Vaporous Thoughts: Sterling Commerce e-Gaming

It was one hell of a night. It was about valour, guts and glory. It was about the ability to strike and the inability to survive. Strategy and brute force. Focus and skill. It was Sterling Commerce's e-Gaming Finale. Here is the review of the gala event.

Initially the thought of having a gaming tournament in a professional environment was odd. A tourney in office? Are you kiddin' me? It'll be a flop! Anyone and everyone doubted the ability of professional hands dealing with gaming events, be it playing or organising. There were a lot of talks that people might not be much interested. The league round of knock-out games in Counter-Strike, Quake3 and NFS Underground 2 were played in a small room with 15 spectators and 8 participants at a time. Ventus, Lamina and Terra came out victorious. Now was the time for the final event. The grand finale to decide the 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions. I walked into the cafeteria thinking about the task at hand and the setup was a shock to me. An absolute sitter.

The event's final was being under-estimated by everyone. It was a huge setup. Big LCD TVs, huge projector setup for the audience, WCG style sitting arrangement; that is all that is required to make it a gaming experience of a lifetime. I had the honor of playing from the side of Terra in CS and Q3. There were spectators, there were servers and there was energy. A lot of it.

The night started out with Ventus vs. Terra. Quake and Counter-Strike were assumed to be in ventus's pockets as they had players like fandoo, So!id and BlackDeath. Even Killer from Ventus did more than what was expected. Terra was crushed after a fighting start in both games. Then came NFS, Terra won the races back to back. They also won against Lamina. Terra came out victorious in NFS thanks to Mukha, Chandan, Shishir and RKT. Now the pressure was off Terra's back when they were to play Lamina in CS and Q3. Supposedly, Terra took it a bit too easy and lost both the games in Nail Biting finishes to Lamina. The scores were 10-9 in CS and 8-6 in Quake3. Call it luck or whatever you wanna call it, but the second favorite team (terra) landed up in the 3rd spot. Lamina's spirits were high and they had to play the undefeatable Ventus. Lamina made a good start in both CS and Quake3 thanks to Fubu and HappyFeet, but Ventus gathered their strength and crushed Lamina as convincingly as they could.

It was a night of rocking gaming. The players in all teams did well and surpassed expectations by a long margin. The Final standings were Ventus-1, Lamina-2 and Terra-3. The gameplay of So!id(CS), BlackDeath(Q3) and Chandan(NFS) were mind-boggling. Fubu and company did well too. Kudos to everyone involved in making the evening an adrenaline packed journey into the OtherWorld. The atmosphere, the energy and the professional handling of the event made it one hell of a show, the first in its kind. In the end a very special Thanks to Rajesh Chandolia for making it all possible. Keep rocking dude. :) And yeah! The sound was BOSE. Game ON!