I heard it from a colleague at the office… “there is gaming competition at Rajpura”. I didn’t pay any attention. There couldn’t be anything big in this part of the world. They only play CS. But my colleague, knowing about my connection with gaming from my regular rants about TAP, was intent on showing me the website. Is this really big enough that it has its own website? I saw the site here and it looked good. Damn they have big sponsors, and I knew… this is big. And so began… the rush to cover the event.

The contact information was given on the website. I asked my colleague to make arrangements so that I can talk to the proper authorities and not waste time in following leads to find out if this was some cruel joke! Harpreet, my colleague, got me on the phone with Karan Shorey, an ex Chitkara student, who played an important part in organizing the event. After some miss-timings and giving excuses for our not being available I was able to talk to Karan. I told him about TAP and that we are trying to bring more Indians into the scene. “Give me the url” , he said, and I did. His reaction was the same we get from everyone - “Wow! It looks good!”. Well, so much for the content, which is what a blog is all about anyways! Whatever! Right away I called up Reggie and Krishnan and told them i’ll try to cover the event and heard the same thing from both of them - “IF YOU DON’T COVER IT, WE’LL KICK YOUR ASS!”

The event was called Gameeks 1.0 and was scheduled to take place on the weekend of 12-13th April 2008 at Chitkara Campus near Rajpura, an industrial city and a major railway junction. Rajpura falls almost in middle of the Patiala-Chandigarh highway. Chitkara Campus has a reputation for its high standards of education and infrastructure. Never knew they were going to do something in the field of cyber games as well.

They had all the gaming rounds arranged in such a way that it became an overnight fest. As most of the teams were coming from all over India, they had to get accommodation sorted out, but the event was planned in such a way that they were (forced) to spend most of their time in the arena. The qualification rounds were to start on the 12th at 11 o’clock and were to go on till 8 in the night. The semi finals were to start at 12 midnight and the finals at 4 am. So the gamers had to be awake for 24 hours straight. I planned to go there on the evening of 12th, so that I can stay over night and cover the complete action.

The games they chose were Flatout, FIFA 2007 and the Indian favourite - Counter fucking Strike 1.6. Personally I liked Flatout; still without any practice, it was useless to participate. The prizes were really lucrative as they were giving away 2 Lakhs in prize money. The gamers could participate by simply registering themselves online at the site under the name of their institution or individually.

So on 12th I left from Chandigarh for Patiala on my bike along with Harpreet (my colleague), who also registered himself for competing in FIFA 2007. Once at home in Patiala, I left the bike and decided to go on my jeep. So we started off for Chitkara and reached there around 6 o’clock in the evening. Once there I called up Karan and asked him to meet me up. While we were waiting for Karan, I met some of my batch mates from University who are now teaching there. Finally Karan came and we talked a little about the whole arrangement and the competition. He seemed very excited about the whole thing and he made me meet some of other organizers who were running here and there as if the world was going to end.

Soon we met Sumit Kakkar who was the faculty in-charge from Chitkara. Sumit was very co-operative and he immediately took the responsibility for showing us around the arena. There were stalls outside the arena for eating and refreshments along with some game stalls. Next to the stalls was the Chitkara Indoor sports complex. They had turned this massive indoor sports complex into the Gameeks arena. So the systems were placed in 12 per boxing ring. (At least that’s what I like to call them. The boxing rings are the platforms where they put up the competitions). There were projector screens showing the gameplay, large advertisements ;all arranged in very professional way, admitting the presence of the Indian Gamers League. IGL did a wonderful job and unbelievably, throughout the event - there wasn’t a single technical problem encountered.

Sumit told me that during the noon the complex was jam packed and as many as 107 colleges were competing for top honors, including teams from IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi, BITS, Goa, Mumbai University, Delhi University etc.

“I don’t know much about games myself, I’m just taking care of things here. But our existing and ex-students have shown so much enthusiasm that I’m just making sure that we provide them with everything they ask for.”

…thats what Sumit said while I was clicking snaps for the article. Upon asking if the faculty will be really interested in making this happen annually, he replied:

“Why not? Look at these students, for once they are all following the discipline and organizing everything on their own without breaking anything. I’m more than happy to run around with them every year. ”

We met Mr. Chitkara himself with his wife making the rounds of the arena. Sumit introduced me to them and we had a little chat and Mrs. Chitkara came out with this remark:

“We are not familiar with these events, but if so many students show up from all over India and all these youngsters are putting so much effort into it, it must be something worth promoting. ”

Surely an encouraging remark from an adult, especially when we all get rebuked from our folks for staying up late playing games. Next we met Pankaj Gandhi, the Area Manager from Zapak.com .We all know that Zapak has been making its presence felt in various gaming events, but here? Well, they were the major associates of the Gameeks fest. Pankaj was again very enthusiastic regarding the fest and upon my asking if he had any plans to sit down for sometime he replied:

“Oh.. I have a whole night to stay up, and tomorrow as well. I cant let any winner win without me seeing him perform in prelims…”

Next we met some teams from Mumbai and other cities who were planning to play basketball in the court. Next came the one man army from IGL.. the Indian Gamers League who single handedly managed the fixtures of the systems and planned the whole technical setup with the help of Chitkara’s students. According to him this was the best gaming event he has seen throughout India, I don’t know if he was exaggerating but his facial expressions were pretty convincing.

