register for Leg 2 before the end of the
registration period to participate.
|
Command & Conquer 3 |
Counter Strike 1.6 |
Counter Strike Source |
Gears of War |
DOTA |
|
Slick |
Virtue |
Plasma |
WatchYaHead |
EZ |
School Teams that ranked in the top 50% of Leg 2 in the 2007 MSSA School's
League also qualify for Leg 2 registration.
Players should also note that awards shall also be made for the best performing
University and School teams in each game.
Players
that participate in the Online League will be able not only to participate
against the best players in South Africa, but will also be able to graduate to
play in the African Continental Championships to be held in South Africa on the
6th and 7th of December 2008.
____________________________________
EXTENSION
GRANTED
Please note that the date for
entry to Leg 1 of the 2008 MSSA Online League has been extended until 24H00 on 8 April 2008.
The extension of time granted is
due to the MSSA being inundated with requests for such extension.
However, due to the fact that Leg
1 shall begin on 14 April 2008, no entries shall be taken after 8 April 2008.
________________________________-
All players
are reminded that Registrations for Leg 1 of the MSSA Online League closes on
30 March 2008.
Leg 1 of the League shall begin on 14 April 2008.
The games that are to be played in Leg 1 are as follows:
Command and Conquer
3™ (PC)
Counter Strike Source™ (PC)
Counter Strike 1.6™ (PC)
Gears of War™ (XBox360)
Warcraft 3™: Defense of the
Ancients (DoTA) (PC)
Players must please note that the following players/teams must not register for Leg 1 as they automatically are seeded through to Leg 2:
|
Command
& Conquer 3 |
Counter
Strike 1.6 |
Counter
Strike Source |
Gears
of War
|
DoTA |
|
Slick |
Virtue |
Plasma Saints |
WatchYaHead |
EZ |
Players should also note that awards shall also be made for the best performing University and School teams in each game.
Players that participate in the Online League will be able not only to participate against the best players in South Africa, but will also be able to graduate to play in the African Continental Championships to be held in South Africa on the 6th and 7th of December 2008.
To participate in the MSSA Online Computer Games League you need to have completed the following items:
____________________________________
Registration
has now opened for the Mind Sports South Africa's 2008 Online League at http://www.mssa-cgboc.org/.
Players can register for the games that are to be played from leg 1 from 4 March to 30 March 2008, which are as follows:
Command and Conquer 3™ (PC)
Counter Strike Source™ (PC)
Counter Strike 1.6™ (PC)
Gears of War™ (XBox360)
Warcraft 3™: Defense of the Ancients (DoTA) (PC)
Players must please note that the following players/teams must not register for Leg 1 as they automatically are seeded through to Leg 2:
|
Command
& Conquer 3 |
Counter
Strike 1.6 |
Counter
Strike Source |
Gears
of War
|
DoTA |
|
Slick |
Virtue |
Plasma Saints |
WatchYaHead |
EZ |
Registration
for the following games will only begin on 12 May 2008 and end on 8 June 2008:
Call Of Duty 4™ (PC)
FIFA 2008™
(XBox360)
Guildwars™ (PC)
Unreal Tournament 3™ (PC)
Please note that the players/teams that automatically qualify for Leg 2 must also register from 12 May to 8 June 2008.
Players should also note that awards shall also be made for the best performing University and School teams in each game.
Players that participate in the Online League will be able not only to participate against the best players in South Africa, but will also be able to graduate to play in the African Continental Championships to be held in South Africa on the 6th and 7th of December 2008.
Should you require any additional information, please contact mindsportssa@iafrica.com .
__________________________________
In 2006 South
Africa witnessed Mind Sports South Africa start its officially accredited
online computer league.
Up until 2006, computer game tourneys were characterised by LAN (land area network) events where computer gamers would gather with their mainframes, screens, keyboards, mouse, and other paraphernalia at events run and administered by individuals for their own profit.
Even where well meaning individuals raised enough profits to send the occasional team overseas, there was little or no accreditation of computer games as a sport, and as such players were never accredited for their achievements.
In fact many other conventional sporting stars are absolutely astounded by the amount of time that the top computer gamers dedicate to the games that they play.
It is not surprising therefore that South African gamers are highly respected overseas. The only reason why South African Computer Gamers do not do well at international events is due to South Africans being starved of adequate international competition.
The accreditation of computer games is therefore vital to help create a better awareness of computer games as a sport as well as to help the MSSA to solidify the support of sponsors to raise the necessary monies to fund our top players who officially represent South Africa with full Protea Colours to attend major international events.
