Clan Review: Ventus Gaming South Africa

Ventus Gaming. The newest and most successful Multi Gaming Organisation in South Africa. Yesterday we had the opportunity to catch up with Pieter ‘Cyrus’ Venter, the founder.

Ventus has a radical history, however as I told Pieter yesterday — we’re not going to dwell on the past. eGamer is all about the future — so this will be our focus. To be honest, we don’t feel that we need to talk about the history of Ventus Gaming. The future looks bright, and we want to know what they are up to. However, if you are interested in the history behind Ventus visit their Wikipedia page here.

The organisation sports 9 different divisions run by six different managers — or non-playing staff. Furthermore each division holds their own division manager which handles the team line-up. Pieter said that top-level management will only interfere with the teams if the division manager asks them to do so, or if the players complain about the division manager.

Ventus is the first ever legal entity for clan gaming. Their founders are bound by the Closed Corporations Act of 1984, and this essentially means that they have a duty to perform. Following their fiduciary duties as CC owners, Ventus will be able to enter into contracts on behalf of the team. This in turn limits their liability, but also shows potential sponsors that they are not only bound by the law, but that they have also invested time and effort into potential success.

Gaming organisations acting as a legal entity is something new in South Africa. Overseas teams have proven that you would need to create a legal body to succeed, and this seems to be the plan with Ventus.

We mentioned that Ventus holds nine different divisions. They include: Call of Duty 4, Counter Strike (both 1.6 and Source), DotA, Heroes of Newerth, Warcraft III, Quake Live, Fifa ’10 (PS3), Guitar Hero (Xbox 360) and an Overclocking team.

Past MGO’s in the country only ever held about three or four teams max. They never ever included console or hardware teams into their roster. Ventus seem to be trying something new, and we’re yet to see if it works to their advantage.

Staff members for Ventus include Pieter ‘Cyrus’ Venter (recruitment and sponsors), Jéan-Paul ‘Jeeva’ Avenant (Webmaster and competitions), Flipi ‘alcardu’ Portman (Editor), Husain ‘phANT1m’ Haffejee (journalist — you’ll notice he works with us too), Melanie ‘PiTi’ Bosman (marketing) and finally Goddy ‘Vivi’ Roodt (graphics).

We’ve quoted a large body of results from the divisions. We’d like to familiarize you with their success:

• V|COD approached us soon after we launched. They were in the 3rd Division of Telkom DoGaming Online League at that point, but got promoted to Division 2 in leg 2. Leg 2 finished yesterday and they were undefeated which means they will be promoted to Division 1 for leg 3. We aim to get to Premier league for leg 4 and then to get a top3 placing at rAge.
• V|CS joined us 1 week before we went live/public and have since then gone through a bit of a lineup change. The captain quit CS to focus on studies which got some players to lose motivation. We then reformed with a new lineup (only 2 of the original lineup still with us). The new lineup is currently underperforming but they are improving after each practice and they are planning on bootcamping in these upcoming holidays. They are currently in the DoGaming 1st Division and will most likely stay there for leg 3. They plan on getting to Premier League by leg 4 and to win rAge. There is a chance that CS 1.6 Dreamhack qualifiers will be held at rAge and in that case they will most likely rather enter that than the DoGaming CSS championships.
• V|DOTA had a few internal spats, but all has been resolved. They have taken 1st place in Twilight League Season 1, SynCidy March and SynCidy April. They plan to enter Twilight Season 2 and any other local online comps that are coming up. Thanks to our sponsors they are able to compete on Garena against European teams to increase their skill level to international standards.
• V|HON has yet to lose a match against a South African team. They won the DoGaming Leg 1 & Leg 2 as well as the S2 Games comp held at WITS University in March. They plan on continuing this streak. They have been competing internationally against various teams and will be entering the HoN World Cup in June. They are all based in Cape Town and will therefore be competing at OC on a monthly basis (when the lan version gets released). They will also be competing at rAge (if DoGaming hosts HoN there) and plan to win it.
• V|WC3 consists of 3 players who have been competing for years. They play on EU servers as the local scene is rather dead. (once again thanks to Web Africa for the unshaped accounts). They are competing in the MSSA online League and have won all their matches so far convincingly. They will be invited to National Team Trials and hope to be chosen for the national team which will be flown to Korea to compete in the International eSports Federation (IeSF) Championships
• V|QL consists for 3 players who have all competed in Quake 3 for years and now Quake Live. They recently won the 1st Ventus Quake Live Sprint Cup (16 May). more about that below. They also won the miNt Quake Live Cup in March as well as the MSSA Gauteng Provincial Championships.
• V|FIFA has won the Telkom/EA FIFA09 Roadshow in December after winning the Johannesburg Regional Qualifiers in October at rAge and then the national finals in Pretoria. Unfortunately there has been a lack of competitions lately, but he plans on entering the MSSA National Championships and to be chosen for the IeSF Championships in Korea.
• V|GH won everything held in 2009 from Provincials, to Nationals, to WCG Qualifiers (rAge). He got flown to China to represent SA but could unfortunately not exit the group stages (like many other SA teams). He plans on repeating 2009 by winning everything hosted locally and hopefully improve on his results at the WCG.
• V|OC has been overclocking for 2 years now and has won the GOOC SA Qualifiers and will be flown to Indonesia for the Regional Qualifiers in June.

