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Gaming

Western Digital hosts second edition of the WD_BLACK Cup Esports Tournament for gamers across South Asia

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Earlier this year, Western Digital (WD) hosted the first edition of the WD_Black Cup in India, and now, WD is ack with Season 2 of the esports tournament, in association with AMD Ryzen. This 19-day long gaming marathon – WD_Black Cup Season 2.

This season, the tournament will have a prize pool of $20,000, a longer duration, and there is one more game added to the tournament. The WD_Black Cup S2 will feature some of the most seasoned gaming influencers and esports players as they battle for top honours across 3 tracks:

  • WD_Black Cup Open Qualifiers featuring Valorant and League of Legends, and
  • The Invitational track featuring Battlegrounds Mobile India

This tournament will be held across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives, with an expected viewership of over 8 million. The tournament began on November 20th with the first track, WD_Black Cup S2 Valorant Qualifiers, open to 200 teams. This track was spread across 9 days and will be broadcasted live with single elimination open qualifiers filtered down to top 8 teams, with the total prize pool being $10,000.

The second track, WD_Black Cup S2 League of Legends open commenced from 6th December with qualifiers, and the play-offs started from 10th December with the final being held tomorrow, December 15th, which will also be streamed live on the Skyesports WD Black Cup S2 streaming channel. This track featured 32 teams.

The third track, BGMI Invitational track, was a 4-day long marathon that ran from 6-9th December, and it hosted 18 teams, featuring a few top influencers from India, including Soul Esports and Godlike, with the prize pool being of $7,000.

“The inclusion of esports in the medals category at the Asian games is attracting a lot of young talent to gaming in India. Western Digital is enabling gamers to be battle-ready with or by using our innovative WD_BLACK range of gaming SSDs. The WD_BLACK Cup is our flagship gaming tournament designed to motivate, recognize and reward these budding gamers in India and South Asia, and we are thrilled to have AMD as our partner in this exciting initiative”, said Mr. Jaganathan Chelliah, Senior Director, India, ME &Africa, Western Digital.

For more information, please visit this page.

How AI Has Transformed the Gaming Industry

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Ever since the emergence of AI in the gaming industry, game developers have been programming software in a manner so that it acts as if it’s human and helps in making the digital world from the scratch through non-playable characters. However, at present, even the most out-of-the-box game design doesn’t spin around modern AI. Rather, it revolves around making a bunch of mind-boggling frameworks that result in emergent gameplay, which refers to complex situations in video games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics. The majority of the developers are making efforts in the direction of creating a sense of realism instead of game-breaking outcomes. The objective, in the end, is not to attain human-like intelligence, rather, it is to generate an experience that draws in and stimulates in a manner that imitates reality. Several giant game developing studios are gradually trying to push the envelope with regards to building frameworks that achieve the complexity of reality.

Although it may seem like Artificial Intelligence is a recent innovation in video games, it has been a developing resource for decades. It was incepted in the 1950s, and ever since those early years, AI has been an integral part of the gaming industry that has inclined to an incredible level of growth and development. Let’s explore further how AI transformed the gaming sector.

Smarter non-player characters (NPCs)

AI game developers make the best use of the technology by controlling the conduct of NPCs today. Earlier when the games didn’t have the opportunity to leverage AI, they used to become exhausting after playing for some time as it kept getting easier to defeat because of their anticipated behaviour. The real excitement and thrill of playing video games come from rivalling NPCs that respond erratically and surprise the players. Envision an FPS game in which enemies are equipped for breaking down their surroundings so that they can track down what’s significant for their endurance or make moves that seize your intelligent moves to increase their odds of winning. Moreover, imagine a scenario where they can learn from their behaviour and can seek shelter, perceive sounds and patterns, speak with one another and move in a manner you never saw or expected. Having new encounters despite playing such games numerous times keeps gamers energized and captivated to continue to return. A pioneer in game development can assist you with building such games that gamers enjoy playing for extended periods. The advent of AI has provided opponents with the capacity to securely explore in a dynamic environment without colliding with different entities.  

Real-time customisation

AI has redesigned the general gaming experience by continuous customisation of situations. Besides, AI makes a game more interactive by enhancing the experience of playing. For example, in case your team is losing, it will urge the fans to support your team to lift the morale and cause your players to perform better. Such a tendency of AI has now taken the general gaming experience to an all-new level.  