Forty-three (43) players in 2007 qualified for Senior National Colours and a further three (5) players qualified for High School National Colours.
The 2008 computer gaming year is to be as exciting.
Mind Sports South Africa is not only going to continue with its online league, but shall also be hosting the 2008 African Continental Championships to which the best gamers in Africa shall be invited.
The online league will commence on 14 April 2008.
For further information, please contact any of the elected committee members.
__________________________________
Mind Sports
South Africa is the national controlling body for Computer Gaming in South
Africa.
As such an exciting on-line league was run by AGASA under the auspices of Mind Sports South Africa with the purpose of not only determining the best players in the country but also so that a player could be selected to represent South Africa at the World Cyber Games to be held in Seattle, USA, on 3 to 7 October 2007.
Mind Sports South Africa held the final stage of the on-line championships at SASCOC House in Melrose on 1 and 2 September 2007 which was sponsored by AMD and Electronic Arts.
EA South Africa’s Chris Gatherer confirmed the sponsorship the gamer to represent South Africa in the Command and Conquer 3 game, which includes flights, accommodation and the WCG royalty fee, to have a total value of R35 000.
At the award ceremony held on 29 September 2007 at 12H00 at the RAge Computer fair, both Chris Gatherer (EA) and Imi Mosaheb (AMD), were on hand to award National Colours to Centurion resident Pieter van Nieuwenhuizen who had been selected to represent South Africa.
_________________________________
31 August 2007
Greg Fredericks has eventually reached the last day of his tenure in the department of Sport And Recreation.
Greg Fredericks has been around for so long that he saw two Ministers and two
Director General’s leave.
Without doubt Greg Fredericks was a great force in sport in South Africa and showed an incredible amount of dedication and interest to all the different sporting codes.
______________________________
Yet
again EA South Africa stepped up to the plate and showed their commitment to
the South African gaming community. For the second year running EA will make it
possible for a South African gamer to officially represent our country at an
International event.
EA South Africa’s Chris Gatherer confirmed the sponsorship of one of the gamers
in the AGASA Command and Conquer 3 league to represent South Africa at the
World Cyber Games in Seattle USA from 3-7 October 2007. The sponsorship includes
flights, accommodation and the WCG royalty fee with a total value of R35 000.
_________________________________
All
paid-up members are requested to submit any nominations by the end of business
on 30 July 2007 for the position of National Team Manager for the
Computer Gaming Team.
Please note that according to the Constitution, the following criteria must be met:
1. National Team Managers shall be registered players with both the UNION and the INTERNATIONAL WARGAMES FEDERATION, and have held office for at least three years in an administrative or technical capacity for the UNION, or have already served as a National Team Manager, and
2. Selectors may not be elected to the position of National Team Manager.
The Amateur Gamers Association of
South Africa (AGASA) will manage the South
African qualifying Leg of the 2007 World Cyber Games (WCG). The first two legs of
qualifying will take place online while the National Team Trials will be
determined at a LAN.
All registrations close Friday, June 29, 2007 at 12h00 and no late entries will
be accepted. Match rosters will be drawn up and will be available to view on Saturday,
June 30, 2007 at 19h00. Leg 1 will start on Monday, July 02 and teams/players
will need to complete the scheduled matches on time to avoid being disqualified
from the Leg.
To register please visit http://www.agasa.co.za/forum/member.php?action=register
and complete the registration. When registered please select the games you wish
to compete in from the user CP.
At present we are committed to send one player to the WCG 2007 Grand Final in
Seattle USA. While competing in the league for provincial and national
accreditation we endeavour to source sponsorship to send the full compliment of
South Africa players to compete in the Grand Final in Seattle.
________________________________________
The World Cyber Games (WCG) site is now live.
This is the link to the site http://wcg.agasa.co.za/
___________________________________
What's Mobiraba™ I hear you ask.....
Well it is exciting game otherwise known as Morabaraba that the enterprising team at Darote™ has developed as a cell 'phone application.
All players who were at the 2006 S A National Championships would have seen that the Morabaraba Championships was played on cell 'phones instead of the usual board.
If you want to learn more about this exciting venture, watch Noeleen Maholeana-Sangqu on SABC 3's 3 TALK on Friday, 13 April 2007 at 17H45 as she discusses the development of this game with David Vannucci.
