BENGALURU: Gilles Mazarello was a bundle of nerves during his first game in 2011, and ended up losing in it. Before that, he was playing Counter-Strike in a gaming café and realised many others were playing another game — DOTA, a multiplayer battle game. His interest piqued and he learned the game in detail to play it. He found his love for DOTA and decided to join a team to play his first competitive game.
Gilles started off playing Prince of Persia, Dave — most games that 90s kids grew up playing — when he was 12 years old. After that, he went on to play more strategy-based and survival type games. “I love those because you plan a lot before making any move. And also because it’s powerful, to be able to command over everything and move and play the way you do,” he says. He has also played other games like Counter-Strike and PUBG.
Gilles has played at many gaming tournaments in the southern states. This includes colleges and gaming cafés. He has played at almost every gaming café in Bengaluru He and his team would always come second to another Bengaluru team in these competitions. “One day, the team’s leader asked me if I wanted to be a part of their team because they were short of a member. I agreed and we’ve been playing together since,” he says.
Presently, Gilles has joined another local team because two members from the previous team met with an accident and passed away. “It’s been hard losing people from the gaming community. When we were playing, it did not matter that they spoke Kannada and I did not. We connected through our mutual love for the game. Not just here, even online, the problems of age difference go away. I’ve had friends who are 40 years old and work as managers and still I can talk to them without feeling that they’re too old or that I’m too young,” he says. “There are around 32,000 Indians in the DOTA–2 community, and that’s just one game.”
Talking about the tournaments he went to with his previous team, Gilles remembers going to a tournament in SRM Universtiy, Chennai. It was a three-day tournament and their room across the road from the college was slightly spooky. So when his teammates were out, Gilles took a few pillows and bedsheets, rolled them up and made it look like a dead body was lying on one of the beds. “Then I went downstairs and told them that I had a bad feeling about this room. When they came up and saw the bed, they screamed,” he recalls, laughing at all the ‘stupid things’ that he and his friends continue to do.
Along with his work, the 26-year-old makes sure that he still has time to play at competitions. He and his four teammates practice online every time before they play at a match. “The gaming world is an escape from reality,” he says.