In the not too distant future, gaming might be an Olympic sport, says Akshat Ratee, who is organising the first ‘Best of the Best Fighting Games Championship 2013’ in India. He spoke to Shana Maria Verghis
One of highest entertainment properties is Activision’s videogame titled, Call of Duty. It simulates World War II warfare. There have been a couple of articles about recruiting Drone combat pilots from among video gamers, although the airforce men themselves have retorted by saying that warfare is no videogame. At any rate, the gaming industry has many users, unlike some Olympic sport including wrestling, which could be soon be a no event. One reason is that fewer people apparently watch the real thing. What we usually see are lots of faux matches and showmanship.
In gaming its all virtual anyway. Akshat Ratee, who is part of NODWIN Gaming, is organising the 2-game ‘Best of the Best Fighting Games Championship’, where gamers play Super Street Fighter and Tekken on Playstation 3. He shared, “The winner of Tekken gets to play at the World Finals in Paris, during the Electronics Sports World Cup, which has been on for seven years. While the Super Street Fighter highest scorer will participate at the World Championship of Fighting Games in Caesar’s Palace, USA between August 13-15.” The latter match was initiated so that Americans too could partake in the spoils of a world, that continues to be dominated by the Koreans and Japanese.
“Gaming companies are viewing Indians seriously. last year, we held the first domestic regional finals. And 16 people, (including two wild card entries), were chosen from across India,” shared Ratee. The winner was a doctor from AIIMS, who is also their topper. lovneet Dogra, placed seventh out of 120 countries. Not bad at all, considering our usual showing during the Olympics.
Apparently the winners of the World Championships get between “twenty to thirty thousand dollars”, and regular world class players can get “up to one hundred thousand dollars.”
Ratee remarked, “because the Olympic Association is evaluating whether to give e-sport status, we were talking about this to the associations in India, both old and new, about our participation. And we made several arguments to the effect that within eight years, we could have a team ready. Imagine if we beat Brazil during FIFA (a game). It’s the next best thing to beating Brazil in soccer!”
He added, “If it all pans out, we could be offering a Rs 15,000 salary to people who would be expected to get up at 7 am and leave for work — to play video games! One argument in favour of video games is that the Olympic motto of ‘Stronger, Faster, Higher’ doesn’t strictly cover games like say, shooting. Or even luge. In both the emphasis is on focus,” said Ratee, making his case. He continued, “Most gamers are men, although league of legends is a favourite with women. Anyhow men tend to favour fighting games like Tekken, which was made into a movie — though a very crappy one. It’s a classic boys with toys phenomenon.”
And if you thought that watching a having a go at the game yourself, was far less boring than observing others, you might have underestimated the laziness of the modern individual.
Earlier they would warn us about becoming couch potatoes, but who was paying any attentionIJ It seems, “Koreans have seven channels devoted entirely to video gaming, US and even Poland has them too. In fact one of highest watched videos on YouTube is a video game.”
We understand that Ratee is pushing his product. He’s in the business of marketing videogames.
But Indians have been trying to join the bandwagon, although the quality of mobile videogames produced locally is pretty sad. Anyways, for those who are interested, Grand Theft Auto-5 will be launched in India soon. Apparently Call of Duty didn’t do too well here, because of the mark-up — Rs 3,000 plus.