Other News: The DotA team will participate in the Razer Challenge (1024 teams participating), while Ventus HoN came third in an international event  (Gamereplays.org warm-up tourney) — they lost to Fnatic.

* Extract from Ventus Gaming itself.

Ventus Gaming are involved in almost every aspect of competitive play. They host tournaments and they attend LANs for recognition and prizes.

As previously stated, I was able to share a few kind words with Pieter yesterday afternoon.

For those unfamiliar with Pieter, he has a long history. He previously ran a Multi Gaming Organisation in 2007 where he later joined forces with the MSSA. The previous MGO known as XploIT was involved with the MSSA as well as with Vodacom. They would have been the first team to receive sponsorship by Vodacom, however internal relations at Vodacom halted their gaming endeavours.

There is a shocking history behind Pieter’s attempt at success, and it’s amazing how he never gave up. No matter what the community said or did, he carried on. Pieter now runs one of the top teams in the country.

Thanks to Pieter, Ventus Gaming holds three major sponsors – WebAfrica for ADSL accounts, Samsung for electronics and Cooler Master for gaming accessories and chassis.

During the chat with Pieter he was slightly hesitant to reveal all his plans, but we managed to find out why he started an MGO opposed to an organisation which runs tournaments and big events with sponsors. Pieter hinted that, while he’d love to do major tournaments and events, the MGO idea would be the best start. Gaming in the country lacks competition, sponsors and enthusiasm. He plans to bring all of this back with Ventus Gaming. In the near future don’t be surprised to see Ventus involved in various gaming aspects.

While Pieter feels competition in the country is important, he assures me that they would rather be friends with rival teams opposed to serious competitors.

“While rivalry is good, it should stay in-game. When it comes to the management of MGO’s they need to work together to grow eSports in SA and not against each other,” he said.

Their competition between Bravado Gaming was described — to me — as, friendly.

When I asked about the legal entity idea he said that it allows for proper structure and a sense of security. Teams will be able to exist longer as there is more structure and risk behind the idea of a company built around gaming.

Ventus Gaming currently holds three leading sponsors. I asked Pieter if they would help other teams obtain sponsors and he replied by saying that the near future definitely holds opportunity for this. At the moment their organisation needs slightly more stability and thereafter they will try to help the community.

I asked Pieter where he gained inspiration for the MGO and he said that teams such as SK and Fnatic were good inspiration. Moreover, the MYM path was not the one he’d like to follow. Ultimately, his lucrative gaming goal would be similar to Vitrolic Gaming — an older international organisation.

With help from various international organisations, Pieter is looking at a bright gaming future. While I did comment on helping the community, it’s understandable that their first goal would be to better themselves.

I asked Pieter to describe what he would want Ventus to have by 1 January 2011, 1 January 2012 and 1 January 2015:

1 Jan 2011: Ventus has secured enough sponsors to send their teams to various events around the country with all expenses paid
1 Jan 2012: We start going international by sending teams over to international events
1 Jan 2015: We own a office similar to that of SK where our players can regularly bootcamp.

Ventus Gaming would like to hold divisions in most competitive games. Following this they would like their trophy cabinet to be used more than Manchester United, which isn’t far off as they have already trumped Arsenal FC.

But enough about cricket.

Girl teams? “A possibility”, he said. If things change with female competition Ventus would look into adding girls to the entity. That’s all Pieter could comment about girl-gamers. He said that not much thought has gone into this.

Finally – I had to ask. The name. Ventus Gaming being related to Venter. Pieter said, “well I just looked for a latin name that sounds good and has a meaning we can use in gaming,”

“It just happens to turnout to sound similar to my surname,” he added.

Ventus is latin for Wind – Their slogan is: The Invisible Force

eGamer’s Overview:

While gaming is changing, we definitely feel that Ventus are doing something right. Despite our slightly-negative attitude to gaming organisations in the country, something just feels right about this.

We preferred to look into the future of Ventus and not really the past. Their history is open to everyone on their Wiki page.

Sponsors, watch out. This team means business.

After being around the local gaming community for about 10 years, gaming feels fresh again. And while they might share ideas with other organisations, they are the only ones risking everything they have to make this work.

Of course, they cannot build the community alone — so why don’t we all try and help out?

To contact Ventus Gaming you can click here.

We’d like to open the comment section for questions. We’ve asked Ventus staff to, uh – troll – the comments with replies to any questions or suggestions you might have.

Unfortunately there are no team pictures of Ventus just yet as they are yet to play locally as a team.