Ventus Gaming Emerges

South Africa sees the birth of another multi-gaming organisation (MGO), this time in the form of Ventus Gaming.

The MGO has launched with supporting four PC games in the form of Heroes of Newerth (HoN), DotA, Counter-Strike and Quake Live. On console the MGO supports FIFA and Guitar Hero.

Pieter “Cyrus” Venter, founder of Ventus, says the idea of launching the MGO started in August 2009.

“Due to us not wanting to be another MGO that comes and goes, it was decided we would wait for a while and make sure everything is in order before we go public. After several months of planning, that time is now,” he says.

In getting all the planning done, Ventus has managed to get its website up and running and also secured a host of sponsors, which include Cooler Master Taiwan, Samsung, Rectron Holdings, Web Africa and Clans-SA. Each supply equipment, broadband or hosting, depending on the company's business.

Teams have also been finalised. One of the top dogs in HoN right now, Kai, will be coming under the Ventus wing as well as the DotA team Tankh.

The Counter-Strike team consists of a mix between Boondocks and some ex Bravado players, while Telkom / EA FIFA 10 Roadshow champ Matthew Bosch will come on board for FIFA, and Guitar Hero stalwart Mark Dennison will come on board for Guitar Hero.

Quake Live sees players Micele ‘Azul’ Aleksandrov, Robert 'draven' Szlanina, and Henk 'Adrenalin' Boshoff join Ventus.

But why no Call of Duty 4 (CoD4) or Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (BFBC2) teams? Venter says that the MGO don't want to rush in getting a CoD4 team as the top teams at the moment are already in MGOs, and Ventus doesn't want to fill the spot with just any team.

“As to BFBC2, the game is still very new and we want to see how it plays before we choose a team. But we're definitely planning to have a team before rAge 2010,” Venter adds.

The MGO has taken up a DotA team to support both the HoN and DotA communities simultaneously, Venter says, adding that the communities are definitely different now despite the game being similar.

“We actually originally just had the DotA team, but when Kai approached us for HoN we couldn't miss the opportunity.

“It is also important to note that the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) has chosen DotA for this year and it will most likely stay for quite a few years, even if the competitive scene in SA dies. Our DotA team plays on Garena every night and frankly we don’t need to have competition in SA to have competition going,” he says.

Venter says Ventus have a very simple vision and want to become the top MGO in the country by putting in a lot of time and effort.

“We aim at getting international experience by competing online. When we get the opportunity to attend international events we will have the experience and hopefully perform.

“We believe in friendship and camaraderie, while keeping it professional. We aim to have events where we get together as one organisation and just have fun and build friendships,” he says.

Venter believes that his experience with XploIT as an MGO, which no longer exists, has given him a lot of experience in terms of what went wrong, and by looking at MGO's such as Pantheon, Bravado and MiNt he can see where they're doing things right. He believes the lessons learnt will keep Ventus from being a flash-in-the-pan MGO.

“Some of the unique factors about Ventus, though, is that we're starting with sponsored equipment and Internet from our launch day. As far as I know, that's a first. We are also the first MGO that has taken up console players under our wing,” he says.

Venter hopes to see all the Ventus teams keep their current top standings or improve. In particular, he hopes to see the Quake Live players help each other to improve and take top spots in local events.

“If there are any events like Dreamhack or ESWC this year then I would like to see one of them go overseas and represent us there,” he says.

He has a lot of faith in the Counter-Strike team, who will play both Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source, he says. He adds that the team have a lot of synergy with styles that fit together well.

“For Guitar Hero, Mark just needs to repeat what he did last year. He won every event hosted, from the KZN Championships to Nationals, to Rage Qualifiers for the World Cyber Games (WCG). He went to China and represented South Africa with his National Colours. If he can just manage to keep that going and work on gaining international experience for future years that would be great,” he says.

He is sure Bosch, playing FIFA 10, will also be able to keep up the top performance he is giving at the moment. “He doesn't have to win every event but just needs to keep his skill and performance on the increase, like he is doing now,” Venter says.

So what does Ventus stand for? Venter says it is Latin for 'Wind'.

“That is also where our slogan comes from, which is 'The Invisible Force'. We wanted to follow the trend set by many international, and some local, MGO's by having a Latin or Greek name,” he says.

The full line-up

DotA - Previously tankh

• Anthony 'scant' Hodgson (Captain)
  
• Mike 'nakor' Jones
  
• Wessel 'Freez' Louwrens
  
• Gerrit 'Death' Willigenburg
  
• Liang 'Kspr'Cai

• Sakkie 'RandomHero' Basson (Captain)
  
• Mark 'iLLuSioN' Woodland
  
• Nicholas 'Prodegy' Bowler
  
• Justin 'smke' Probyn
  
• Riaan 'azN_DoMz' Visser

• Mark 'DarthPenguin' Dennison

• Matthew 'Cheezy' Bosch

• Henk 'Adrenalin' Boshoff
  
• Micele ‘Szarko’ Aleksandrov
  
• Robert 'Draven' Szlanina

• Connor 'KING' Laming (Captain)
  
• Dean 'HackeM' Seyfried
  
• Jandrey 'JiN' Venter
  
• Marco 'Lost' Fourie
  
• Marchant 'StripflOw' Laauwen