Undoubtedly, the gaming scene in India is on an upward surge given the huge untapped potential the country still has in this sector. While the indigenous growth can be mostly traced to the mobile gaming industry, eSports is steadily making its way into the limelight. Thanks to gamers and the enthusiasts alike, various tournaments are springing up and giving opportunities to many.
One such event is the Taiwan Excellence Gaming Cup, which concluded its third consecutive edition this year at Infinity 2 Mall, Mumbai on (16 and) 17 September. If the journey of this tournament franchisee is to be evaluated, it has come a long way since its inception back in 2014. The total number of participation has increased manifold, so have the sponsors and definitely the spectators.
Even though the lack of big gaming events in the country make any event of such kind a ‘great one’, Taiwan Excellence’s efforts have truly been great as far as this year’s tournament goes, at least. This edition of the gaming cup witnessed the participation of 378 teams from across the country, which is reportedly almost double the number of teams which participated last year. 40 teams registered from Delhi, 50 from Hyderabad, 55 from Mumbai, 77 from Bengaluru, 64 from Chennai, and 92 from Kolkata. For the elimination rounds, four cities were added freshly to the itinerary of the tournament: Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata in addition to Mumbai and Delhi.
We visited the venue of the grand finale, where the two days long showdown was taking place. More or less the audience were filled with gamers and tech enthusiasts. With the main stage as a backdrop, the entire space was jazzed up with huge posters, stalls displaying the latest products from the tech sponsors, beanbags scattered for the audiences and even a small stage designed exclusively for the Cosplay competition.
Games (matches) were being played on two set ups, one on the stage where the grand finals took place and one beside it. During the final match between team Invisible Wings and team Beyond Infinity, the excitement was on the peak as the casters managed to do a great job and the whole thing was being broadcasted live on Twitch.tv. We took a look around and checked some of the hardware items on the display and even tried out the VR gear at the MSI stall (Personal revelation: If you cannot live without glasses and are not wearing lenses, it won’t be that good an experience).
We tried to hear from the gamers about what they thought of the event, “It has been a rather good experience. We qualified from Kolkata and came here to participate in the finale. It feels great to play in an event with the best teams of India participating in it,” said Ayan Banerjee, a member of team Surprise Gaming from Kolkata.
While most players we spoke to were quite happy with the experience they had here, Vaibhav Shridhar, a member from the Silver Lining team from Bengaluru had some grievances as he vented, “We could have made it to the two tier of the tournament but we lost because of a toss.” Apparently, team Silver Lining and their opponents both came an hour late and thus their match was decided by a toss, in which the former lost. The member of the team also expressed his perspective about the team brackets, which according to him was not justified. When we spoke to the organisers regarding the issue, they informed us that they had to take such a decision given the match formats and the unavailability of the teams during their match.
Soon, the suburban mall of Mumbai was drawing crowd being a Saturday evening. People passing by watched in bewilderment as they could not make out what exactly was the event about, the inquisitive ones were even taken aback to know the whopping prize pools which a ‘video-game’ tournament was offering, but maybe that’s how the word spreads and assists in bringing eSports to life.
We got an opportunity to speak to Mumbai office of TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade Development Council), director, Michael Lin. On being asked why they chose this kind of an event in the country, he said that India has a rapidly growing gaming market and they were just trying to tap into it, which in turn would benefit both the sides. He was quite positive about this year’s event and hopes for an even bigger presence in their next year’s edition. Lin also emphasised on the fact that eSports is a booming market globally, and India is yet to join the ranks of the bigheads and hence events like these will in turn help bring out the talent from the country.
Finally, team Invisible Wings were crowned the winners in a best of three matches format against team Beyond Infinity. Next in line, the cosplayers were called upon the stage, the six who were selected from an online voting forum, and Nabil Khan cosplaying as Doc Ock was crowned as the winner. He received a cash prize of Rs 25,000 and Kelly Gabrielle who cosplayed as Blastoise bagged the first prize in the wild card entry category, winning Rs 10,000.
All the 12 teams that qualified for the grand finals had cash prizes in stock for them, clubbed with hardware products from Taiwan Excellence’s partner brands which were Adata, Optoma, INWIN, D-Link, MSI, Transcend, Gigabyte, ASUS, Acer, Genius, Zyxel and Thermaltake. The winners of the Dota 2 championship (Invisible Wings) took home a cheque of Rs 2 lakh, while runners up Beyond Infinity received Rs 80,000 and second runners up, team StanDin 5 received an amount of Rs 40,000.
Team Invisible Wings, captain, Darshan Bata said, “We are elated to have won in a gaming tournament as big as the Taiwan Excellence Gaming Cup. The prize money too is good and it is a great motivation for people like us to pursue our passion in gaming. The entire set up of the event was amazing.”
Team Beyond Infinity, captain, Moin Ejaz said, “The Taiwan Excellence Gaming Cup is one of the best gaming events in India. There is always something new to look forward to and the prize money is always big. Events such as these are a mecca for people like us who are passionate about gaming.”
This event was a part of the 2016 Taiwan Excellence Campaign in India. The Taiwan Excellence Campaign is organised by the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) and implemented by TAITRA and from the looks of it, the event was quite successful. There was more participation than its previous editions and players came in from different parts of the country.
We hope the upcoming stint for eSports in the country is good and events like these are more frequent in numbers.
