With the winds of eSports blowing strong all across the globe, it is no wonder that big companies have now started throwing their weight behind the fledgling scene and are coming up with huge tournaments to help the community grow. One such tournament, possibly one of the largest in the region, is the ASUS ROG Masters 2017. The tournament will cover over 30 countries globally across four regions.
Now, why is this a matter of great importance? First of all, for the ASUS ROG Masters 2017, India falls under the South Asia region. The other countries that are going to be vying for the qualifying slot from the region are Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This puts the Indian teams on an almost even footing against the other national teams, the reason I say this is fairly simple. As someone who has been following the Indian eSports scene, especially for CS:GO and DoTA 2, the teams here still lag miles behind their South-East Asian (SEA) and Middle East (ME) counterparts.
While the top DoTA 2 team from India, Entity Gaming, has managed to crack into the top 10 teams of the SEA region, they recently had to face an upset defeat at the hands of a relatively unknown Cambodian team, Intelligence Quotient (IQ) in the grand finals of the ESL India Summer event, this past weekend. Worse still was the showing from the Counter Strike guys. The team from UAE, Risky Gaming, completely decimated all the Indian teams, with no team even managing to post double digit rounds against the Dubai powerhouse.
These recent drubbings have led to a lot of backlash from the community and has caused the teams and the players themselves to enter a slump as they can’t figure out where they went wrong. Certain CS:GO outfits such as Dare to Dream and Entity Gaming, who have been provided with all the tools possible to succeed, such as salaries and a proper boot camp with state of the art hardware, were affected the most.
With the region being restricted to South Asia only, it gives these teams a chance to showcase that while they may lag behind their international colleagues, in the region they still reign supreme. Winning the regional qualifiers will net the winning teams the lion’s share of the '10 lakh prize pool and will give the fans, the investors and most importantly the players themselves the much- needed confidence boost that they sorely need to push themselves further. Such a win is even more crucial for the salaried teams as it would instill a sense of confidence in the investors to carry on providing the monetary support required to build and maintain a top tier team.
At the end of the day it boils down to this. In the South Asia region, the Indian teams for CS:GO and DoTA 2 still reign supreme. Winning this regional qualifier will only reassert that claim. However, it would go a long way to build confidence within the investors in the brand and in the players themselves to maybe go to the global finals and cause an upset. So far the Indian eSports scene has been bogged down not because of lack of talent, but primarily because of lack of professionalism. When player egos come in the way of working as a unit, it becomes impossible to reach the heights that a team is capable of achieving.
Long story short, the ASUS ROG Masters 2017 will be the proving grounds for the Indian teams to show their fans and sponsors that within the region, they reign supreme and then use this as a platform to maybe try and get a few great results in the final event. With the state of quality we posses right now, that is the best we can hope for, because to become world beaters, the entire training regiment of these teams needs to be revamped and they need to approach the game more professionally.
