Playing videogames for a living isn’t exactly an appealing pitch modern Indian gamers can make to their parents and get away with. But increasingly, India’s best gamers have been trying to step out of the ‘part-time’ appeal of videogames, and take the competition seriously.
Omkar Yadav makes a living setting up the Indian eSports scene, as a business accounts manager. He helped organize the 2016 Indian e-Sports Championship – with a prize pool of $29,394 for the winning team. It was enough to make more than a thousand gamers participate. Says Omkar:
eSports in India started growing from almost 20 people playing in a café, to about 200 at a time today…eSports in India is still quite raw. We have to give directions. In 2014, there were only about four [major] tournaments in India, the entire year. In 2016, we had at least eight large tournaments, six online normal tournaments, and as many LAN events.
One of the teams he used to manage, Overcome, represented India at the ESports World Championship in Paris. They reached the final rounds of the qualifiers before being defeated, but it was the highest an Indian team had reached in ESWC, in the game Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
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