Page 53 - BEATS: Secondary School Edition 2020-21

Us as a tournament entry. Sometimes people don’t “While I was modding Rocket League, I didn't exactly
know what they want to see. It's like Steve Jobs said, assume that I'd see many out-of-the-ordinary events
‘Did Alexander Bell do any market research before he take place. Little did I know, the very first game of the
invented the telephone?’” — Soham Patil tournament was going to be a 22-0 drubbing at the
hands of the eventual champion.” — Ansh Aggarwal
By early February, just before registrations started,
a scoping form had been sent out to all eligible The two weeks of preliminary competition ended
participants about what games they might want to try with exciting bouts for third place that left two
out in the event. With 100 responses, Counter-Strike incredibly skilled finalists in both Rocket League and
and Rocket League were the clear favorites among the Counter-Strike, and while the players spent their time
student body, with some games coming close. burning the midnight oil in practice-mode, the admin
team—and newly formed graphics team composed
“For a while, the admins thought we'd decide the of Aayush Rathaur, Simar Bhogal, Rishi Mohan, and
games on our own. It's a good thing we didn't do that. subordinates—had their hands pulled equally taut as
For example, three out of the five of us (Ansh, Manya, they worked overtime to put together studio-quality
and Zorawar) were huge, huge fans of League of images.
Legends. And it is, in fact, the world's biggest eSports
title. We figured the interest for that game would scale
down throughout the school population — it didn’t. If
we would have taken League just based on global stats
we would have had pretty bad turnout and in hindsight,
that scoping form turned out to be a lifesaver.”

Once the games had been decided and participants
were registered, the admins spent a couple of days
setting up a Discord on which the tournament would
take place, furnishing it just in time for the preliminary
rounds that began on February 7 for Rocket League
and February 10 for CS: GO, and ran for the next seven
days.

The preliminary rounds were full of action, both
incredibly high-octane plays and some slightly more…
comical occurrences that would serve as amazing
entrants into highlight Reels further down the line.

“I think that in the last week everyone was just running
around like rats in a maze. Soham had to figure out
how to set up and operate a telestrator on his own
while basically co-directing a TV production. I had
to prepare commentary for an endless array of
possibilities and figure out how to analyze games I
had little experience in while also having to become
the backup showrunner. It's safe to say we felt a little
short-staffed. And then our team was overseeing the
graphics teams, who were putting together these
amazing visuals but that took a fair amount of blood,
sweat, and tears, too.”
Graphics Design for eSports - Player statistics graphics

53