Winner hopes to paint more positive picture of gaming, writes Don Sambandaraksa
Everyone loves a winner and Wirasit is officially Asia's fastest driver, at least when it comes to the game `Need for Speed'. He competes in the world championship in Cologne, Germany, later this year. |
Wirasit Kitwannakul drives a heavily modified Porsche 911. He has been the fastest driver in Thailand for many years, and this year he is officially the fastest in Asia and can usually lap a good racing driver over just five laps, being 30 to 40 seconds a lap faster than many other pros. The only thing is, he has never even sat in a real Porsche 911 and does this in the PC game Need for Speed.
Wirasit is the current Asian World Cyber Games car racing champion. The World Cyber Games Championship selects 14 games each year and holds national, regional and then world championships where individuals or teams battle it out against each other to be crowned world champion. This year, Thailand has selected six games - Counterstrike, Command and Conquer, Need for Speed, Fifa, Warcraft and DotA-Allstars - and sent the country's best to compete in Singapore, where Wirasit won the regional championship for Need for Speed, a driving simulator.
This is his eighth competition and Thailand's first gold. The world championships will be held in Cologne, Germany, from November 5 to 9.
Wirasit has just graduated with an MBA, and his family is supporting him to practise his in-game racing skills full-time.
He says that everyone loves and understands a winner, and with this in mind, the current Asian World Cyber Games Champion hopes to paint a more positive picture of video gaming in today's paranoid and pessimistic society.
Cyber games are all about quick reflexes. Last year, in the Need for Speed category, the champion was just 16, and most professional gamers are between 15 and 24. After that age, reflexes get slower and then they move into support and coaching, a role that Wirasit is looking into for next year.
He first got hooked on games with the classic first person shooter, Quake, back in 2002. "When you see two people fighting, you have to second guess them. It's not just about going there and shooting them, but more about getting into his head and thinking what he is thinking. It's down to strategy and planning. The same is true for Need for Speed," he said.
Wirasit is part of a team with other members from Brazil, the UK, the Philippines, Switzerland and Mexico. Most met online in competitions and became friends, exchanging tips and techniques. If anything, Wirasit says it's easier to trust pro-gaming friends as one quickly finds out if they are really good and if they are withholding information. In real life, people use one another, but it takes much longer to find out.
So, if he plays games all day and does not have a proper job, how is it different from addiction?
"People get addicted to chat and other things. Games at least have a clear objective, to win and I am committing a lot of time and effort to winning," he said.
While his parents are supporting him this year and have told him to hold off from getting a job and concentrate on the championship, it was not always like this. In the first few years, Wirasit said his parents were concerned, but consoled themselves with the fact that at least he was home and not getting in trouble on the streets. But once the wins and medals started coming in, they became proud of him.
The same was true for his classmates. Few knew about pro-gaming, but once he explained the level of competition and how many people he had to beat to get to the top, most people said "Wow".
Graphics and CPU power are just the icing on the cake, but that said he does have a 6600 Core2 Quad CPU and nVidia 8800GT graphics card bought last year. Far more important for certain pro-gamers is connectivity.
One of the reasons Wirasit focused on Need for Speed is that good Internet connectivity is not needed. People can practice off-line and compare lap times, or practice together and see "ghosts" of each other without crashing into one another. However, for first person shooters or football games, Internet latency here is a big problem. The best person in Thailand ends up with nobody to practice with, as the Internet here is so slow, but once he gets to Japan or Korea, he is creamed by the opposition.
Other games, such as Fifa or DotA need to be practiced in Internet cafe's or at big LAN parties, as they are team sports, again making serious practise a hassle.
In Japan or Korea, pro-gamers are celebrities and they can be put on a stage and fill entire stadiums with fans queuing just to see them play.
Asked if first person shooters make him aggressive, Wirasit said that they are games. Sure, he gets frustrated losing at times, or making mistakes, but it has taught him to meditate and keep calm.
He has not played Grand Theft Auto 4 yet, but he has played the last version, GTA3: San Andreas.
"At first it was weird. Why would you walk up to a total stranger and punch them in the face, but when you think about it, it's not different from movies which are not real either. Is it bad? I don't think it's bad enough to deserve the news it has received. If you look at the web boards or society, nobody agrees with the reports. It's only the media who think it's weird and newsworthy. Only media and the people who have never played games before," he said, adding that many people did not even understand the difference between massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which need time, money and levels; and the kind of games he plays, which are all about reflexes and strategy.
The local championships are sponsored by Samsung to the tune of 10 million baht a year. Other local sponsors include AMD/ATi and the Software Industry Promotion Agency under the Ministry of ICT. The champion has not been approached for sponsorship deals just yet, but he has been able to ask for sponsorship for equipment here and there.
Ultimately, it is like weightlifting. Before, nobody in Thailand cared about weightlifting, but now with the Olympic gold medals rolling in, everyone is following the sport. Wirasit hopes that success in Cologne will help raise awareness of this other side of gaming among people in Thailand.
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