ADDICTION our own gamming club written by our own Cracken

Hello friends. This blog is dedicated to Team Addiction - the official gaming club of computer science department of Konark Institute of Science & Technology 2006-10 Batch......



Who I am?? I am the server-the manager of Addiction Dedicated server, also known as cracken server.



The college techfest Technovation'09 was to be in a less than a month’s time. The gaming event was organized by our very own Soumya Pradhan.The name ADDICTION was his idea. The gaming event consisted of games Medal of Honor and Need for Speed. After the end of the event our batch was crowned runners-up. There was no stopping after that....soon we became Team Addiction....the team had one common feature, all the members were crazy addicts of Online games like Medal of Honor and Counter Strike.



Addiction started as an unnamed group of individuals who wanted to play games. As we studied in a college where academics were not the priority, we used most of the time in fun and enjoyment. Gaming was the only solution. Small steps of Antaryami (MAFIA) and prasanth (Voldemort) to play MOHAA over internet sparked one heck of an interest in all of us. Soon everybody joined in. Those who joined the team were Saroj(Jumper),Sriram(mogli),Anshuman(Smoke),jagannath(avatar),myself(cracken),Soumya(headshot),Kanhu(Mr. White),Ranjan(B2 Bomber),Kiran(Junior Jumper) and among others were Barun,Lokesh,Tapan,Arundaya.



Maximum players could play on my server. So I used to make the server regularly. Initially my server supported 10 players which were later reduced to 6.But the hunger for gaming was increasing exponentially.

The gaming was such an intense obsession that the server became full and we had to kick players out of the server during the game. An experimental 2 server theory was also tried. But it didn’t work for too long. So we set limits on the maximum players who can play on the server and players to be selected on First come first serve basis. I still remember the player who was left out used to call again and again to ask for entry, and the "OK" in the most disappointed tone when denied a place in server. But adding an extra player was not possible due to internet bandwidth bottlenecks. Adding one extra player would affect the entire game. Ping will reach an astounding 999 in Medal of Honor. This situation is known as LAG in multiplayer gaming world. As a result of Lag none will be able to play .So in the mutual interest either one voluntarily left the game or forcibly kicked by me, as I was the server.



We started of with MOHAA and then MOHAA gave way to Counter Strike. As we transited from MOHAA to CS many of our regular players left the gaming group. We now only a handful of gamers....G9 as it were called later, comprised of only 9 individuals.



The Games stretched as long as 2-3 hours at one time and we would play at least 2 times a day. The memorable ones were the night play that started at 1AM when we came to know that the semester dates have been shifted and on another occasion one late night match that went on till 3AM.In a game of MOHAA all of us held rocket launchers, it was a match like no other. It was like we were in the battlefield of 99’Kargil.BOOM BOOM BOOM….players was flying in air. Sometimes we had International players from Japan and UK joining our game servers, When that happened it was India vs. the World. All of us would jump together to kill that player. And when that player leaves the game in utter desperation we start killing each other. In one occasion me and saroj guarded the place where the opponents were born (redeployed).As soon as they were born we shot them down. for almost 10 mins after increasing our individual scores by 100 we left the place.

One night we had a match where we named ourselves as the college staff. I became SANJAY PADHI MTech PhD*,Antaryami became Karthik babu office 0601214…..,someone became Prasanth Patnaik HOD,WUMPUS,Bipin Bihari,Tirupati Panigrahi.It was the funniest match ever. We even had an Addiction Cup. It was the most intense match ever.



I don’t want to be partial but my personal favorites were Saroj(Jumper) and Anshuman(Smoke).Saroj for his accurate aim and speed and Anshuman for his leadership and strategies.Kanhu(Mr. White),Prasanth(Voldemort),Jagannath(Avatar) and Antaryami(Mafia) were sensible players with good aim and strategy. They preferred to play as a team .Sriram (Mogli) and me (cracken) were the emotional lot of players. We used to make a rush at the enemies in a Do or Die style. We were the Kamikaze member who went forward at great speed to either kill or get killed.Soumya (headshot) was the hacker of the lot. He would come up with new hacks and cheats. He got branded as cheater and we often kicked him away from the server.Voldemort was known to crouch when he confronted someone.Kanhu was the Sniper specialist of the lot and would always use a sniper. Anshuman was the suicide bomber in Medal of Honor who would throw a number of hand grenades on the ground encircling the opponent that would kill both the opponent and Anshuman. During game if one sees someone running really fast with a grenade in hand it was undoubtedly Anshuman. He led the team by suggesting strategies and moves over game chat.Kanhu was seen hiding somewhere and shooting down with snipers.Sriram and me would be running in open fields and shot down mercilessly. There were hardware faults with players.Sriram used to play on a Computer whose monitor didn’t show the central portion where the cursor is present. He often had to bang his monitor to restore when it stopped working. In the midst of the game we wud see players whom we are aiming at getting vanished. These were the jatni guys. They would be having power cut at the moment. When Kiran joined us in gaming we were already good players. He was a beginner who didn’t know the commands and was not adept with the controls. He was often seen running blindly with his gun pointing to earth. Initially he was killed mercilessly but later we made a resolution not to kill the Kiran.He was easily identified by his funny way of moving.



Saroj often got the tough remarks from everybody as he commanded all "Follow Me" and then charged to kill the opponents. I was often accused of using cheats for being faster which was result of my server.Soumya used to threaten to crash the server when he was not included and Kanhu used to ask in the most emotional tone to increase the players limit.



I still remember how we used to bunk classes in college, sit under the tree in the bike stand and had endless discussions about previous day’s game. This discussion pissed of the non gamers. One such guy being Soumendra our batch topper who was able to stay away from online games despite his 7 roommates playing online multiplayer games.



When somebody was insulted heavily by others he would leave the game and vow never to play a game with these morons again. There will be orkut status updates that I am leaving games, messages sent thru free message service to all about bidding farewell from the gaming club. Next day at college it would be a drama scene at 7:45AM on the pendal.Some guys will try to convince .And again by the evening that guy will be online asking for IP address of the server to play….



Addiction became of part of our life. We no longer called each other with first names. The gaming handles became our identity. Even the nongamers started calling us by these names.



What we achieved in the end?? Well for record sake we won the Runners-Up in CS loosing to a Professional Team and Won the First and second prize in MOHAA at Technovation 2010.

The time of 2 hours passed like minutes in the company of friends in the virtual world of gaming. The games made our bond of friendship stronger and gave us many moments to cherish.



Now Addiction gamers are scattered all over India, Some are in Bangalore while others in kolkata, Hyderabad and many other places. The future in uncertain. I don’t know what the future of Addiction is. All of us busy with respective lives. Some are doing jobs in top companies some still looking for jobs. But I guarantee one things, once all of us are settled Addiction will become active again.Thats for sure. That is the promise that the Addiction gamers have given.





Thanks for your valuable time for reading this blog……



Sambit Priyambad Rout

cracken