e-Sports in Manipur

Rocky Singh *

The Winning Team (Manipur) - Team XM (Xceeding Mayhem):-

On 14-17 July at Aizawl, Mizoram there was an E-SPORTS event called the ICGC (Indian Cyber Gaming Championship)/ESWC (Electronic Sports World Cup) many of us are not familiar with the term "ESPORTS" well you can find the term in Wikipedia just search for "ESPORTS". In short, E-sports means competitive gaming where gamers compete for and earn by gaming.

Here is a recent High Level E- sports competition. A qualifier for the northeast leg of ICGC where Manipur's team (Team name xM (Xceeding Mayhem) took 1st place in the Counter – Strike 1.6 (FPS Shooter Game) and followed by (Team name f0e) Assam which came 2nd.

Both two teams along with other participants which qualified for their respective games will represent northeast in Goa for the National finals which will take place at Goa from 25-28th of August this year.

The Competition is backed by many big brands and industry Giants like NVIDIA (is an American global technology company which specializes in the development of graphics processing units and chipset technologies for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices) Alienware ( A leading Global technology company which specializes in High End Gaming Laptops and Desktops) Roccat GmbH is a manufacturer of gaming peripherals and accessories best known for their high-end computer products and so many other sponsors.

The Winner will not only be named the best teams and best players of India but they will be representing India in the ESWC (Electronic Sports World Cup) Finals which will be held at Disneyland, Paris (France) From 21st to 25th October (http://www.eswc.com/).

From gaming in a small café to high end stadium based completion has turn taken a new level that gamers from across the world has made it an exciting sports. Manipur Athletes are known to be one of the best athletes in the globe.

Quite similarly there are talented E-Sports personals who work hard and could rise to the ranks of one of the best E-SPORTS personals of all time, with events like WCG (World Cyber Games) ESWC (Electronic Sports World Cup), IEM (Intel Extrme Masters) with a prize money of over 220,000 $ each year. Similarly as each sporting events are taking place in each corner of the world there are competition thought not as physical but are as nerve racking and heart pounding and tactical as the sports are.

Asking Romeo Misao (Captain of XM) Winner of Cs 1.6 ICGC on what he thinks about competition E-SPORTS level wise he says, "We are really happy to have win the ICGC 2011 / ESWC 2011 Mizoram (Northeast) Level Qualifiers and hopefully we will do something to make the people of Manipur understand that there is something as E-SPORTS that also exist and Manipur is quite good at it and hopefully they would understand and be proud of us"

Clan XM has won almost most of the local college tournaments or events held in the state, Manipur itself. But with different aspects on computer gaming on the society it's very hard for people to get gaming as a competitive element though people in the South Indian states have started to give importance to E-SPORTS personals with large scale events and sponsors sponsoring these teams.

Whether it happened now or it happened back a while there is something or a thing such as "E-SPORTS" which really looks adamantly good outside INDIA can our E-SPORTS Gamers get the attention of the people like other teams in US and EUROPE do. Maybe this is also something our state is good at.

We would like to congratulate Clan Xceeding Mayhem (Manipur) and Team f0e. (ASSAM) in qualifying for Counter-Strike 1.6 in the Northeast Level of the qualifiers and hope they can win the national qualifiers as well and represent India in the World's edition of Electronic Sports World Cup at Paris, France where teams and players will compete for 220,000$ in a wide ranges of games.

A Screenshot of the Standings of ICGC/ESWC Qualifiers:-
Link – icgc.in
(Click Preliminaries --- Mizoram Guerillas)