Nvidia GeForce Lan recap

Nvidia has been organizing the GeForce Lan in the States for nearly six years now. The concept’s pretty simple; bring your own PCs to a pre-disclosed destination and game your freaking brains out for 48 hours. Now Nvidia’s turned their sights to India and at the Bandra Kurla complex in Mumbai, they held India’s very first GeForce LAN. This rather ambitious event was full of competitive gamers striving to make a name for themselves in a bunch of  multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Counter-Strike 1.6, Need for Speed: Most Wanted and FIFA. We caught up with a few Nvidia representatives at the event and they seemed pretty happy with the turnout. In fact we were told that the number of entries greatly surpassed their expectations and many gamers actually had to be turned down.

The war zone

A sizeable chunk of the venue was relegated towards the competitive gaming zone where roughly 120 PCs were set up running some of the games mentioned above. On the opposite side, Nvidia had set up a demo zone where gamers could sample first person shooters like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Crysis 2 in 3D. Speaking of 3D, we were shown (behind closed doors) Batman: Arkham City in 3D running on Nvidia’s new 3D vision 2 kit and it looked freaking phenomenal. And this is coming from someone who really doesn’t care about the whole 3D gimmick.

Experience the third dimension

But this event was not just about the games. It turns out Nvidia’s technology has been used to create certain special effects for Shahrukh Khan’s upcoming flick, Ra.One and this synergy gave birth to two Ra.One themed graphic cards, the GeForce 560 TI and the entry level, GT 520. Shahrukh Khan and the cast of Ra.One made their presence felt at the event later on in the evening to felicitate the winners but we had left by then. Here’s the list of winners and the stuff they won:

Counter Strike
Team “Never Say Die (NSD)” – Rs. 1 lakh + Alienware M11X Laptop

Call of Duty: MOdern Warfare
Team “Orange E-Sports” – Rs. 1 lakh + Alienware M11X Laptop

Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Nishant Vasudev – Rs. 10k + AW 3D monitor

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Girls)
Roshni.N.Tasi – Rs. 10k + AW 3D monitor
 
FIFA
Chaitanya Vadulekar – Rs. 10k + AW 3D monitor

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Girls)
Dipika Jerome – Rs. 10k + AW 3D monitor

At the end of the day I’d say the event was pretty successful and it looks like Nvidia may turn this into a yearly event for India as well. This goes to show that competitive gaming is really picking up some steam in our country and if companies like Nvidia continue supporting budding gamers, we definitely stand a chance in international competitions as well.

LOL WUT

More pictures of the event can be found here.