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Career on a console

It's time you start being nice to the boy next door, who spends all day playing 'silly' games on his PC; if things go as per plan he might just win the next Olympic Gold for India. Yoshita Sengupta tells you more.

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About 15 years ago, Akshat Rathee was an engineering student in the sleepy student town of Manipal when he spotted a business idea. He realised that students had limited means of entertainment so he connected every computer in his hostel using LAN cables that enabled students to connect and play multiplayer games after paying a monthly subscription fee to him, of course. What a hit that was.

One day his parents gave him a frantic call apologising for forgetting to send him his allowance of Rs8,000. He hadn’t even noticed.

A few days later, Rathee’s parents were standing in his hostel room demanding to know why his account had lakhs of rupees in it. Thankfully, Rathee had evidence in the form of the LAN connections and friends to prove that he hadn’t been making money illegally.

Bigger than you think
Today, Rathee is venture capitalist, investor and businessman who set up his own gaming company NODWIN Gaming three years ago. He’s also poised to make a few more millions if all goes as planned. That’s because he’s convinced the time has come for eSports or gaming to enter the big league in India. What’s more, he has a blueprint of what is to follow that should give him an advantage when that happens.

Gaming. The word reminds most of us of pimply brothers and cousins sequestered in stuffy dark rooms for hours on end, coming out once in a while for meals, with parents screaming that they should focus on studies since playing video games will not get them anywhere.

Get that vision out of your head right now.

Gaming today is serious business worth over $70 billion globally. And the prize money of over $10 million is up for grabs every year in eSports tournaments.
Unlike you or me or the ordinary non-gamer, many global leaders in the entertainment industry have caught on to the potential of eSports and are tripping over each other to acquire the leading gaming companies.

They are acutely aware that gaming may be the entertainment of the future. You buy tickets to see movies today but five years from now, you may buy tickets to go see two ace gamers fight it out in a stadium.

This is not science fiction, it’s already happening in countries like South Korea that holds gaming tournaments in huge arenas in the manner of Romans organising gladiator fights centuries ago. Reports of such tournaments give you the sense that the atmosphere hasn’t changed despite the difference in years: there’s the same testosterone-driven screaming frenzy, triumphant roars and victorious vanquishers.

If you still didn’t get it, get this.

James Cameron’s epic film Avatar (2009), the most successful film ever, grossed over $2 billion worldwide. In contrast, the game Call of Duty, has made over $6 billion so far, and people are continuing to buy it.

“Gaming companies are being sought after the best in the world. Gamespot, the biggest gaming company in the world is owned by CBS interactive. The second-biggest gaming company, IGN, is owned by Fox. The line between gaming and entertainment is blurring and careers are opening up,” says Rathee.

Deferred development

There’s actually nothing new about gaming in our country. It’s been around for at least 17 years now. But unlike in South Korea, growing popularity of gaming hasn’t resulted in India having eSports as a career.

Ask Himmat Singh (Brandy), 26, a gamer for over a decade. He started competing in eSports tournaments over two years ago when he was in the Philippines studying to become a pilot. He found professional gaming was a career for many across the world. “The first thought then was, what if it could be a career in India too.”

Last year, he spent Rs2 lakh to participate in the Evolution championship series (EVO) in Las Vegas, where he ranked 128 among thousands of participants. This year, he won the Best of the Best, an all India tournament, and is being sent on an all-expenses paid trip for EVO 2013. But he still has hung on to his ‘real’ job. “In countries like US or Korea professional gamers earn well and are respected. In India it’s taboo,” he says.

Rathee admits to this. “There are teams with sponsors who provide equipment and pay for travel. But these teams are far away from being called eSports professionals because there isn’t a steady monthly income,” he says.

eSports professionals in South Korea or the US take home an annual steady salary that begins at around $50,000 and goes as high as $2,00,000, says Chirag Chopra, 22, who is one of the brains behind Game Ministry, an Indian eSports news website. To add to that is the prize money in tournaments that runs into thousands of dollars. In India, teams rely on prize money that range from a few thousand rupees and some ‘goodies ‘ from sponsors.

“Gaming and e-sports was always thriving but it was too fragmented and unprofessional. Everyone made a quick buck and nobody had the patience to develop eSports,” says Rathee.

