This past weekend, I was lucky enough to be in Toronto for the Cineplex WorldGaming Canadian Championships 2016 featuring Call of Duty Black Ops III, and it was awesome. The competition was fierce, the crowd was great and the winner walked away with a $20,000 grand prize.
For the past couple of months WorldGaming has been doing online qualifiers, which then led to regional qualifiers held in Cineplex theaters across Canada. The regional winners then came to Toronto’s own Scotiabank Theater this past weekend to crown the champion.
Upon arriving at Scotiabank Theatre you could tell this was going to be a fun event. WorldGaming staff were there to help everyone get to where they needed to go, such as showing us where to lineup to get into the auditorium for the event. As the line up grew, a hype man came out to get people even more pumped up. He got the line to cheer and do the wave a few times, as we were just about to enter the decked out auditorium for the start of the finals.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed the setup they had. In front of the big screen they had 12 gaming stations and a station setup for the two commentators. So there would be 12 players, simultaneously doing 6, 1vs1 matches, until the numbers dwindled as competitors were eliminated. As they played, there would be live feed from players on the big theatre screen. Sometimes 4 players, so you could see both sides of two matches in progress and depending on the action and what the commentators were focused on, they would enlarge one or two screens at a time. Regardless of what was being viewed on screen it all looked great and the commentators did a great job of keeping us focused on the action at the right times.
So as the tournament progressed and they changed out the players, WorldGaming was also doing little contests (such as who could cheer the loudest and who can toss a t-shirt the farthest into the crowd) and prize giveaways. People won copies of Call of Duty Black Ops III for PS4, PlayStation Network cards, Black Ops Mega Bloks sets and T-Shirts. The crowd loved all of it and one section even got nicked named the “WOOO CREW” since they were certainly the most hyped up out of the crowd.
Before the final matches were played there was a big WorldGaming announcement. The hype man was passed a note, and with bated breath we waited. After a moment he let us know that the next Cineplex WorldGaming Championships will feature the game Street Fighter V!!!
With 30 of the original 32 members eliminated only TheAnonAlly and EvanHoller were left to fight it out for first place. They went through 3 matches and it came right down to the wire but in the end TheAnonAlly gained the upper hand and claimed his victory as the Cineplex WorldGaming Championships’ grand prize winner. TheAnonAlly was awarded a giant cheque for $20,000. You could tell he was certainly pretty pleased but also very humble as when asked what he planned to do that night. He said, he just wanted to go home and rest. I can hardly blame him as I’m sure playing in that tournament was pretty intense after all. So congrats to TheAnonAlly, well played indeed!
With all that being said, it was a great tournament and I had a great time, even considering I don’t play Call of Duty Black Ops III. It was a lot of fun to see my first eSports event and I’m looking forward to more as eSports are going to be a big thing here in Canada in the next couple of years.
Stay tuned here for more info on upcoming WorldGaming events and be sure to check out the WorldGaming website as well since anyone can join in on the action and who knows maybe you will be the next Cineplex WorldGaming Champion!
