The temperature in the city has been on the rise, from a modest 36 degrees it scorched up to 44 degrees within a week, but this did not deter a large bunch of eager multiplayer enthusiasts and yours truly from turning up at Rai University, in the middle of an Industrial area in Delhi to frag the living goodness, out of sinful souls that dared to traverse onto uncharted lands.
Cutting out on the pseudo-cool terminology, I’d say the competition was more of a proving arena for pro players who seemed to be fine tuning their senses for the gala event of WCG 2007,the tourney not only exposed their flaws in their strategy but also saw new blood emerge worthy enough to beat the pro’s at their own game.
The competition was spread over a period of two days, 18 staggering hours (11 a.m. to 8 p.m.) were the official timings, the actual thing lasted for only 12 hours roughly) and five games covering most of the basic gaming genres namely Sports, Strategy and FPS. The games were WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne, Trackmania Nations (an arcade/simulation racing game By French developers Nadeo) replaced the king of (inset yawn) street racing NFS, PES 6 was a welcome change from FIFA (its an European event after all), Quake IV filled in the FPS gap and good but really old Counter Strike 1.6 (wine for most Indian gameaholics).
The national finals are on 10th June in Mumbai (WTC, Cuffe Parade) and the winners get a full expense paid trip to Paris (Expo Park) for the Grand finale between 5th and 8th of July. A word about the Sponsors- Indiatimes.com, Bingo (ITC) supported by Rai Foundation, Radio Mirchi and Times Now, and now our regular rant continues.
The first day of the event found me trotting through the Thar Desert to reach the venue, the event was being held in “The Cafeteria” placed in the midst of a number of office cubicles, I had thoughts of Alice’s journey through the rabbit hole whilst navigating through the maze, I was actually surprised the door at the end opened up to a huge air conditioned room.
The first thing that caught my eye was a Bingo stall, where all the participants had thronged in great numbers to savor unlimited free Servings of their products (A Variety of Indian Crisps), it got better inside the actual game arena with everyone getting a pair of wiii-ings to fly, (they were giving away free cans of Red Bull to everyone who was present in the vicinity).High on caffeine and deep fried potatoes, the event got underway around 12.30 p.m. As time passed by the hall was bursting to it seams, with a lot of participants sitting outside the game arena witnessing rounds of C.S. on a projector at a corner of the Hall.
I asked one of the organizers about the turnout and he said it was roughly 25-30 participants per game excluding CS, which had 32 clans registered (or 160 participants), makes the grand total somewhere close to 250 participants, but people could take part in multiple events as well. So I say the number of people actually present was close to 85 and I shall presume this number is significantly lesser than the turnout at WCG.
Amateur action ruled day one (anyone who could hold a mouse had turned up for the competition) but it was not long before the pros in the game slowly started to emerge and sent the undeserving amateurs back to their Graves.
I really liked all the neat equipment that the players had brought, all of them took CS really seriously with most of the players bringing in their personalized set of earphones, keyboard, mouse, mouse pads, they were also given gamepads for PES and Trackmania along with the regular keyboard option, making it a little easier for console veterans to take command of the games.
I munched on a lot of crisps while taking a look all around, there was something significantly different about the event than Reliance Gamebox Championship “FINALS” I had covered earlier, the event was not only hassle free from the technical side, but the mood was upbeat amongst the participants as well (or maybe it was those “Unlimited” Red Bull cans giving them a high). In short it was a well organized LAN party that had just gone wild and without a drop of alcohol entering anyone’s bloodstream.
The weather was lousier on the second day with my transport getting fudged up on the way, but the good thing was that it was a weekend so this time around; I was not a witness to the seemingly blank faces that had greeted me on the way to the door of the cafeteria. The entire arena was much calmer than the previous day with the round of matches continuing to decide the three finalists who would get an opportunity to compete in Mumbai.
The list goes as follows:-
Counter Strike:
- 1) Rev
2) Sync
3) blitz
Quake 4:
- 1) Imposter
2) Godsy
3) Dark Vega
Warcraft III – The Frozen Throne:
- 1) Tirumarai aka atavistic
2) Losrd CSA
3) Last Chance
Trackmania Nations:
- 1) Akaash aka damagecase
2) JOJO
3) Manish
Pro Evolution Soccer 6:
- 1) Avik Nandi
2) Meghesh
3) Chaos Dragon
Well there were a number of hassles in arriving to the final C.S. list; the clan from Hyderabad “Executioners” had a slight disagreement with the organizers, who according to them wanted all three teams to be from Delhi, this newly formed clan had to take on Rev (the best in Delhi) to prove their worth, this match was one of the closely contended matches with Rev beating them narrowly (16-14) so in the end they did get the wild card entry to Mumbai.
The dampening effect of the event came when most of the winners of all the games were not keen on going to Mumbai and participating in the finals, since they had to bear the conveyance charges and were not being sponsored(so they had to content themselves by filling their bags with packets of Bingo’s). The event organizers cited lack of funds as a major cause for this blockade, this obstacle is present everywhere, even the Gamebox Championship Finalists were apparently not confirmed till the very last day, but it is really sad to see such talent go to waste because of lack of initiative, when will people realize the fact that gaming is serious business and is more lucrative most business of glamour.
As the closing curtains drew upon the event, there were squeals of joy and excitement running across amongst the few participants who had decided to carve a niche in Mumbai. Thus ended another day in the pages of Indian Gaming, with WCG right around the corner I shall have my hands full for another weekend in the coming future.
–Neelesh Mukherjee