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To battle, virtually
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The lowdown on Halo, the first digital gaming competition
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THINK SPORT. If all that comes to your mind is a cricket match with Sachin Tendulkar's trademark straight drive or a hockey match with Dhanraj Pillai setting up that perfect goal-scoring opportunity, it is now time to widen your horizon.
The next generation sport is being played indoors, with a lot more action packed in than a Terminator movie. Without much ado, welcome to the world of online computer gaming.
A computer game as a professional sport? Now before that question pops up in your mind, tune in to the `Now' channel on your telly. It will be an understatement to say that professional computer gaming or pro-gaming, as it is called by online computer gamers, is big. There is World Cyber Games - equivalent to the Olympics for virtual games - being organised every year. Online gaming is popular in countries such as Korea where live telecasts of the games enjoy very high ratings.Now, India has jumped on to the bandwagon of online gaming, thanks to the broadband technology of Reliance Webworld and the software support of Microsoft. A group of online gamers, who recognise themselves as the Indian Pro-gamers League (www.indianproleague.com) are coordinating the event across seven cities, including Chennai. And thousands of gamers across the country are logging on to the broadband network and fighting each other (virtually, of course) in a 3-D action game called `Halo'. With a prize purse of Rs. 2 lakhs and free entry, the country's first digital gaming competition is already a rage. The city prelims and semi-finals of the event will be held at Reliance Webworlds from December 19 to 21. The finals will be held at the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City in Mumbai on December 28. The first prize is worth Rs. 1 lakh, while another Rs. 1 lakh will be shared by the runners-up and good performers across the seven cities. The finalist will be sent on an all-expense-paid trip to Los Angeles to represent India in the Halo World Championships.
Though this is the first official online championship with big sponsors, several computer gamers have been holding competitions at Internet parlours in various cities for several years now. Due to the poor Internet connectivity speeds, the competitions will be conducted on a LAN (Local Area Network) with several computers connected directly. Also, Internet gaming requires the participants to have registered game software; something which is still not the norm among gamers because of high pricing and easy availability of pirated copies.
Almost all the latest 3-D games are high on graphics and hence, require a large data transfer rate. So, ordinary dial-up connections with a low data transfer rate will not do.
The gamers keep in touch with their counterparts in other parts of the country through Internet forums. There are also websites such as www.frag-shack.com that gamers log on to regularly. The site has servers that offer link-ups and games online. The Internet connectivity, however, was an issue until broadband came into force.
J.Shashank and A. K. Ravichandran, game jockeys who keep a tab on the sessions at the Reliance Webworld, have participated in LAN gaming competitions in Bangalore. "The gaming community in India is pretty serious about making online games professional. What we lacked was infrastructure. But now all that is history with a competition that offers such a huge cash prize," says Shashank, who represents `Agents', that participates in competitions for a very popular action game called "Counterstrike". (Gamerspeak: Teams are clans. In this case, Shashank is from the clan, Agents.)
The gamers are now talking about online events of other popular games. Says Mithun D'Souza : "We intend to organise more such events." The league's website has promised forthcoming online events for popular games such as Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike and Warcraft. It's not just about playing games. Mithun says a team of gamers is preparing for what he claims will be the country's first advanced 3-D action game. Actually, it is not exactly a game but a mod (gamerspeak for `modification' of another game) based on the action title, Half-Life.
"The future rocks," Mithun guarantees us. And when one sees the action at the Reliance Webworld, it is easy to understand why.
KARTHIK SUBRAMANIAN
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