KEY POINTS:
All play and no sleep was the weekend for nearly 800 hardcore gamers battling for a place at this year's World Cyber Games.
The country's top gamers turned out to the New Zealand qualifiers at the TelstraClear Pacific Events Centre in Manukau for the three-day event. Hundreds of spectators watched them combat one another in popular cyber games such as Counter Strike, Warcraft 3 and Halo 3 on Xbox 360 and their own PCs.
Dylan Beck, 18, flew up from Dunedin for the event. The atmosphere was "buzzing", he said.
"I've never seen so many people in one place. It was pretty intense. I'd say I probably got only six or seven hours' sleep out of the three days."
Competitors varied from young teenagers to middle-aged and older hardcore and keen cyber gamers.
Mr Beck said he would not call himself a "hardcore gamer" - although many people he knew would say he was. "With things like uni, it has to take a back seat."
Nineteen winners were chosen to represent New Zealand. They will compete against 12 countries from the Asia-Pacific region in Singapore next month, before getting a chance to compete at the grand final of the 2008 World Cyber Games in Cologne, Germany, in November.
