Last year, while dropping a friend home after a regular meetup, he asked me to stop at a supermarket so he could pick up some snacks to eat while he watched some tournament matches. Football would be the first assumption, but it turned out his intention was to catch early morning streams from The International, the premier annual tournament for online multiplayer video game Defence Of The Ancient 2 (Dota 2).
Sixteen teams of five players each, going up in one-on-one battles in an arena, with each team having the opportunity to choose from over a hundred playable characters to fill specific roles in the team. Each match is streamed live on the Internet, viewership figures hover in millions, and the winning team last year took home over $6 million from a prize pool of over $15 million. Online gaming is not just a hobby, but a sport in itself.
A deeper dive into the world of eSports reveals a massive culture that exists within cosy bedrooms, swanky Internet cafes and packed arenas around the world. Fan favourite Counter-Strike, in its latest version, Global Offensive (CS GO), caters to the first-person shooter community, while Dota 2 and League Of Legends (LoL), along with other titles such as StarCraft, are the multiplayer games that comprise a chunk of eSports. Passionate debates on teams like Na'Vi or Fnatic are commonplace, as followers decode tactics and moves in the midst of what seems like a random clash of swords, spells and bullets.
Indian gamers, while not as well known internationally as their South-East Asian and European counterparts, are growing in number, and Bengaluru is a hub for the eSports community. “Dota 2 and CS GO are the mainstays for gamers in India, due to their history and popularity,” says Aravind Ananth, who owns the League of Extraordinary Gamers (LXG), a gaming cafe. “Because of the IT industry, Bengaluru has reasonably good infrastructure and fast internet speeds, so we get a lot of events and tournaments here,” he adds.
The infrastructure plays a pivotal role in online gaming, where a moment’s lag could change fortunes. Prashant Prabhakar, a former professional CS player and founder and CEO of SoStronk, a company that provides server facilities for CS GO players, is one among many looking to improve the eSports ecosystem in India.
"Indian teams are still far behind the international ones because they lack the right mentality and sponsors. Indian technology companies do not understand eSports the way big international players do, where some even have eSports heads to manage the gaming activities of the firm. Many players also get into it for fame and money and not to take eSports forward." he says.
One problem, according to Karan Wohra, who heads marketing at LXG, is that the online community in India has missed out on the larger possibilities of the medium. "There is a generation gap. We are all children of the Internet, but we have only used its potential for IT. So even the most liberal parent would have apprehensions with children wanting to take up eSports as a career," he explains, going on to cite examples of people in the community, who despite topping online game leaderboards while managing jobs, still get pressurised by family to give it up.
Prashant explains that building an environment that nurtures young talent is an important part of eSports. "A Brazilian CS player started a series of gaming centres and ran them like an academy, and the country, which always participated in events without much success, suddenly started churning out top ten teams. In Korea, eSports stadiums are included on the tourism websites, " he says. "Meanwhile, I had to get around eight licenses to set up my place because there was no specific category to fit a gaming cafe into; people thought we were gambling," adds Aravind.
The community, however, continues to grow, and gamers find new avenues to express themselves. Popular players stream their games live on popular video streaming service Twitch, with even YouTube slowly getting into game streaming with its YouTube Gaming platform. Kiran Noojibail, who provides commentary for local tournaments and streams Dota 2, believes streaming is a part of the larger eSports universe. "People like me watch game streams like television, and we have a schedule where we watch a stream before going to bed or another in the morning. Not many Indian players do it due to bandwidth issues but streams are keenly followed, and players with popular streams monetise them effectively."
India is slowly reaching out to the larger gaming world, despite generation gaps and infrastructural difficulties (a recent study claimed India's average Internet speed to be 2Mbps. South Korea boasts 26Mbps). "All it takes is for one team to go abroad and compete on equal footing with the best in the biggest tournaments. Even cricket became a phenomenon when we won our first World Cup." says Aravind, saying that youngsters these days have much more opportunities.
As Prashant puts it, with discipline, talented players, and good mentors, there is no reason India cannot make a mark on the international scene. For the Indian gamer does not lack talent and passion. Prithvi Bharadwaj, fresh out of school and a deadly CS GO player, wants to take up gaming as a career, despite being born with one arm. "I am not interested in following a regular path and getting degrees and working a normal job; I want to play."
Pro moves
Professional eSports teams employ the services of coaches and data analysts, often spending hours discussing and practising tactics within a single in-game map. They exercise to strengthen the spine and neck, and often use heated cushions to ensure their response times are not affected by factors like temperature. Some players have undergone wrist surgeries. Barrier for entry is as low or lower than more physically demanding sports, as response times slow even for player in their mid-twenties. In game, professional players have keep track of multiple targets at the same time, even memorising the skills of every playable character and mentally recording when an opponent last used an attack and the time left before they can use it again.
