When you think of the World Cyber Games in India, the first thing that comes in your mind is Indiagames. This time we decided to go and speak to Mr. Vishal Gondal, the CEO of Indiagames.
In 2007, Indiagames is planning to make WCG bigger and better than its predecessors. Mr. Gondal said, “Well, this year WCG is going to be bigger, better and a lot of action is going to happen this year. We are going to be unveiling the whole WCG plan in the next few weeks. We are working on this.”
They have also signed up last years WCG winners as their brand ambassadors and will hold coaching camps for the WCG 2007 this year. This has been done so that Indian gamers can go and improve his skills with the help of expert gamers at the camp. The brand ambassadors will be present at these camps too. One more thing that he said about the World Cyber Games was that they want to hold it early as there is going to be an Asian Championships happening in Singapore. So the event could be held in June or July 2007.
As of now, Indiagames is busy surveying gamers about the locations and the cities before they plan out the actual event. For the WCG 2006, Cochin, Calcutta, Jaipur and Chennai were dropped, which disappointed the gamers in those cities. So this time they have decided to take proper precautions and have put up a poll on the Indiagames website.
Speaking about why several cities were dropped in WCG 2006, Vishal Gondal explains, “We basically organize the event in each city, so that we have a minimum threshold of participation in each city and you would have seen that certain cities will not be meeting that threshold, which is why we had to drop those cities. That is exactly why we are running a poll this year, before, where we are actually specifically asking people to tell us what are the locations you have, because many cities didn’t have the proper locations and venues to organize the events. So we asked them please suggest us location and events. The second thing we are asking is that what is the level of participation, because we don’t want to go to a city and find ten gamers turning up for the event and the third thing, we are asking is whether there are any champions in your cities, so that is exactly what we are asking the people to poll. Because as you know that organizing an event and having low participation is definitely, not what our intention is.”
He later added, “So as I mentioned, it is a chicken and egg situation and last year we decided to focus on the six cities and make them well rather than doing on ten cities and doing not a good job in those cities. This year our plan is different, I am still not saying whether we will do it in six cities or ten cities. We have kept it on a poll and we are going to look at the response from the gamers. Certainly, if we do not get good responses in the cities, we cannot organize the tournament there; it is as simple as that.”
Besides the World Cyber Games 2007. Indiagames is also pursuing another initiative where they are working very closely with CII to get the Government of India recognize e-sports. Gondal stated, “We are trying to get the Government of India recognize e-sports. Today, one of the big issues in India is that while sports is recognized, e-sports is not. If you look at countries like China, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam where gaming is big, the government actually supports computer gaming. They have special incentives and if you are in college and a winner of gaming tournament, you are considered a proper winner. Today, while in schools and colleges, kids are promoted to play cricket and hockey. They are not encouraged to play FIFA Online or Counter-Strike or Need for Speed.”
He correctly feels that the perception has to change and thinks that the Government can play a large role in doing that by recognizing e-sports by making sure that schools encourage computer gaming. He does caution that there are good and bad games, like there are good and bad things in everything. Gondal further added that games like Age of Mythology, Age of Empires could be excellent for anybody who wants to build strategic skills. Likewise, Counter-Strike is first-rate for people to build on their concentration. Moreover, with that a big difference for India’s internet and broadband penetration can be achieved.
When we quizzed about the entry of next-gen gaming consoles in India, he quipped, “We are looking at getting at Xbox this year. We are talking with Microsoft on this and we hope to get Xbox as part of the WCG this year.” Indiagames is also looking forward to a program where ambassadors of Games on Demand will be organizing close to about fifty to eighty gaming events. That means there is going to be a gaming event in a different city and there will be smaller events in each city. For this, they have recruited top gamers like Rubin Pereira, Dixit, Oza and many other gamers who will not only coach amateur gamers but will also projected as gaming celebrities.
But when we asked him about gaming clans and Indiagames view on sponsoring them, Gondal said, “We currently are not sponsoring any gaming clans, what we actually do is sponsor people as celebrities. What we believe is that the way Sachin Tendulkar and Sania Mirza have been projected as gaming personalities, in gaming too we have different people who are going to be projected as celebrities in themselves. Currently, team celebrities are something we can look at but we decided to focus on individuals rather than teams at that stage. The other thing that we did was look at the age, Rubin is all of sixteen years, whom we have signed up, everybody else is between sixteen, and twenty-two years of age, so we are focusing on the individuals. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we will not be supporting clans, we are definitely looking at that. Our plan is different. Our plan is not just to sponsor somebody as a clan. Our plan is to look at how they grow gaming, as that is the key thing.”
This year we are looking forward to the WCG 2007 and we have a feeling all you gamers are looking forward to it too. We will be having an exclusive coverage of the event, so keep watching this space for more details.