eSports | Local group seeking to host tournament

Frederico Santos Rosário

Macau based electronic sports association, Grow uP eSports, is rebounding from a “disastrous” performance in a regional tournament over the weekend with a pledge to try to bring a similar competition to the MSAR next year.

Eight Macau-based players, using the “uP” preface to their gaming aliases to indicate their allegiance, competed in the Capcom Pro Tour Online 2017 Asia Event 2 tournament against more than 160 elite players from the region in the game Street Fighter V. Capcom Pro Tour (CPT) is a series of international tournaments, specifically for the fighting genre of online gaming, that is sponsored by video developer Capcom.

All eight Macau based players were bested in the tournament’s first round, leading Frederico Santos Rosário, the chairman of Grow uP eSports, to describe the competition as a “disaster”.

Nevertheless, he says that some of the players are at “Diamond-level or above,” meaning that they are ranked in the top-200 worldwide out of more than 500,000 accounts. He added that their knockout is testament to the skill of their opponents, many of whom are professional gamers that hail from more developed eSports jurisdictions like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

“None of the Macau [participants] managed to win [in the first round],” said Santos Rosário, who also competed under the gaming alias, “HugoMachine”.

“Although it was kind of a disaster for us, the opportunity to experience high-level fights from top Asian players is quite rare. It was the best chance for us to gauge our current skill level under real tournament pressure,” he added. “The culture in Asia is that only the best or confident ones sign up to the tournament.”

Speaking to the Times, the association chairman said that he wants to bring a similar CPT tournament to Macau in 2018, as part of Grow uP eSports’ mission to put Macau gaming on the map.

“My passion is to make Macau a CPT [hub],” said Santos Rosário. “I am in talks with the right people now and I see a possibility to bring a CPT offline tournament to Macau next year. I’m doing this with the help of Grow uP eSports purely for passion and this is why all of the participants from Macau don’t mind adding “uP” in front of their names to help grow [the association].”

The next CPT tournament is due to be held in Hong Kong in August, where Santos Rosário says they “will fight harder and continue to gain experience.”

All-female Macau/HK team announced

Grow Up eSports this week announced the latest addition to the association’s line-up of competitive teams – an all-female League of Legends team. Formerly known as MissRippers, the team comprises seven members who are all based in Macau and Hong Kong. Lam Hoi Yan, who will now use the gaming alias uP Pudding, is the only team member from Macau. According to a statement released by Grow uP eSports, the team ranked first in a tournament at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Its members say that they want to shed more light on women in the video gaming community. They also aspire to be the first women’s team from the region to compete in a League of Legends tournament in an international eSports Championship Series. League of Legends is one of the most popular online games worldwide, having recorded an average of 27 million daily players in 2014. The multiplayer, cooperative team game is a regular feature at eSports tournaments.