I know last month I said the same thing, that we had a packed month with lots of events going on and all, but if I thought last month was hectic, I clearly didn’t know what hectic meant. September has been a hectic month, with an average of 1.25 events each week( haha, yeah I did the math). Events was pretty much the overarching theme for the month really. If there was one thing that defined the month it would have to be Gamer Rebellion. For those who didn’t hear about it or have heard about it and don’t quite know what it is, Gamer Rebellion is an initiative that we started wherein we went from college to college showcasing some of the best gaming hardware in the market right now.
It all started with the launch of the RX 480 in India that we hosted in Radisson, Blu Dwarka. The one thing that sets the RX 480 apart from the rest is that it is a sub 25k graphics card which is VR ready. We realized that most gamers haven’t experienced VR so we wanted to bridge that gap. It is a known fact that gamers can be found in abundance in colleges and that is when Gamer Rebellion became a thing. So we lugged around two systems: one powered by an RX 480, which had VR games running on it and the other had a R9 380X on which we showcased games like Doom and No Man’s Sky.
We started it off at the Indie Game Jam meet at Founders Cafe late last month, where game developers had a 24 hours to make a prototype video game on a certain theme. It was a great way to kick off gamer rebellion.
We then headed out to our first college; Indraprastha University, Dwarka. We had a great group of students who helped us with the set up and who ensured that the event went on swimmingly. While we were setting up inside the auditorium, a crowd outside was getting more and more agitated to get inside.
We also had Nishant Aggarwal, the winner of the RX 480 at it’s official launch in India, to collect his winning.
Students had a lot of chances to win goodies as we had quizzes for them to take part in. We also had a VR challenge where the one with the highest score walked home with a Thermaltake Talon (it’s a good mouse, I can vouch for it!). We also gave away Deus Ex: Mankind Divided game codes for the runners up of the VR challenge.
Then Shrey, Jasmeet and I took a little road trip to Jaipur to host Gamer Rebellion at two colleges there: JECRC and Manipal University. The trip there was painful for me as Jasmeet and Shrey kept talking about Jaipur and the different places each had visited in their own time there. But that quickly changed after I sent Jasmeet to the back seat.
JECRC was the college Shrey did his engineering from. He kept telling us stories as we passed various locations in Jaipur that happened back in his college days.
The response from his college was not only brilliant but slightly surprising as we saw a good number of women who attended this event. Jasmeet jokingly asked them if they knew it was a gaming event to which they positively responded saying it was something that interests them.
The next day the three of us got up early and headed out to do some touristy things. We went to Nahargarh and Jaigarh fort, both of which were shut at 7 in the morning. Then we decided to a decent ways off to Amer fort which was insane!
I was completely freaking out with this fort. I had never really seen anything like it before. I was running all over the place, along side elephants, up steep stairways, down narrow paths while Shrey and Jasmeet were just strolling around the fort like it was their 100th time there, probably was though.
Then we headed back to our hotel to prepare for the event at Jasmeet’s college, where we found a nice, fat 1 GB update for Doom. With Jasmeet using whatever resources he had at his disposal, he got to work and tried to get things back on track.
After buying more phone data, we managed to update the game and head toward Manipal University which is like on the outskirts of Jaipur. Once we reached there, both Shrey and I were quite impressed with the campus set up.
I really enjoyed interacting with the students here. They told me about the other events that they had coming up for the month and how hard everybody is working. I started reminiscing about my college days and how I didn’t take part in jack shit. But it was quite refreshing to see that spirit and vigour one usually has during his/her college days.
Then we headed to our last campus, which is like literally next door to our office; Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology. We experienced a bunch of technical difficulties during this event. We had a slight hick up with the system which delayed the event right from the start, but from there on it went on fairly well. Jasmeet and I introduced the students to Gamer Rebellion and conducted the quizzes and giveaways to which the they all responded quite positively to.
Then we opened the floor for gamers to try out the gaming systems. They had a good time seeing what a good graphics card could do.
Even though we were jam packed with Gamer Rebellion, we had another event that happened in Nehru Place in the start of the month. Gigabyte opened an experience zone for gamers to try out their latest hardware.
So that was September here at the Gaming Central office. Until next month, take care.
We did a whole lot last month too. If you want to read up about it then click here
