ILG SEASON 1 – THE STORY

In October 2017, LXG successfully concluded the first season of the Indian LAN Gaming(ILG) cup. It consisted of a series of 27 tournaments (21 minor +6 major tournaments) spread across seven major cities in India over a period of ten months with a collective cash prize pool of 15,00,000 INR. We saw over 2800+ gamers across the country come down to the venues to participate, with an additional 110,000+ viewers who tuned in online to witness the celebration of one of the largest LAN gaming events in the country. To understand the reason behind this inception by LXG, we have to first understand the roots of LAN gaming culture.

A LAN (local area network) party is an event where any number of people come together with their gaming PCs to play games in the same physical space . It’s a more intimate way to hang out with your friends, enjoy games and trash talk or work together. Watching people physically react to every kill, or become frustrated when you dominate the scoreboards, is a delight you don’t get with online play.

 The real revolution in gaming came when LAN networks, and later, the Internet, opened up multiplayer gaming. Multiplayer gaming took the gaming community to a whole new level because it allowed gamers to compete and interact from computers at different locations, which improved the social aspect of gaming. This key step set the stage for large-scale interactive gaming that modern gamers currently enjoy.

The Indian LAN culture grew from 2007 to 2012 and it gradually became a trend among college goers and regular cafe gamers.

But the act of playing this way comes from a world that doesn’t really exist anymore. Gaming has left the LAN party behind. You can’t really find games that offer LAN modes, since nearly every multiplayer game on the market offers a progression system that requires a constant connection to home servers. So even if you get together in the same room to play, you need to loop in their servers and matchmaking services for the game to function. You can’t get together with your friends and cut off the outside world, because the outside world is necessary for the game to even run. LAN parties used to be the only way to play with or against other people, and readily available high-speed Internet has changed that reality. Gaming these days has become more online oriented. Better quality network for online multiplayer gaming has made gamers prefer playing at home more conveniently. The LAN gaming culture has the true essence of teamwork and communication which are vital for professional gamers of this generation to which the online gaming environment doesn’t do due justice.

Despite this trend, there are over 650 LAN centres in the US, while 90% of the LAN centres in the world are in China, the largest having over 1777 seats. But India on the other hand constitutes only a small percentage of Internet cafe’s which have true LAN gaming capabilities.

We at LXG wanted to bring back the spirit, challenge and teamwork involved in LAN gaming and also encourage LAN gaming centres to grow by not looking at them as competition, but rather work together to promote the LAN culture in the country. Thus ILG was born.