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My name is Trevor “qu1k_sh0t” Henry, clan leader and captain for =BFB= and the laRd team, this is the third part of the MPLD competition that took place over the weekend of 5 – 7 September 2009! As a sponsored player with one of the strongest teams in Call of Duty 4 Online in South Africa, I took some new Logitech peripherals to a monthly LAN in Pretoria. Part 1 introduces this small series and why I am here. Part 2 looks at a few of the games and this the final part, is a small testament to the Grand Final between team xP and team sG. A brief recap of the tournament so far, shows that =BFB= Trevor "qu1k_sh0t" Henry and =BFB= Andrew "xiR" Harper competed alongside 3 other gamers against some of Joburgs strongest teams! Coming out undefeated so far, xiR's Pimps had made it to the Grand Final of the tournament. With no losses to their name, in order for sG to win, they would need to beat xP twice!

The Incredible Connection MSSA 2009 National LAN Championships took place over the weekend of the 14th - 16th August. The competition was fierce, with 150 gamers competing across 8 different games! Including the ever popular COD4, DotA, Fifa 09, Guitar Hero World Tour and even some golden oldies, Quake 3 and Starcraft. This event was the first large event that Incredible Connection was directly involved in, and we managed to bring Verbatim to the party bringing on board some prizes to the party in addition to the honour of winning Provincial and National Colours! The games started early on the Saturday Morning with competitors setting up their rigs from 8 am. For anyone that plays computer games, that is very, very early.

[caption id="attachment_631" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Organised Chaos - Cape Town"] [/caption] I have been thinking about sports and the "sport" of online gaming. My own personal experience comes from Call of Duty 4, which is currently one of the largest and most stable competitive games played in South Africa. With roughly 50 teams competing online, it is anything but chaotic. AGASA, the powerhouse when it comes to competitive gaming in South Africa hosts different leagues and divisions splitting teams of similar skill and ability into groups of 12 teams playing online 3 times a year. The final of the online leagues is hosted at the premiere electronics expo rAge. For all intents and purposes this is a formal sporting event. Teams compete with set rules, in set matches and in certain time frames. Should teams or players digress on the rules they can be harshly punished. Just like any other competitive event, eSports functions run and operate under very similar pinciples. There are tournament specific rules and regulations and the particular tournament decides how to go about seeding teams that have entered and how best to represent the overall winner of the competition. However when you look at the definition of the word "sport", almost all the definitions include at least one phrase relating to physical activity and ability. Taken from freedictionary.com, "Physical Activity that is goverened by a set of rules..." With that in mind, can one look at computer or console games being classified as a sport? If you do some digging and googling it is difficult to find the definition of eSport or anything similar in any official recognised dictionary. Wikipedia however says this on the topic, Electronic sports, abbreviated e-sports or eSports, is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively. Other terms include competitive gaming, cybersports, cyber athletics (used by the CPL) and V-Sports (used by the GGL) These games which are considered electronic sports normally belong to the first-person shooter, real-time strategy, or sports game genres.