26th January- India celebrates its 58th Republic Day. Instead of lazily lying around in bed waiting for my mom to nag the living daylights out of me, I was up and about running off to Pragati Maidan (it’s an exhibition centre in Delhi) for the gaming exhibition held by Skoar, Microsoft and other prominent Indian gaming companies. The event was also hosting the ‘Reliance Gamebox Championship’ finals. I reached the venue around 1100 hrs only to find out that most of the exhibits were still under construction. I glanced all and saw everyone busy setting up their respective booths. The one thing I had in mind was that the event was somewhat going to be similar to the Xbox 360 launch (which was horrendously boring) but I shall eat my shoes for having such thoughts in my head. For the first time I realized that gamers did exist in our country, even though they might not be extraordinarily proficient in gaming but they certainly knew what playing a game was all about.
The spotlight of the entire event was on the ‘Gamebox Championship 2007.’ There were five games where contestants from different parts of the country had gathered to compete in – Half Life 2: DM, Need for Speed: Underground, Age of Mythology, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and good’ol Counter Strike 1.6. The Star attractions of the show were the members from the E-sports club ‘Fnatic.’ This club is based in ‘Australia’ and has different clans for a variety of online games the clan that had arrived were professionals in the classic game of Terrorists Vs Counter Terrorists. They played on all three days and took on the clans from all the zones except the East. We were no where close to the competition….they wiped out the clans one after the other till there was left none standing to face the onslaught. They showed no mercy because there was none to be spared in this tactical game. The game of Warcraft saw players battle it out. This was not too much of a competition because there were only two players worthy of competing the rest of the them were to described in the words of the gaming community were “Newbs”, Half Life 2 Death match saw more balanced competition form all the four zones, so was the need for speed tourney.
The rest of the stalls were also holding competitions in order to attract attention from the event and were doing fairly well. Microsoft’s stall was the largest in the arena and had consoles lined up everywhere, playing the latest games offered by them. You had to wait in line for your turn to play the ‘EPIC Gears of War (pun Intended)’. Reebok had a stall, which was hosting a slew of sporting events like Cricket 2007, and FIFA Soccer which also attracted a decent number of people. Airtel’s booth had stage dances and singing competitions (now that’s what I call the sweet taste of India) and were giving away free goodies, the Yahoo stall was probably the most loud in the entire show or maybe I spent too much time right next to it…I mean I can proudly do the Yahoo Yodel in my dreams…all due to the chick who was yodeling continuously only stopping for short breaks.
The entire show was well organized and planned, the niche gaming community got what it had been asking for a really long time in Delhi. I also met a number of interesting people during the course of the show, which I shall speak about later in a snap. The show was a success and everyone left happy…A thumbs up in my books…
By Neelesh Mukherjee