The quest to become the champion of the multiplayer arena always manages to attract hordes of people from different parts of the country. The arena of professional gaming is coming up in a real serious way in India and it seems that this community will aid in the influx of the growth process of the relatively nascent industry.
The concept of World Cyber Games needs no introduction to any professional gamer, but for those who do not step beyond certain genres of the industry, WCG is the Olympic torch of the online gaming world, with nearly 70 participating countries and counting, this global event is poised to grow at an unprecedented rate in the next 10 years, and soon enough the world shall be engulfed in a vast array of online networks, with “Avatars” of the virtual world lunging for each other’s throats.
Getting down to the prelims held in New Delhi, the event was not dramatically different than those I’ve covered previously. Actually it would be an unwarranted want to expect something absolutely unique out of the entire event, since most of them are a sophisticated version of LAN parties. But I would definitely love to add how the whole bit of sponsorship wonders and it just seems to keep on growing and growing.
The first time I actually covered the finals of a major multiplayer event I was in the middle of a cooped up arena with a cacophony of noises echoing all across a hall. The event was held in midst of a gaming exposition which kind of made the whole thing a bit redundant and adding to that the star power of the show just made things worse. The next time was a lot better even though it was in a canteen of some de-recognized university, but hey it was air-conditioned, had an unlimited supply of crisps, Red bull and a few random females to hit on which made it bearable than the aforementioned event.
WCG was probably the best out of the lot, with a separate hall for the actual event to take place, along with an entire auditorium for the participants and visitors, who were being entertained by random musical acts on the first day whilst the initial rounds of the prelims were underway, a real crappy idea, but it kept the non gamers something to mindlessly wile away time. They also had a huge projector in the auditorium that was showcasing all the matches live. This auditorium also made a lot of difference to the entire event it made everything less chaotic and unbearable, inside the actual arena everything was in order with separate kiosks for the games being played, it was not a messy mangle of wires which otherwise made traversing through the arena a peril in its own right.
Samsung the global sponsor of the event had actually taken special notice to finer details, one of their chiefs actually came down to the arena to have a check on the running of the event, they even had press kits ready for the media which barged in a few moments after my arrival to take exclusive interviews and get expert comments from the Samsung representatives about the gaming industry. I actually overheard a reporter planning to ask one of the Samsung rep on the new mobile game that they were developing, even though Indiagames and Samsung are spelt completely in different ways.
Sponsorship holds a lot of ground, a few top end sponsors and you can have a bloody professional event. So here goes the list of sponsor’s involved: Samsung, Indiagames, Kingston, and Microsoft’s Xbox360 brand, the occasion being managed by live2own.net and their parade of enthusiasts.
The competition had six games starting off with the rustic and evergreen CS 1.6, followed by NFS: Carbon, Warcraft III: TFT, Age of Empires III, Project Gotham Racing 3(Xbox 360), and EA’s foot simulator FIFA07.
The first day actually saw a huge crowd pour in to register for the games. According to one of the chief organizers, the registration count was close to 1200 people, with a large chunk of teams signing up for CS alone. Amongst the crowd I saw a sea of familiar people along with the ocean of unfamiliar ones. Here’s a quick snippet of the two different sets of conversations that I engaged in.
Familiar Faces:
Them: Hello…you here to cover the event…
Me: Yeah…
Them: GameGuru.in right….
Me: Yeah…
Me: So when’s your match
Them: In a couple of minutes…
Me: best of Luck… (Followed by a brief smile)
Unfamiliar Faces:
Them: Where are you from?
Me: The media
Them: Which publication?
Me: GameGuru.in
Them: Is it a website?
Me: yeah…
Them: So when will this be put up?
Me: In a day or two…
Now I managed to talk to a Samsung rep, who went on to detail how the youth was influencing the country, why gaming had become so popular amongst the youth now-a- days, how everybody wanted to be a part of the growing gaming culture in India and the people at Samsung were pushing the boundaries in this sphere. They also gave lengthy sets of interviews to media discussing in great length about how their company was setting standards and forging ahead where a entire generation was concerned, to suck up to the media as much as possible they have even organized a special India Vs. Pakistan set of matches post finals in Mumbai.
I somehow stuck up a conversation with one such Journo who had absolutely no idea what CS was concerned with, but had to do a report on the growth of sub cultures in India, post 60 years of Independence. This particular individual kept repeating the term Second Life ‘n’ number of times and its unique nature of gameplay, even if the expression MMORPG seemed like a devious riddle, which could only be solved by the caped crusader.
However the real business of games went on as usual, teams competing against each other, a volley of explicit stuff form the losers followed by the regular shrieks of joy from the bunch of winners.
The second day saw the venue completely deserted, gone were the cameras and the official people, what remained was the bunch of pure professional gamers who loved to play games against each other. Now as I entered the arena I was kind of taken aback by these monstrous air coolers across the arena, they looked like something right out of a science fiction movie. I called it the vacuum vaporizers; they were installed to absorb the heat, which was basically due to tremendous amounts of CO2 being released by tense gamers and let out cool air, these machines and adjustable nozzles like a vacuum cleaner which could be turned into any direction, it was kind a fun to tinker around with them for a while.
The players that had made it to the second round were professionals who knew their game. After a load of grueling rounds finally there emerged the bunch of winners who were to go and compete in Mumbai. Here’s the list along with their photo-ops (guys here’s your 24 hours to fame):
Rev a.k.a Revolution winner of C.S 1.6- their clan is the best in Delhi and they are indeed a revolution in their own right, with regular practice sessions and serious gameplay techniques these guys are tough and “MEAN”, business could have never been so much fun eh….They beat Sync 16-10 in a closely contested battle to continue their reign of unbeaten glory in Delhi.
Hassan Khan was the winner of the NFS Carbon tourney, a guy who had his headphones perpetually hung around him and kept his AC/DC bag close to him, Black is back indeed.
Mannan A.K.A. Dante winner of PGR 3 reminded me of Daxter. But this guy does have nerves of steel when he hits the tarmac. A T.V journo actually asked him to make a public service announcement on driving safely, which somehow makes him a dangerous opponent on real life roads as well.
Shray “ICE” pretty boy, won a battle against the insidious undead horde in Warcraft III: TFT, he somehow did not feel confident enough about meeting his opposition in Mumbai.
Sundeep Singh – His defeat at the recently organized ESWC did not deter him. He went on to win the FIFA tourney in grand style thrashing his opponent 2-1 in a best of three game and winning the last game by a humungous margin 7-1 to be precise. Go Barca indeed…
AOE III saw the slowest turnout and it was probably the longest game, but was ultimately won by Harsh Oza a.k.a Zeal_Love when he went against Sushrut the apparent King.
The winners of each game won Rs.4500 for the single player games, CS had a grand total of Rs.20,000 raked in by Rev…The runners up of all the games also got their share of goodies in the forms of bags, gaming apparel and cash prizes of smaller denominations.
I came back home really with a bunch of tired legs to jot down my remnants of the entire event, which seems to be leaping forges ahead.
–Neelesh Mukherjee