Sri Lanka Institute of Information and Technology (SLIIT) resurrected their Gamefest eSports tournament after an idle 3 years; the last being held in 2015. Time between the tournaments notwithstanding, the event had a turnup of over 600 people which proved even more impressive given the weather conditions that particular weekend. The event took place at the SLIIT campus in Malabe on the 19th and 20th of May and had quite the theatrical essence to it.
Kicking off at 10.00 a.m, the setup showcased at the campus was impressive indeed, the auditorium stage was lit and decorated to great effect along with another setup to greet you as you made your way through the entrance into the campus. With the platform set and the competitors ready, things kicked off smoothly.
The tournament saw a variety of major titles, such as Call of Duty 4,League of Legends,DOTA 2 and CSGO as team games along with Injustice 2,FIFA 18 and Clash Royale as individual games. Curtin University of Australia, Nestle, Koththu Mee, Red Bull, Red Dot Geek and SLT had joined in partnership as the sponsors for the event with each sponsor having set up stalls with some great offers and products.
Speaking to the organisers to get their experience and expectation of the event this is what they had to say;
“We didn’t plan anything unique this time. As the community has been inactive for some time due to graduation of former members, our objective was to “get up from sleep”, to get back in track with the eSports community of Sri Lanka. It is our passion for gaming which makes us stand as one to work for something we all love and we want nothing more than to contribute from our end to the eSports culture of Sri Lanka to help it thrive and develop more”
Our team, especially the board of SLIIT Gaming Community, are not newbies to organizing events, but the thing is, organizing a gaming tournament is something that goes beyond organizing just any event. That is what we felt and learned from GameFest 2k18. And we shall use this as a learning experience to make GameFest 2k19 the best we have delivered up to date.”
Moving onto the competitive side of things we saw some new and old rivalries as well as some exciting matchups during the course of the two day tournament.
These were the winners and runner ups for the titles;
Call Of Duty 4
Winner – nA Spite
Runner up – Maximum pulseCORE
DOTA 2
Winner – Division Death Sentence
Runner up – Division Bedtime Samurais
League of Legends
Winner – PnX Lanka Lions
Runner up – PnX Meme Masters
FIFA 18
Winner – Sachin_d
Injustice 2
Winner – X3 RaSSylZaR
Clash Royale
Winner – IsuruAmendis
The award ceremony will take place on 23rd of June at SLIIT Premises.
Any gamer who is interested is warmly welcome to attend and be a part of this golden endeavour.
In conclusion, even with the less than stellar weather , seeing many teams fight against rivals and newer teams to come out on top and keep the eSports spirit going strong was truly a sight to behold and we congratulate SLIIT on a job well done, especially with the challenges they faced during the event and hopefully we will see an even better event in the coming years.