The shift in difficulty levels

Another excellence of AI-planned video games is player-experience modelling, which implies giving tailor-made insight to players in real-time according to their level of mastery. For instance, if the gamer is inexperienced, the AI possesses the potential to change its level and turn on the easy mode so that s/he doesn’t get baffled or exasperated for not being sufficiently equipped to make further progress in the game. Conversely, if s/he is an expert-level player, the AI will make the game difficult so that the player doesn’t get exhausted or bored. It can also determine the intent of a player through gesture recognition which empowers players to convey and cooperate with video games normally with no mechanical gadgets. 

Generation of procedural content

The technology has allowed the developers to consequently produce creative content, similar to scenes, things, levels, rules and quests. The gamers can now create weapons and armour based on the character level if they utilise procedural content generation in quest-driven games.

Summing Up 

The inception of Artificial Intelligence has made video gaming a lot more exciting as it has the power to provide unprecedented situations by altering the flow and force of the games. It would be more than appropriate to say that there’s nothing preferable for a player over getting fantastic as well as challenging experience simultaneously. As the future unfurls, we are going to witness an ever-increasing number of games with AI regulators which will improve the experience of the end-users like never before. Furthermore, AI will prove to be a testing ground for the developers to work on their code and configuration for creating an avant-garde game. Certainly, AI solutions have transformed the Indian gaming industry for the better. 

About the Author

Stewart Neal is the Studio Director of Sumo India Studios, an award-winning network of game development studios. With over 22 years of experience in the gaming industry, Stewart leads Sumo India’s Pune and Bangalore studios.  

Zotac launches Resident Evil-themed GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs and a Mini PC

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The extremely popular Resident Evil franchise is gearing up for a whole new generation of fans with Sony Picture’s new movie: Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City. The movie returns to the origins of the franchise’s popular campaign, at Racoon City, and as a celebration of completing 15 years, Zotac Technology’s gaming brand – Zotac Gaming – is launching a ‘Survive with Power’ campaign featuring Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City themed hardware which includes Zotac’s premium AMP Extreme Holo graphic cards and the ultimate Mini PC: the Zotac Zbox Magnus One.

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti AMP Extreme Holo – Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Edition

These powerful GPUs come with the might of the GeForce RTX, with real-time ray tracing, DLSS enhanced AI graphics processing, NVIDIA Reflex and the ability to play in up to 4K with better graphics efficiency. The HoloBlack design turns ruby red in this limited edition GPU.

Zotac Zbox Magnus One – Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Edition

Just 8.3 litres in volume, the Magnus One is a compact system which is powered by the Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. The Zbox Magnus One is a premium Mini PC with the latest hardware and it takes full advantage of its small footprint.

‘Survive with Power’

The ‘Survive with Power’ campaign is already underway and will run until December 17, 2021. Participants can win either of the above two products by playing Zotac’s ‘Escape to Win’ mini-game. Participants will enter with one of the ultimate prices in the grand lucky draw. For more details please visit this page.

Representing India, Gamestacy wins selections in two world-class accelerators

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Gamestacy, a mobile game studio that combines business expertise with extensive gaming knowledge to develop original mobile game IP, has set records by winning back-to-back selection in two world-class accelerators: Google Games and Newchip. These accelerators ‘will take the brand to the next level with its advanced technology’, the press release mentions.

Gamestacy is founded by Danish Sinha and funded by Sanjay Kumar, the Ex-CEO of Altran and Elior India. As a result of its selection, Gamestacy will receive mentorship and support from the widely-experienced network of industry experts from these two accelerator programs. Guidance in improving the UI/UX design and fundraising along with a development mentorship and leadership workshops are a few perks of being selected. Gamestacy will also get better networking opportunities, product featuring, and much more.

Gamestacy aims to build the next big gaming ‘metaverse’ where programs integrated within their games will aid users get the best of Google’s programs, products, people, and technology. An all-in-one optimisation tool will be built to help the company grow.

“With our flagship games under our banner, we will use what we learn and make the existing games better and make better games integrated with enhanced infrastructure where we are able to create high-quality social interactions, persistent multiplayer, UGC platform, and live ops” said Danish Sinha.

