Cyber Slam

A screen shot of the Cyber Slam Forums

Cyber Slam (also known as CyberSlam) was the Tournament and gamer division of CBN Media, which operated between 2003 and the middle of 2010. Most of the action for Cyber Slam took place on the Cyber Slam forums both during events and between them.

Cyber Slam's tournaments were run as a gaming democracy with players submitting their ideas and suggestions on how the events could best be run. The games community directed the event, played in the event and submit feedback to the website managers for improving future events. Prizes were organised by Cyber Slam's managers to ensure the community is rewarded for their tournament support.

Cyber Slam came into the public eye by hosting the Australian Halo PC Tournament, which saw JoshH (then known as HoOh++) flying to the United States of America for the International Halo PC Finals (2004).

In May, 2004, Cyber Slam hosted the Australian Battlefield Vietnam Tournament for Electronic Arts. This Tournament was of significant importance for online gaming in Australia as it set the precedence for all large Australian events that followed. The first prize was $AU15,000 - the highest amount offered for any gaming event in Australia at the time - and was held completely online.

Official Tournaments

Australian Halo PC

The Australian Halo PC Tournament took place towards the end 2003 with online rounds. The final was held in Sydney at a LAN Cafe called iStarZone. HoOh++ was victorious on the day and was flown to the USA in early to 2004 to represent Australia at the International Halo PC Finals.

Cyber Slam Halo Ladder

The Cyber Slam Halo Ladder was small tournament with a first prize of $AU100 per week, to be played over 20 weeks. This took place from April, 2004.

Australian Battlefield Vietnam Tournament

The Australian Battlefield Vietnam Tournament was held completely online. The event started in May, 2004. Originally the event was announced as a 5vs5. This was soon changed to a 10vs10. The prize money for the event was $AU15,000. The final was between 6pack and Lex Talions, with 6pack being victorious.

ACON5

In May 2005, Cyber Slam were official hosts of the Australian Regional Finals of ACON5, the annual global gaming tournament sponsored by Universal abit and other hardware vendors. The qualifiers of the online components of both Counter-Strike 1.6 and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne were flown to Sydney for the LAN grand final. F-Zer0 (Function Zero) beat XR (Xtreme Revolution) and YGS (You Got Served) in CS1.6, while Philbot dominated the Warcraft 3 event. F-Zer0 were flown to China for the Global Finals, however Philbot could not attend and fellow qualifer Paz was sent in his place.

Cyber Slam Battlefield 2 Tournament

From October to November 2005, Cyber Slam held a Battlefield 2 tournament with a first prize of $AU20,000. It was an online tournament which culminated in a grand final LAN event ("GameSphere") which was held at Sydney Gamers' League SGL on the 19th of November, 2005. Notably, for the two teams who made it to the grand final, aK^ and aK^^ (Anarchy Krew), it resulted in a substantial boost in their reputations as amongst Australia's best professional gamers. However, both sects of Anarchy Krew are highly competitive amongst themselves due to aK^^ consisting predominantly of former LAB (Little Aussie Battlers) members. LAB disbanded after the notoriety of its leader, "Booth", established the clan as the most egotistical players in competitive leagues - mainly due their highly skilled but arrogant players in comparison to the community. In the end, it was aK^ who won home the $AU20,000.

Game servers

Cyber Slam hosts a number of game servers, which are mostly run by the players. These servers include:

• Halo PC
• Halo CE
• Counter-Strike: Source

Downfall

From 2008 onwards, popularity slowly dwindled. The community eventually reached a state where the gaming servers and forums were rarely used at all, and the lack of support for more current titles ultimately led CyberSlams' demise. It therefore followed, that in the middle of 2010, CBN Media pulled the pin on CyberSlam. The CyberSlam Homepage now reads:

After much thought and some sadness we have decided to withdraw support for the CyberSlam.com.au website and forum. In it's [sic] heyday CyberSlam was a thriving player community, where we all spent much time playing games online, competing in organised tournaments and having pro-active discussions through the forums. It was as much fun organising competitions as your feedback said it was to play in them.

However over time our attention has been directed elsewhere, and with that the opportunity is now open for some one else. If anyone would like to continue the CyberSlam website, or do something with large community of registered players, we'd love to hear from you.

Email me - cyberslam(AT)cbnmedia.com.au

Best regards,

Charlie Brown CyberSlam Chief Admin

http://cyberslam.com.au

While this alone saddened members, unfortunately, many precious memories, screenshots and videos were lost forever when the forums went offline.

References

1. WILD - Coverage of the Cyber Slam Battlefield 2 Tournament on Australian Television, Channel 7, Saturday 31st Dec, 2005 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST
2. Australians on target at Cyber Games - By Louisa Hearn, Sydney Morning Herald, November 18, 2005.
3. GamersHell.com - Out of Hell Information about the BF2 Tournament, October 28, 2005.
4. Blue's News Competition entry for the Cyber Slam Battlefield 2 event, October 28, 2005.
5. GotFrag eSports - Information about ACON 5 event, (registration required).
6. Acon5 Australia Editorial - Opinion by Mike 'azog' Longley, who later assisted in the running of the ACON5 Australian grand final.
7. AusXbox - Information about the Australian Battlefield Vietnam Tournament.
8. 3DAvenue - Information and write-up about Cyber Slam Halo event.

Related links

• CBN Media (parent company)
• Cyber Slam (main site)
• Cyber Slam Forums (direct link to forums)
• Cyber Shack (Radio show based on tech and video games)

References