Then I was joined by Harpreet, who had cleared the qualification round with 6 to 0 in FIFA and he was all set to kick some balls (pun not intended) in the semi finals. By this time they were closing down the arena for the preparation of Semi finals. We went outside where the War of DJs was just about to start. Before the DJ session, the Chitkara students unveiled their in-house built racing car.

Dear fellow jumping pixels, you know me well. If im not yodeling or playing my antics at an arena im not doing full justice to my presence there. So while the Mumbai teams participating in CS or enjoyed playing basketball in the Gameeks Arena (didn’t I say that its actually a sports complex?), I enjoyed some Bhangra outside in the War of the DJs. There were girls everywhere and they looked amazing (just because we play games, we don’t always run after pixellated breasts!).

The dancing and partying made it easy to pass the time. AT 12 o Colock, we went inside the arena and all the winners of the qualification rounds were already there. So it began, the usual humming, the woos and yays… the screams.. the celebrations of winning and ahhs and oohs of losing. We shifted from ring to ring taking a peek into every game. Harpreet cleared the semi final round as well with 7-2 and I was wondering maybe im walking around with one of those unknown FIFA pros… cool… By 2 oclock the semi finals were over and I was getting sleepy every next second. The finals were to start at 4 AM and I literally had no idea what to do 2 hours and besides, two hours of dancing finally started taking their toll on me. With office on Monday I had to take a decision. So, after talking with Karan we decided that he will send me the winners’ list on my mail and that we will be leaving right away. So me and Harpreet, who also gave up the idea of waiting for 2 hours to compete in Fianls, started our journey back home.

I have a history of expecting too much from gaming expos and competitions, so when it came to Gameeks 1.0, I tried to stay on the ground. But this was different. I had to remind myself again and again that I was in Rajpura and not in Bangalore or some other pro-gamer-infested city. One thing is for sure - Rajpura has registered itself on the gaming map of India and my hopes are that it stays the same way for years to come. From myself, the commitment is that I will be more then ready to assist them. I hope our whole team does that and our members with clans should participate. Lets hope they make better choice for games next year. Seriously hoping that India moves beyond CS. Enough of T-bagging people.

List of winners:

COUNTER STRIKE - V -1.6

WINNER-
BRUTALITY

1 Amar Parekh —– (SIES BOMBAY)
2 Ankit Pant —– (THAKUR COLLEGE MUMBAI)
3 Aakash More —– (PATKAR COLLEGE)
4 Pranay Bhatia —– (SIES BOMBAY)
5 Poojan Mehta —– (MITHIVAI MUMBAI)

1st RUNNER UP
ATE
1 Ritesh Shah —– (Mumbai University)
2 Amar Ratnam —– (Mumbai University)
3 Ben Varghese —– (Mumbai University)
4 Michael Mehra —– (Mumbai University)
5 Ronald Alexander —– (Mumbai University)

2ND Runner Up
REVOLUTION
1 Shyamrup Ray Chaudhury —– (Amity University)
2 Shivanand Krishnan —– (Delhi University)
3 Siddharth Hans —– (Delhi University)
4 Jean Charles Colognesse —– (Delhi University)
5 Puneet Singh —– (Delhi University)

FIFA ‘ 07

WINNER —– Lokesh Arora —– (PEC , Chandigarh)

1st RUNNER UP —– Sundeep Singh —– (Indira Gandhi National Open Univ.Delhi)

2ND Runner Up —– Nitesh Verma —– (APJ School , Jalandhar)

FLATOUT 2.0

WINNER —– Abhinav Rawat —– (PEC , Chandigarh)

1st RUNNER UP —– Daman Sandhu —– (MCP , Jalandhar)

2ND Runner Up —– Arjun Goyal —– (Chitkara Inst. Of Engg. & Tech. ,Jhansla)

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By N2H

• neha Says:
  April 26th, 2008 at 10:52 am

  hey bobby…..congrats for covering the event of my college so passionately n putting in efforts to know the best of the event n potray in this bful manner….Bravo… !!! bt i must appreciate the deadly efforts of event organisers, all the participants from distances, and off course the audiances n supporters for making it a successful event…tonne of applauses for u for covering it n including it in this website.

• bobby sandhu Says:
  April 27th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

  Thanks Neha… and thanks to those who left their friends alone to dance without saying goodbye… grrrrr #%%@$^**& just kidding.

• Arachnid Says:
  April 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm

  And thanks to those who edit ;-).

• Siddhant (s1d) Says:
  May 6th, 2008 at 2:00 am

  its good to c atleast sum1 is interested in coverin INDIAN GAMIN EVENTS with such interest, m sure players doin not so well even get inspired c’in the publicity of the event n work hard to go pro!

  as said by al piacno:
  nice job bobby!!