RAGE Gaming Awards 2005

After a series of directional goof-ups, breaking a few traffic signals we finally made it to the venue of the event, Rangsharda Bhavan in Bandra. One of the guys from RAGE was ready at the gate with the passes for the award ceremony and the after show party. We collected the passes and made our way inside the building. The main auditorium was on the first floor and to get there we had to make our way up a couple of series of stairs. There were two cute looking young ladies flanking the way towards the stairs. Huge posters from the RAGE magazine were put up at regular intervals after a few series of steps.

The first floor was a sort of a cafeteria. When we arrived, initially it was pretty vacant but was soon filled with a lot of crowd which included gamers, industry executives and media personnel. Within some time we were asked to enter the main auditorium.

The auditorium was huge; approximately the size of an average cinema hall. We made ourselves comfortable waiting for the show to start. The center stage was decorated with huge banners and featured a small podium with a microphone mounted and three giant screens, two on each side and one in the middle. The middle one was constantly airing clipping and demos from various games which had made their name in the nominees list.

Finally the show started with a speech from the evening host Mr. Christof Romuland, who is also the editor and the latest member of RAGE. He basically highlighted the reasons which are posing as hindrances for the growth of gaming in India. The speech was pretty impressive though there were a few points which were a little clichéd. Following the speech, he called upon the co-hostess for the evening who was going to assist him for handing out the awards.

After the first series of awards, there was another presentation, by Mr. Mohit Anand who is the country manager of Microsoft. He spoke about the company and presented a small survey which they took sometime back to understand the patterns of gaming in India.

There was a series of more awards after the presentation in the same pattern. The guests who were invited to announce the names of the winners were mostly people from the industry. During the award ceremony, though there were a few technical mishaps, it was rectified immediately

The batch of awards was soon followed by a brilliant presentation by Mr. Joey G.Alarilla the President of the Asian Gaming Journalist Association (AGJA) from Philippines. The presentation focused a lot on gaming journalism as it exists today. He also pointed out some ways of eradicating disbeliefs among people with regards to careers in the gaming industry. There were a few slides on the gaming scene in Philippines, where the presenter actually hailed from, and the notable similarities between the gaming scene in Philippines and in India. The presentation was highly informative and insightful.

Following this informative presentation there was another batch of awards and the show concluded.

VERDICT

The event had its share of criticisms from a whole lot of people basically for the technical mishaps, but, I congratulate the RAGE team for taking an initiative for something which is quite path-breaking. There was also a point where I was a little annoyed and upset too, it being the fact that there were no Indian gamers or developers who were given awards for their contribution in the industry. With respect to technical mistakes, well I have even seen rock concerts featuring the top acts that actually make mistakes with the instruments they play so the mistakes can be absolved for now.

Clearly the event was a success according to me and marked the beginning for a great gaming boom in India.