_____________________________
The IOC President has requested all NOC's and Sport
Organisations to support an initiative from the United Nations Food Programe
(WFP) called Fight Hunger: Walk the World. The walk will be held on the 13 May
2007 at 10h00 at the Wits University. All the proceeds will go towards helping
orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa so the more people, the
merrier. In addition, the Walk is also intended to raise awareness about child
hunger so it would be wonderful if you could
convince some famous athletes and sportspeople to attend since that will
guarantee even wider media coverage of the event.
Your support in this regard is highly appreciated.
Patience Shikwambana
SASCOC
Manager: National Academy System
_______________________________
MORABARABA
PROGRAM
Just to let you know that Adam Oellermann has released version 0.4 of AHEM,
that is, his Morabaraba program. The main changes are:
Although he has produced a Windows version, it's still only command-line based. Unfortunately it still doesn't know about the machine-gunning rule, but he hopes to add that in the next release.
__________________________________-
Stephen
Whitford 14
February 2007 at 11h00
Three post graduate students from Wits University who developed Mobiraba, a
cellphone version of the popular Morabaraba board game, last night won silver
in the SIMagine 2007 awards at the 3GSM Conference currently being held in
Barcelona, Spain.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Academic Director at the Joburg Centre for
Software Engineering (JCSE), says David Vannucci, Rolan Christian and Teddy
Mwakabaga, receive €12 000 (about R113 000) for being placed second in the
competition, which aims to stimulate the development of Java-based SIM
applications around the world.
The three are all Wits students, currently completing their PhDs on topics
around convergence, Dwolatzky says.
"Vannucci, Christian and Mwakabaga developed the game in the Wits
Convergence lab which is one of the JCSE’s laboratories. Mobiraba is a Java SIM
based application and was developed with a SIM tool kit provided by Gemalto as
part of the competition.
"With Mobiraba, players are able to log on to a gaming server via GPRS
(general packet radio service) and compete against each other. The online
server maintains the results of all the players, as well as rankings, and a
record of each game," he says.
Trialled at national Morabaraba championship
Colin Webster, President of Mind Sports SA (MSSA), says Morabaraba is the
most popular game in South Africa with around 20 million players. Through MSSA,
Morabaraba players are able to receive their Protea colours.
"The game is also played across Africa and in some European countries.
The game dates back thousands of years. In fact, there is a Morabaraba board in
the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt. Of the 10 previous world champions, seven
have been from South Africa," he says.
Mobiraba was used at the national Morabaraba trials in Pietermaritzburg in
December in place of Morabaraba boards with the handsets having been supplied
by Vodacom. Simphiwe Maphumulo, the 2003 Morabaraba world champion played
Mobiraba and thoroughly enjoyed it, Webster says.
"It is our hope that Mobiraba will be used in the development of the
game in South Africa, not only to enable more people to compete in the game,
but also to raise the standard of Morabaraba in South Africa through the
recording and ranking of players and their highest scores," Webster says.
"Mobiraba also has the potential to utilised in a world championship
context allowing players from different countries to compete against each other
from their cellphones."
More SIMagine information
The SIMagine competition aims to stimulate the development of Java-based
SIM applications. The competition is a partnership between Gemalto, Samsung and
Sun Microsystems and is sponsored by the likes of Maxis, Telcel, Telefonica,
Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM).
There were a total of 315 entrants into SIMagine 2007 of which 53 projects
were short listed from 17 different countries. Of the 53 projects, 15 were from
South Africa. The short listed teams were then given Java SIM tool kits and
training to developer their applications. From the 53 projects, eight finalists
were selected, one of which was Mobiraba.
__________________________________
The Mind
Sports South African National Team for Computer Gaming returned home at 7Hoo on
Monday, 4 December 2006.
The team
was sent by Mind Sports South Africa to compete in the Electronic Arts™ BF2142® Asian Championships on 3 December 2006 in
Taipei, Taiwan.
Even
though the team consisted of the best players in South Africa in such period,
the team struggled against their Asian counterparts.
The Team
members are:
|
Name of Player |
|
Barry Louzada |
|
Johan Diederiks |
|
James Fenton |
|
Ruan du Plessis |
|
Rizaan Lakay |
|
Benjamin Greenwood |
|
Quentin Huggett |
|
Jacques Jordaan |
|
Johann von Backström - manager |
|
Johannes Greyling - coach |
"It
was a different game" said James Fenton, "the Asian teams were far
more disciplined and even though we could match them one on one it was the
discipline that counted".
