Team WYK-D from Wah Yan College (Kowloon) emerges as the victor of the inaugural tournament
Hong Kong, 29 August 2022 – To nurture students with digital skills and empower Hong Kong’s education sector to enter this Metaverse age and strengthen their integration of 3D technology into the education curriculum. Microsoft Hong Kong completed the finale of the inaugural Interschool Minecraft eSports Champion League on August 27, Day Two of the Cyberport Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum (DELF) 2022. Team WYK-D from Wah Yan College (Kowloon) was named as the champion out of 21 teams from local secondary schools that competed in the finale.
Photo 1: Microsoft debuted the inaugural Interschool Minecraft eSports Champion League
“The metaverse has created opportunities to reinvent education and entertainment with immersive experiences,” said Serena Cheung, Director of Public Sector Group at Microsoft Hong Kong. “As we enter this new era, Hong Kong needs to nurture a digital culture for our next generation with local educational practitioners.”
Cheung added: “We are pleased to see the education sector and society leveraging Microsoft’s Minecraft, a platform to learn essential digital skills and coding, to take education to the next level. With Minecraft, we can help equip our students with the capabilities they need for future success. We also wish this Minecraft competition, the first of its kind to be featured on an eSports stage in Hong Kong, would color the summer of the students with memories of excitement, teamwork and school spirit, just like any other sports events would do.”
With the growing popularity of eSports in recent years, Microsoft, together with its Global Training Partners, namely Cobo Academy, Coding101, Gamenoodlesoup and Koding Kingdom, debuted the Interschool Minecraft eSports Champion League in Hong Kong last October, in hope of cultivating students’ creativity, computational thinking, teamwork and problem-solving skills, as well as providing students with a more fruitful, interesting, and autonomous learning experience with e-sports elements. This competition is powered by Minecraft: Education Edition, a popular game-based learning platform well used by worldwide teachers, parents, and students. A total of 102 teams from more than 50 secondary schools in Hong Kong completed a series of online challenges in the past 9 months, and 21 top teams have successfully entered the final tournament to compete for the accolade.
Photo 2: Finalists competing at the final Champion Round
Finalists competed in a total of 3 qualifying rounds and 1 final round, in which they need to accomplish different Minecraft team missions which tested their skills in 1) speed and reaction, 2) coding knowledge, 3) problem solving, 4) collaboration, and 5) real-time team strategy. The final results of the Interschool Minecraft eSports Champion League are as follows:
Champion: Team WYK-D from from Wah Yan College (Kowloon)
1st Runner up: Team SIMP from CCC Kei Yuen College
2nd Runner up: Team MiTeen from SKH Bishop Baker Secondary School
This competition is also fully supported by Acer Hong Kong, Jabra and SmarTone as Technology Partners to provide a professional eSports experience to schools and teams. The event was powered by Acer’s Predator series of laptops as devices for competition, Jabra’s communication devices which enabled real-time communications for on-stage battles, and SmarTone’s 5G network with super-fast speed and low latency, as well as technical support throughout the whole competition.
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