Gamestacy strives to safeguard the community by stopping cyber bullying through upgraded software. Gamestacy also mentions how it designs games that can be free of abuse, and are gender-inclusive. Through software like Bodyguard AI, user-generated text, images and videos are moderated.

Danish Sinha, The Founder of Gamestacy, said, “Newchip and Google programs complement each other and provide the right product and business acceleration we required to advance to the next step. Gamestacy has always been about improving the gaming space, and now, with the help of these accelerators and our other collaborations, it is possible.”

Mr. Sanjay Kumar, Ex CEO of Altran and Elior India, who has largely funded this enterprise, said, “The selection validates that the core offerings of Gamestacy has innovation embedded in it, as the idea is not only exciting from a gaming experience perspective but also lends itself to commercial viability. This is the rare combination that few startups are able to achieve.”

Alienware X-Series consists of the brand’s thinnest laptops yet

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Dell Technologies has announced Alienware’s latest X-series portfolio which boasts of an advanced cooling technology and the latest design. The new Alienware X-series are packed with the latest and fastest processors and hardware, delivering an exceptional performance in top gaming titles, and also, in any task the user performs.

Let’s get right into the computers’ specifications. The Alienware x15 and x17, which are also the brand’s thinnest 15-inch and 17-inch gaming laptops, are powered by the 11th gen Intel Core i9H-series and the i9K CPU, respectively. They are also equipped with up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPUs.

These gaming laptops feature Alienware’s Cryo-Tech cooling technology which introduces Element 31, an exclusive thermal interface material (TIM) derived from Encapsulated Gallium-Silicone liquid metal compound. This material is situated between the CPU and its thermal elements in order the disperse heath and alleviate spikes in core temperatures. The internal thermal resistance, through this tech, is improved by 25% when compared to the Alienware m15 R4. Long hours of gameplay call for better performance which is also supported by the HyperEfficient Volatage Regulation.

The addition of the Alienware Quad Fan – which blows air efficiently through the system, chassis, and internal hotspots – and Alienware’s patent-pending Smart Fan control which speeds up or slows down to deliver optimum cooling, further enhances the system’s heat dispersion technology.

Both, the x15 and the x17, come with a dedicated 1TB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD and while the x15 comes with the option to choose between a 16 or 32GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM, the x17 comes with a 32GB DDR4 XMP 3466MHz RAM.

The x15, as the name suggests, is equipped with 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080). The x17, on the other hand, features a 17.3″ FHD (1920 x 1080) screen. The specs of screens of both computers are 360Hz 1ms and come with with ComfortView Plus, NVIDIA G-SYNC and Advanced Optimus; and also feature 300-nits brightness and 100% sRGB color gamut.

With respect to the GPUs, the x15 offers the options of RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 (all 8GB GDDR6) while the x17 offers the options of RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6 and RTX 3080 16GB GDDR6.

The Alienware X-series also comes with the ‘Thermal Control Circuit offset’ (TCC offset) which lets gamers set a threshold limit for CPU temperature, thus, assuring that the system CPU temperature will remain within the defined range.

These laptops also come with 5 specifically tailored power states:

  • Full Speed (max power)
  • Performance mode (graphics priority)
  • Balanced mode (balanced CPU/GPU)
  • Battery saver (low temperature priority)
  • Quiet Mode (acoustics priority)

The Alienware X-series computers come with a CHERRY MX keyboard with a 3.5mm ultra-low-profile design with German stainless-steel mechanical components. They also come with a Windows Hello IR camera for facial biometric logins. Additionally, the laptops come with the evolved AlienFX stadium lighting which consists of up to 100 micro-LEDs on the X17 (90 on the x15) and can be utilised as an independent and customisable lighting zone by gamers through the Alienware Command Center.

The Alienware X-series comes with a 240W power adapter and it comes with sustainable packaging made from 92% recycled or renewable materials. The X-series comes in the Lunar Light colour with high endurance clear coat and silky smooth finish.

  • The Alienware x15 is available at a starting price of INR 2,40,990
  • The Alienware x17 is available at a starting price of INR 290,990

Both the laptops are available through Dell’s website.