The South
African team has learnt many lessons from the experience. The lessons learnt
will also be made available to other players in South Africa in the hope of
strengthening all the teams.
On 29 November 2006, Mind Sports South Africa held its award ceremony at the Old Edwardian Society for the team that it had selected to participate in the Electronic Arts™ BF2142® Asian Championships on 3 December 2006 in Taipei, Taiwan.
This is the first time that Mind Sports South Africa has sent out an official national team to compete internationally. As Colin Webster (President of Mind Sports South Africa) stated at the ceremony, without the support from EA™, South Africa's participation at this year's event would not have happened.
Colin Webster then went on to emphasise that this is the first of many teams that Mind Sports South Africa will enter into international competition to ensure the growth of computer gaming and the accreditation of computer games and the players who play them.
The team will have to play against seven (7) other countries, and it is hoped that South Africa will perform admirably.
Mind Sports South Africa has a proud record in the international arena having produced nine senior world champions and a further seven junior world champions since 1997.
The team that was selected to attend the Asian Championships made it through a gruelling league, which required contenders to play no less than 12 games each from 3 November 2006 to 23 November 2006 in what computer fundis would call an on-line league.
The South African Team consists of the following players:
|
Name of Player |
|
Barry Louzada |
|
Johan Diederiks |
|
James Fenton |
|
Ruan du Plessis |
|
Rizaan Lakay |
|
Benjamin Greenwood |
|
Quentin Huggett |
|
Jacques Jordaan |
|
Johann von Backström - manager |
|
Johannes Greyling - coach |
The team returns on Monday, 4 December 2006.
SASCOC SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR AWARDS – 30 NOVEMBER
2006.
It is that time of the year again when people turn to end of year functions and awards.
As usual, Mind Sports South Africa made its nominations, as we do every year, and lo and behold, this year we have a finalist.
The finalist is in the Volunteer of the year section.
The finalist is none other than Simphiwe Maphumulo.
Who says that hard work and dedication does not pay off?
__________________________________________________
7th November 2006 :
The AGASA/EA Taipei Competition kicked off last night with a
bang...jerk...rattle...and finally a smooth purring sound. Thanks to all the
contestants for being there and playing the games, you guys truly showed the
meaning of South African patience.
It seems that we have found the bugs that delayed the first 2 games. They are
ironed out now /touch wood.
But with that, thanks again for playing, and lets get all these games down.
Lots and lots of game time coming in the next 2 weeks and I’m sure lots and
lots of cups of coffee!
__________________________________________________
18 October 2006
Registration opens today for a Battlefield 2142 PC gaming tournament being
organised by the Amateur Gaming Association of South Africa (Agasa) and
Electronic Arts (EA), with a trip to Taipei up from grabs for the winning clan.
EA approached AGASA, which runs the largest
online league in the country on behalf of MSSA, to run a tournament for the PC
game, Battlefield 2142, which is being released in the country on Friday.
Registration for clans consisting of eight players opens today on the AGASA site (www.agasa.co.za) and gamers can start buying
the game on Friday. Gamers will have to play with a licensed copy of the game
and will have until Friday the third of November to register for the tournament.
The roster will then be available from noon on the fourth of November on the AGASA website and the round robin leg of the
tournament will run online from Monday the sixth of November to Friday the 19th
of November. The semi finals will be held on the 20th of November and the
finals of the 21st of November.
Claire Gobey, EA marketing manager, says if the winning clan resides outside
Gauteng, they will be flown to Johannesburg.
“The team will then be flown courtesy of EA to the knock out tournament in
Taipei, which will take place on the 2nd of December, where they will compete
head on with teams from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand,
Hong Kong, Singapore and India,” she says.
With BF having such a big following in South Africa, EA is excited to partner
with MSSA for the first time to send South African gamers to an international
BF tournament, Gobey concludes.
This has been an exceptional year for the AGASA league. We wish to thank all
the players for their participation in the league and hope to see all of you
register for the 2007 season.
We require more information from players registering for the 2007 season as
part of the MSSA affiliation. To enter and play in the MMSA league as administrated
by AGASA) is for the second consecutive
year free of charge. We do however require the R50-00 registration fee payable
for your annual MSSA membership, which is valid from 01 November 2006 to 31
October2007 and allows you to compete in all the games supported by MSSA.
Please remember to register your clan first. Players can only register for the
league once their respective clans are registered. In the drop down menu
dealing with the league, please select the Premier League.
A complete set of rules for the tournament will be available soon.