“Dude.. Balu… where have you been? Why haven’t you been posting anything?” The couple of guys who read this blog but refuse to comment, asked me that in the past few days. The main reason I have been away from the blog, has been due to BYOC, which by the way, was a lot of fun. (I was tired after 24hours of standing around, talking, gaming etc etc)

Speaking of BYOC, Bangalore killed the concept of ‘Bring Your Own Computer’ altogether, even I’m to blame. Hardly anyone brought their own

computers along, from that I hope you understand that most people who registered, came for the tourneys.

While I was there at the event on and off, taking breaks to make a few pub owners richer, I noticed that most of the crowd hung around the CS and DoTa tourney leaving anyone who wasn’t part of these groups to ogle to Alienware laptops or play Quake 3 on the few other systems around. (at least that’s what I did) As it got dark, the crowd swindled and only about 80 of the 250 plus registered participants were around. Most of them were again DoTa CS clans who were taking part in the imbagamer tourney which was also being organized there. Nice arrangement overall.. The crowd was noisy and they kept at it despite an old security guard doing his own round of yelling (ehmm… at the gamers).

Being a participant driven event, it wasn’t required for organisers to hang around and see to it that everything’s organised in a civilized manner. It just happened. Though it was very well organized, there were a few complaints though. Around 8 teams registered for the CoD4 tournament, but by he time it started (10pm) only one team was left. Another team volunteered to participate later on, this confusion could have been avoided. The console space, set up by Consoul.in saw hardly any particpants and they decided to pack up pretty early. Can’t really blame them.

When I spoke to Ashish Gupta, Director of Xteme Gaming who organized the event, he said that every city’s been different. “Delhi’s big on LAN gaming, Mumbai had a good share of both, while in Bangalore it’s all for the tournaments. We’ll need a different strategy for each city. The turnout was good enough considering it’s being organised for the first time. Plus, we were really busy with other events as well and did not get enough time to promote this event,” he said.

Publicity aside, there a few things which could have made the event better.

1> The console section was in a corner, most gamers would have missed it as there was indication anywhere that such a section exists.

2> An separate space for LAN gaming and only for LAN gaming. The space allocated for LAN gaming was taken over by clans who were eager to practise.

3> DVD drives in systems. Not all of us carry around games in a pen drive

4> More goodies =D There were plently already to offer to winners and to a few lucky guys. But more’s always welcome.

5> Get some console manufacturers on board. Are you listening Microsoft, Sony?

6> There were lot of outstation participants, get more Bangaloreans to participate

Here’s a full list of winners as posted by Eports India

FIFA

1 – Akshay Sundhareswaran [Chennai]
2 – Sabeel [Bangalore]
3 – R.Kartik [Chennai]

Need for Speed Most Wanted
1 – Deb kumar
2 – Mohan S
3 – Aashik

CS tourney
1 – ETOS
2 – DsP
3 – Step

IMBAGAMER  DOTA tourney
1 – A clan that comprised of Vishak (Max), Kashif (spoon), Devilrules21, Str_I_ke, Varun_Nightwolf, RajtheImmortal (players from Chennai and Bangalore) came first at the BYOC.
2 – Spindix’s clan from Bangalore’s Zapak came second.
3 – D_Destructor’s clan from Hyderabad

Few pics from the event, courtesy of the organisers