EPTWhen we think about the average gaming scene in most of the European countries, we think about heavy online competition and even harder LAN competition and booking slots in the highest echelon of gaming for instance, let's say, ESWC.
But in India, it is totally different-lack of online competition and lack of number of LAN's to participate in creates a huge problem for StarCraft 2 players in the country. For the national championship, only 8 players turned up for the event and it is said that in total there would be only around 25 active players in the country. Yes, we dont have sponsors, spectators, or even the proper infrastructure. But why is it that at almost every big event you will always see Indian participation in some way or the other. It is out of sheer passion. You guys might think that im blatantly supporting India just because I'm Indian but i assure you that is not the case.
There is no server for the South Asia region because what profit will Blizzard get from it? Most of the Indian players who do play either log into the SEA or NA region servers to play. In this edition, a certain Nickunj "Rog.razIel" Bansal might have literally just come and gone during the group stages by winning just one game. But that 1 game victory for us was like progressing to the next round, we have only one main LAN throughout the year which is ICGC(Indian Cyber Gaming Championship) which had two ESWC slots- one being for StarCraft 2 and the other being for Trackmania Nations forever.
In StarCraft 2, we have had only 4 tournaments till date- 1 being ICGC and the other 3 being "weekend warzone". The maximum registration for the event was around 26-28. Shocking isnt it, if this was a LAN in South Korea the numbers would have surely been 5 times more. The driving force behind the StarCraft 2 players in our country is just love and passion for the game, there is almost no money involved in the scene. Still a number of hardcore SC2 lovers turn out for every online competition and the infrequent LAN's that do happen.
It is this passion of the gamers here in the scene that earns them a slot in the ESWC, consistent performances in online tournaments and making their presence felt in the lower echelons of the game gives the SC2 players the big ticket.
When people talk about asian StarCraft 2, they think of the mighty South East Asians and ofcourse amongst them the mighty South Korea, the SC2 powerhouse as we may call it and the first thing that comes to your head is that of packed stadiums watching the game. Well, although we do belong to the same continent things are a wee bit different for us. We barely have tournaments so leave alone filling up stadiums, no sponsorship and barely any infrastructure or incentives to attract players.
A regular in the Indian StarCraft 2 scene, Elroy Pinto said:
They can't, why would they? we've fallen back once again. I really thought after WC3 we would have taken leaps and bounds ahead in SC2, but no one has bothered.
A nation as populous as India dreams of scenes such as these
Obviously, Pinto was at the peak of his emotions when he said this and i dont blame him at all for this. Being in a scene like this will make you frustrated when you see players like stephano winning ESWC and getting a huge paycheck, you are bound to feel frustrated especially when you know that if given one chance you can reach that level that they have.
You might think I'm getting too preachy, but this is a fact that every Indian StarCraft 2 player has to think about, "Will he be able to sustain himself as an SC2 player in the country, however good he maybe". Puts into hindsight at times how lucky some of the "developed SC2 countries" are getting opportunities that gamers of India are deprived of. This is not a complaint in anyway, just putting things into hindsight.
Just for the ones who forgot, raziel was placed in group 7 where he beat paranoid to win one game. Yes, just one game but that is a sense of achievement for us, from a scene that can hardly be called semi-professional leave alone professional to win a match at ESWC which is our Mecca!
The point I'm trying to make is our dwindling scene has a lot of talent that will go to waste, if not enough investment is given to it and a proper Infrastructure is built, if without the infrastructure we have gone so far. Imagine what the players can do with a bit of Infrastructure.
The Indian scene also has a diaspora of sorts as there are many NRI's (NON RESIDENTIAL INDIANS) who due to the huge popularity of the game abroad have taken it up, and if you go by the players who are a part of the whole SC2 system they say that these NRI's who are mostly online players would be a terrific representative for India if they do play. So a question comes up, Should India promote home-grown talent or if NRI's are ready send them to these tournaments.
In my opinion, the only way the game can grow in the country is by promoting home grown talent and first to develop the infrastructure to take these players to that level where when they reach the ESWC they can get past the group stages. If you visit this link: http://www.sc2ranks.com/c/10378/sc2-india-ranking-list, you would come to know of the top players in our country online and ofcourse South Asia as a whole. This was all due to the effort of one man that these rankings came about and that is Akshat "LordNod" Rathee, who took the effort of creating a South Asia based ranking system which goes into indepth analysis of each player, as he had said "It's a labour of love".
Some die-hard gamers in the Indian SC2 scene who are always vying for the top-spot are Nickunj "Rog.raZiel" Bansal- Number one in the country, also ESWC and TGX representative.
Nachiket "blah" Pusalkar- who according to raZiel is his closest competitor in the country.
Naveen "axar" Akshar- who finished third in ICGC.
Balasubramanyam "piledriver" Ganapathi- A regular in the Indian scene, been there for most tournaments.
To most of you, these players are unknowns actually to most of the people here in India as well, but for a selected few they are nothing else but heroes carrying a dwindling scene on their shoulders and trying to push it into some sort of limelight if they can.
StarCraft 2 is growing in India with around 100 regular players playing online spread over servers of EU,NA and SEA. One major upliftment for the Indian scene would be the inclusion of Indian into the SEA server which is located in Singapore. If somehow India can come under the SEA server, it would increase the number of online players from our country by a huge number.
In terms of sponsored players or players affilliated for an organization, it's only raziel who plays for roccat and that too because of affilliation with the DOTA team. DOTA is really big in our country, everyone plays DOTA here but its sad similar intentions are not shown for StarCraft 2. Our scene is growing at a slow but steady rate but there is no use of this growth if there is no competition and players end up just playing on servers.
So the next time you see an Indian participant in any of the tournaments in SC2, instead of trolling the participant think of the back story and the amount of struggle he has had to go through to reach there, unimaginable to many gamers abroad. If we are given the proper infrastructure and incentives, I really think we can make it to the top and maybe one day win ESWC and become MLG stalwarts.
