SINGAPORE'S professional cybergamers have gone from heroes to almost zero in just seven months.

Last October, the nine-men, one-woman team called Singapore Swords thrust Singapore into the spotlight when they were crowned champions at the Pan-Asian leg of the Championship Gaming Series (CGS) in Kuala Lumpur. There, the team won all of their games in the professional championship event - bringing down cybergaming giants like South Korea, China and the eventual runners-up Australia.

It set a new milestone in Singapore's e-sports history. But the team reached a new low at the same competition this year.

This time, the same team fired blanks, losing all of its five matches except one, which was against the weakest team in the league, Dubai. It did not help that the Swords' ace player Wilson "Tetra" Chia lost his cool and hit his manager Aaron Aw on his left cheek. He was disqualified within the hour.

Aaron, who was the Swords' leading racer last year, had to take over the gloves from Wilson for the gongfu fighting game Dead Or Alive 4. Without Wilson, the Swords' chances were as good as dead. The Swords lost its third match to South Korea, won its fourth against Dubai and then lost the last against Malaysia.

Cybergaming is becoming a big thing among youths. Andy Reif, the chief executive of CGS, said in a telephone interview from the United States: "Video games are becoming the first choice of entertainment for the younger generation." Looking back at the history of Singapore's e-sports, it appears that Singapore has a knack of hitting new highs in competitions one year and then be in the doldrums the following year.

During the inaugural World Cyber Games (WCG) Asian competition in 2006, Singapore also emerged champions by winning two gold and two silver medals. At the same competition last year, it could only manage one silver and one bronze to take fourth position. And in 2005, Wilson grabbed Singapore's first medal at the WCG Grand Finals when he won a silver in Dead Or Alive 4. That medal remains Singapore's only medal at the Cyber Olympics.

Then in 2006 at the same championship, Wilson could make it only to the quarter-finals where he was edged out by a player from Holland. The CGS Pan-Asian competition seems to be a case of lightning striking for the third time. Perhaps what is lacking is mental strength.

At the recent event in Wuhan, China, the Swords lost its first match against the Sydney Undergrounds - last year's runners-up and this year's eventual champions - in a game that could have gone either way. After four of the five games were played, the Swords were ahead 13-12. The Swords' Counter- strike team placed Singapore closer to victory, winning 6-3 during the first half to give a four-point advantage. It only needed to gain three points out of nine in the second half, but it ended up getting thrashed 9-0 and was thrown out of the competition.

Had the Swords won that first match, its morale may have been boosted, Wilson might not have lost control and Singapore might have made it to the top two.

That is a lot of "ifs" but, for now, it seems that cybergaming in Singapore has hit new depths.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 13 May 2008.