Photo Courtesy: Ronit Pradhan

[Disclaimer: This is an article about how a small group of casual gamers got together and formed a gaming-community within DWIT. If you are not into gaming, or dislike the gaming group, feel free to skip this. Also this article contains a lot of gaming terms and the name of the gamers isn’t mentioned but their respective Gaming Alias is mentioned instead. ]

During the first semester, Counter Strike and FIFA games dominated our college. Everyone was either “fragging” or “scoring”. You could hear people shouting from the other class. You peek in the class and see faces full of excitement / frustration and a larger crowd of spectators watching the gamers do their thing. Watching games was fun as the gamers were very proud of themselves and always tried their best to overcome their opponent. Of course there was no team work [in Counter Strike especially] and dead bodies would be flying everywhere. Swearing was common method of expressing rage or fun. Loud bursts of laughter would lighten up the atmosphere and even after a day of defeat, large smiles were ever present on the faces of the gamers.

Many games like Blur, Age of Empires came but couldn’t last for more than a week. Need for Speed: Most Wanted became the next hottest thing, but it wasn’t continued since one gamer “Franklin” dominated every game and it seemed impossible to beat him. Five gamers: “R16”, “Psycozenomorph”, “Gorodoro”, “Franklin” and “Carefreeav” started playing “Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne”. They were passionate about it and played it regularly after college hours. The game was interesting and soon there were spectators in matches. One of the regular spectators, “Logan” caught up with the game’s mechanics pretty quickly and became the 6^th member to play. Playing after college hours was tough so the gamers discovered a method of playing their beloved game online. The practice sessions were held till late night and it certainly did affect their health and studies, but it didn’t hamper their determination to be the best.

Few weeks later, the veteran Gamer, “R16” recommended a modification of “Warcraft” which was called “Dota All Stars” or Simply “DotA”.  The group would sometimes play “DotA” and sometimes play “Warcraft” but not everyone was fully into DOTA. Occasionally, gamers would load up the game and “insta-quit” it since the game was nothing like anything they had played before. The game was much more complex and had a very steep learning curve making it incredibly difficult to get used to.  But the level of competitiveness and with their pride at stake, gamers devoted their time to the game and dropped “Warcraft”. Little did they know about their fate, as their lives was never the same again. To be continued…