The Hindu Business Line : Big game hunting

While all eyes are on the upcoming Football World Cup, another hard fought, competitive world cup took place recently in a small Internet café in a Chennai suburb - the Electronic Sports World Cup.

Organised by French company Ligarena, the World Cup is held in five events — five different computer games, played over local area network (LAN), ranging from first person shooters to role playing games to sports games.

And if you think I'm kidding, get this — youngsters from 53 countries participate in the qualifying rounds in their countries, and a select few get together and travel to Paris for the finals!

Pruthu Chauhan, owner, Zap, an Internet centre, explains that in India, qualifiers were held in nine cities, and Zap was hosting the Chennai chapter of the qualification round.

As this reporter walked into the centre, a group of players was sweating through a game of Counter Strike 2, a game where terrorists and counter terrorists try to finish each other off.

But this game isn't as simple as shoot-at-each-other. The five-member team, an unassuming looking bunch discussing strategy in the distinctive Tamil of the southern part of the State, was reconnoitring one region of the map called `Dust 2'. One member tossed the bomb to the other, who looked for a suitable place to plant it, while two others took positions strategically to finish off any counter terrorists who might come that way.

A fourth used a sniper rifle - good for distances, but almost certain death if caught within close proximity of a member of the opposition. So the first player, having planted the bomb, stuck close to him with an SMG (Sub-machine gun) to make sure he wasn't caught out on a close skirmish.

Waging a lone battle

Meanwhile, another young man by the name of Karthik Gopal was waging a lone battle against mythical monsters in Warcraft III, a role playing game where you have to build small war towns, train creatures to fight for you, and strategically plan the downfall of your opponent who is doing the same.

When this reporter walked in, Karthik's game had reached its climax, with the final all-out war going on. As the opponents' monsters slowly gave way, in a final clenched fist of exultation, he became the Chennai Warcraft III champion. He will travel to Delhi for the next round of preliminaries. If he's successful there, then he'll be eating French toast and clicking pictures of the Eiffel Tower in a month's time.

"I've been playing for about two years," says Karthik, "I'm a bit of an amateur in that sense. But I've won, and hopefully I will do the same in Delhi." What does Karthik do for a living? "Well, I'm working in an IT company, but I can't tell you which because I'm on office time right now!" he says.

That seems to be the case for most of them, with several exams in the offing, a lot of the players have been slipping away to pursue a much more attractive title than `first in class'.

Meanwhile, the team playing Counter Strike is on the verge of a nail biting finish - four counter terrorists and four terrorists lie wasted, and the last one nervously scouts around the map, dreading and hoping to catch sight of the blue uniform that denotes counter-terrorists. Suddenly he's there, and both fire - and unfortunately, our hero is the one that bites dust.

Disappointed as they are, Sunny, Vikas, Navendu, Srikanth and Jagadish a.k.a. the `Ruby' clan of terrorists, spare me a few minutes. "We are hostel-mates in the Trichi National Institute of Technology," they explain, and they have been playing Counter Strike 2 for the last two to three years.

How did they hear about the tournament in the first place? "From our friends, of course," Srikanth says, looking at me askance.

If you've been in the gaming world, you'll realise that actually it was a stupid question on my part - there's a carefully connected network, and every scrap of news whizzes around by word of mouth within a matter of days, or hours even.

Anyway, even though they have to go home now, there are tonnes of tournaments in LAN gaming that can take you places from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to San Francisco and even the Bermudas! Who said gaming was a waste of time?

abhinav@thehindu.co.in