Friday, October 30, 2009

Back to Blogging!

Now that I have another website where I can properly reach out to an audience and do some professional writing, my blog will turn back into a personal crib-dairy. I'll still write some interesting stuff in my blog but I won't try to make it interesting or relevant to a general audience. It is just going to be about me, me and me. I basically started blogging to vent out some personal feelings which I felt I needed to express badly. It later grew into something else when I realized that a lot of people were reading it. But now, I'm back to its roots. So, if you don't know who I am, my posts hereafter might not seem that interesting to you, sorry.. :D

Being a gamer, my comeback crib is again about gaming. For long now, I have been both a competitor in and organizer of gaming events. Though most of the organizations that are promoting gaming in India have failed miserably, I crib only about the attitude of the gamers, but not about the organizations. One obvious reason for that is that I don't want to go on record against organizations that are genuinely trying to help. But the other reason is that, gamers are the sole reason for the existence of such an industry, not the organizations. Therefore, it is the gamers who need to get their act together, first. Organizations don't even matter without the gamers.

So, whats wrong with the gamers? Well, as I said long before, they just aren't gamers anymore. Four years back, when I went out of my city to participate in gaming tournaments, I saw so much dedication in the gamers and a mad desire to win. You could really see it from the way they talked, moved about, fought, shouted, screamed and played. I used to think that, we (players from Chennai) could never really be that dedicated and that is why we would never win. I attended WCG in Chennai this week. I saw gamers from all over the country doing what they did best, fight!

But the players from Chennai, they never really put up any fight. The CounterStrike team MakeWay though, did show a lot of spirit. But they couldn't match the players from Mumbai. They were rather confused after their defeat. They couldn't understand why they lost even after almost matching the skill level of the Mumbai players. But I think I know the answer. They weren't desperate enough to win. They discussed for hours together about their match after their defeat. They were extremely upset, but still, they weren't as dedicated as the others.

The worst part is that, I envy their dedication. They were probably more dedicated than what we could have ever been. They cared enough to be upset and to crib about it. It mattered enough for them to be heart-broken. That is hardly comparable to the current DotA scene in Chennai. The DotA teams here have no fight left in them. They don't care anymore about winning and losing. They don't care if they aren't the best team in the city. They don't care even if they couldn't beat their favourite rival even once. Once we lose a match, we are supposed to brainstorm or even fight to figure out what went wrong. But the current attitude is 'Ah! That didn't work. Oh well!'.. It seems pathetic to me. Maybe I'm the only one seeing it this way, but somehow, I really feel sad about it.. Giving up on our dreams is a part of growing up and settling down. But at this age, why have we given up?!! :(

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

My Site!

It has obviously been more than a month since my last post. This is not because the past month was mundane, actually, if my daily life was boring, I would be blogging more actively. I didn't blog because I was taking care of another website. Its not actually an excuse but just a reason. The website is www.esportsindia.com. Bharath aka scrib and Praveen aka Spk had this idea to create a website and to start organizing gaming events when I was working in Hyderabad. When I returned from Hyderabad, I was under the impression that I would be joining TCS soon and thus decided to spend most of my time in Zion.

After a week or so, I realized that TCS isn't going to call me anytime soon. Thus, I needed something else to do. I had lots of time in my hands and Praveen was eager to start a website and try our hand at creating a home for the competitive gamers in India. Since this was something that was already in my wish-list, the decision to join him was easy for me to take. Just when we bought some web-space and the domain, Bharath joined Amazon and thus, he couldn't spend much time with us.

Me & Praveen went ahead with the works on the site. Praveen was neither the coding type of guy nor was he interested in designing. Thus, I ended up doing most of the design and coding with some help from friends and relatives. This is basically how our site was born. Some people wondered why I created this site. Well, I don't have any quantifiable reason, I just did it because it was fun & it still is. I'll continue to work on this site, as long as it remains fun. I don't know where we are headed but right now, I'm enjoying it. It is just a month since we started the site and it is already receiving around 200 unique visits per day..