It moved up a level when resourceful gamers started organising local tournaments that evolved into city-level tournaments that gave rise to competitive teams who approached companies for sponsorship.

“It started as a hobby. We spent a lot of time in gaming cafes and thought let’s have a competition. In 1997, we started gaming events. It started out by organising them at cyber cafés. Soon, many people started to do that. Some for the experience, some for fun, some just to make a quick buck,” says Yogesh Nagdev, founder and CEO of gaming event company Re-Inforcement, that Rathee has now acquired.

But after all these years, why hasn’t gaming gone professional yet?

The fault lies with gamers as well as industry stakeholders.

“We initially sponsored a team but they were so unprofessional that we had to pull out. They didn’t attend tournaments they said they would. At times, they did not wear the jersey with sponsor names. If they don’t stick to their commitments why would we continue with our sponsorships,” says Chopra.

Ashish Gupta, who runs Delhi-based gaming event company Xtreme Gaming, agrees with Chopra. He has also come across teams that have frittered away sponsorships. “The gaming lot is lazy. They want to be professionals to earn money but they don’t know how to behave professionally,” he says.

This is why almost all sponsorships dried out by 2012. “Today, the companies are looking at numbers, they want teams who already have say 30,000 followers on twitter, who have 20,000 people watching their feed on YouTube and who have a social media and marketing plan in place,” says Nagdev.

Sashank Bhandaru, who handles the countrywide business for gaming hardware company Razer India, echoes this opinion, “There is no integration of PR, media, events and gaming and till it doesn’t happen it doesn’t make sense for us to invest big money into sponsoring gamers. We are open to open our wallets but we are waiting for them to build a brand,” he explains.

As an impartial observer, this is clearly a ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ situation. The gamers didn’t see a steady income so they didn’t take it seriously. The sponsors beyond a point said, the little money that they started giving the gamers initially was utilised unprofessionally so they stopped the funding.

Which is why a part of the blame also has to be shared by the ex-gamers turned entrepreneurs and sponsors, say experts. “Do cricketers or tennis players in our country manage their own PR and marketing? They don’t. They are sportspersons and that’s what they know how to do. The big companies have given equipment and at times money to the teams but the experienced marketing teams of the same companies have not helped the gamers promote and market themselves and build a brand,” says Gupta.

Going Pro
But this might change soon as India is all set to get its first set of professional gamers.

In the recently concluded Best of the Best gaming tournament that saw participation from over 20 cities, Rathee and his team have identified gamers who they intend to offer contracts to. The 13-odd gamers, a coach and a manager will be paid a monthly salary for two years. Their food, lodging, travel, gym, yoga and strategy classes will also be taken care of. It will be like in any other sport, reiterates Rathee.

It’s taken this gamer and venture capitalist three years to set the groundwork to reach this stage. During these years, Rathee has worked towards building ties with almost every gaming and computer-manufacturing firm in India. He is now poised to enter the big league.

“The idea is to make the sport famous and make it look good. It’s what WWE did to wrestling and IPL did to local cricket,” he says.

For that, he already has licenses to organise the Indian leg of all the major international gaming championships. He is also an official Indian gaming broadcasting partner with YouTube on which he runs a channel. “A lot of our videos have crossed 1 lakh views, we have close to 65,000 followers on Twitter and our Facebook page has over 12,000 likes,” he says.

The Olympic route
eSports may become a viable career in India in about three to five years if all goes as planned.

One major step towards that has been achieved with the Sports Authority of India (SAI) giving in principle approval for the recognition of eSports.

The SAI condition for this to happen is that at least 12 states must first recognise eSports. Rathee started with Haryana. “They are interested in sports, they know what it is to win an Olympic medal and they recognised it as a sport. Now the dominoes will fall.” He is already in talks with Maharashtra, Punjab and Delhi and in the next 15 days, his team is flying to all seven states in the Northeast where the youth are seriously into gaming.

The aim is to form an Electronic Sports Federation of India that will give the sport a structure, give gamers recognition and enable India to field official teams to represent the country at international tournaments.

“There will be state teams, there will be national trials and teams. There will be rules and laws in place. The players will be disciplined and focused because they will wear India jerseys and represent their countries. Parents will start being okay with the idea of their kids gaming,” hopes Rathee.     

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