For all those Indian parents who look down upon gaming as a frivolous waste of time, if only they would have attended IIT Roorkee’s annual festival Cognizance 2007!
The festival featured “Chaos 2007” a special gaming event which saw participation from almost 1500 gamers and professionals.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com , founder and coordinator of Chaos ’05, Supriy Shah said, “Gaming is becoming a religion in IIT-Roorkee. And it is great to see that in two years, this annual gaming festival of IITR has grown exponentially. Chaos has come to be known all throughout the gaming community in India. And it feels really great to be a part of the founding team of Chaos.”
The event was sponsored by Asus, Nvidia, V-Street, Exigent, RZ2 Games, GameGuru, Media sponsors were GamersIndia.com and Skoar and was also supported by AnimationXpress.com. 90 high end gaming PC’s with TFT screens were provided by Intex with graphics cards by Nvidia.
Exigent Director, Paul Steed gave a presentation on the future of gaming industry, opportunities for youngsters from engineering colleges and other technocrats have in this multi-million dollar and ever-increasing profession.
His session attracted a huge crowd. Followed by the presentation was the interactive session where the students asked questions ranging from Paul’s life to social obligations of a game designer.
IIT R’s Vivek Sharma shared, “The crowd also enjoyed the Counter Strike matches being screened on a high-resolution projector system. With unexpectedly large number of people turning up for crucial matches, the organizers had to relax the security norms a bit and allow the spectators into the arena. The cheering and mood that was set up was simply amazing.”
IITian Arun Singh added, “Casual gaming was also an attraction for the gamers to pass time till slots got free for their matches. Even school kids turned up to get a feel of the event.”
A Large number of people interested in game development were seen constantly in touch with the team members of Exigent and RZ2. Increasing the excitement, RZ2 also opened up internship opportunities for budding programmers from the host college and other participating colleges.
The main prizes included more than Rs. 50,000/- in cash and gifts from sponsors valued at a total of more than Rs.200000/- Also other major attractions were high-end gaming peripherals provided by V-street.
Co-sponsor of Chaos, Deepak Sharma from ASUS Tech. India , said, “We are really excited to be here and part of this event. We would definitely like to be associated with Chaos in a much bigger way and take it to even bigger heights.”
The winners of the various events are:
Counter Strike:
1st : Rev (Delhi) (India Rank 2 Team)
2nd : This is (Mumbai) (2 players from India Rank 1 team A+E)
Age of Conquerors:
1st : BebbleRox (IIT Roorkee) (India Rank 3 Team)
2nd : MAIT, Delhi
NFS:
1st : Manan (Punjabi Warriors) (India NFS MW Rank 3)
2nd : Bhavandeep (MAIT Delhi)
FIFA:
1st : Sandeep Singh (Punjabi Warriors) ( India FIFA 06 Rank 2)
2nd : Siddharth Bashisth (AMITY Noida) ( India FIFA 06 Rank 3)
UT:
1st : Samar Vijay Sonone (India UT Rank 1)
2nd : Vishal Srivastava (India UT Rank 3)
On a concluding note, coordinators Ankit Bhageria and Bineet Bhasin said, “It was an experience of lifetime to organize and be part of an event of this magnitude. The participation was overwhelming. Although there were a minor glitches but our highly experienced team handled all the problems nicely. The way Chaos is going, itâ€?s all set to become an international event in the years to come.”