Will Video Game Players Turn Pro?

Oct. 7, 2004 -- — Like most athletes, Jan Cifra is guided by a deeply held belief: Losing to a competitor is something to be avoided at all costs.

"The first thing you have to have: You have to hate losing. That's the main drive," says the 22-year-old Cifra, a university student from Slovakia. "When you hate to lose, you want to win as much as possible… you want to be the best."

And over the last year Cifra has devoted at least three hours every day — depending on his commitments to studies and girlfriend — to training and studying the strategy of his top opponents. Now he has traveled thousands of miles to San Francisco hoping to walk home with the gold — in video games.

Cifra and hundreds of players from around the world have flocked to the fourth-annual World Cyber Games championships being held in California's city by the bay. There, players will compete in one of eight "events" — popular video games ranging from FIFA Soccer 2004 to a terrorist combat game known as Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. And at the end of competition on Sunday, winners will walk away with top bragging rights — and thousands of dollars in cash prizes.

Spurred by the growth of the Internet, home computers and video game entertainment, tournaments such as the WCG have become increasingly popular.

When the WCG tournament was first held in 2000, 10,000 players from 17 nations competed in preliminary rounds in their home countries. In the final round of competition, held in South Korea, 174 players competed for $200,000 in prizes. The tournament's largest sponsor then was the South Korean electronics giant Samsung.

This year, more than 1 million players, from 64 countries, registered for the preliminary rounds of play. Over the course of national competitions, about 700 players were left standing to compete in this week's grand final competitions in San Francisco — the first city outside of South Korea to host the international game play.