THE GRAND IPL AUCTION

Oculus has never failed to surprise anyone. Full of fun events, it brings together people not only from S.P.I.T, but also from colleges far and wide over this entire country. One such event, a spicy one for cricket fans, was the simulation of the IPL auction. An event where superstar cricketers go under the hammer and richest bidders in the country fight for collecting them under their franchise in an enthralling race with other bidders!
Here, players are bought and sold for money to the competitors who pay for them.  Oculus planned an event along the same lines in an online mode. It was designed as a combination of three major websites: Google meet, Airmeet and the main app where the players, teams and other technical stuff were displayed.

The event was conducted very smoothly; right from designing the rules and regulations to declaring the winners. The participants were divided in slots spanning two days. To make things more interesting, new features like the Yorker Card and Discount Card were introduced. But more of that later. First, let’s see how the game was to be conducted.

Every player had an overall rating and some sub ratings, depending on the position they played. Here’s a look at some cards:

Each assigned team had to gather 11-15 players, following some strict rules. The final scores would be calculated by summing up all the big numbers, with the subratings playing second fiddle and adding up bonuses. The team with the maximum total at the end would win.

The auction day proved to be every bit of a success it was anticipated to be. The participants were made to auction for the teams they would be playing with. On the first day itself the 5-time IPL champions Mumbai Indians were sold for 10 crores! At the same time, cards were auctioned.

The teams were distributed in an open auction. The first player was rolled out. Slowly, the players started rolling out. Every team started filling their slots, emptying their coffers at an alarming rate. Soon, all the teams that had started with 90 crore each, had almost 50 crore each. RETRO maestros, current cricketing superstars were bought for huge amounts.

After an intense struggle between the Delhi Capitals and Kolkata Knight Riders, where you couldn’t even dare to blink an eye, Kapil Dev was sold for an amount of 23 crores to the Delhiites. Not only was he the costliest buy in this slot but also in the entire auction.

After a thrilling auction lasting over 3.5 hours, the slot was closed and the teams submitted.

The orange army won the gold with their amazing strategies with a close fight. Even the last team was just 20 points short. It felt as if  we were actually on the cricket field fighting for a trophy!

Winners were announced some days apart Harish M bagged the first prize with 1010 points, Chaitanya Vijayvargia and team were our runners up with 1008 points and Shubh Shah and team were declared the third wheel with 1004 points. Slot Winners were Shantanu Milkhe, Vinaya Gouda, Soorya B, Yash Jathar, Swarup Khode and Durgeshwar Mahto.

Covered By: Guruprasad Parasnis

OCULUS E -SPORTS

The action packed and fun filled Oculus E-Sports event didn’t fail to enthrall this year either! The event included games like Valorant and Counter Strike Global Offensive . A terrific participation from various colleges was witnessed for both game events as the teams battled it out on intense maps to clinch victory.

“The difficulty we faced was conducting this in the pandemic thus we weren’t getting many participants but we did a lot of PR and contacted people which eventually made the event a success.

“I learnt a lot and finally it was worth it”, says Tirth Meghani, the event organizer.

The games followed a 5v5 knockout format with the qualifiers and semifinals being held on the 13th of march followed by the grand finale on 14th. Valorant was livestreamed on youtube along with an exciting live commentary.

The winners were offered a cash prize of three thousand and five gaming earphones. The runners up kept cash prize of two thousand and the MVP’s bagged a gaming console. All in all prizes worth Rs 18,000 were distributed.
The Valorant winners and runners up were team Orgless 5 and VoltFraction Enforcers respectively. Team UNDISPUTED won the CS GO event followed by team ZF in runners up.

“It was a real fun event! Never knew there were such enthusiastic and dedicated players in college. Management was flawless” says Parth Yogaonkar, participant.

Covered By: Kevin Xavier

Raiders of Virtual Treasure

On the 14th of February, the team of Oculus managed to replace a regular, mundane afternoon with a completely new concept for an event, ‘Raiders of Virtual Treasure’. As the name suggests, the event indulged the participants in a mind-boggling adventure, wherein they were stuck in a virtual world, divided into several realms named after characters from Game Of Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and so on, to spice it all up. Initially, all participants were given a website to start from and were expected to decode the hint for each level and move on to the next website, in order to find their way out of the confined zone, and finally to the treasure! The first one to reach out to the other side of the world was the winner, having received prizes worth 10k bucks.

Despite the constraint of the existence of the virtual component and more than 50 participants having taken part, the organisers made sure of the smooth functioning of the event, providing them with a helpdesk on each website along with a few lifelines.

‘We tried to make this event as unique and exciting as possible. This was truly a wonderful experience for all of us, being a part of the organising team.’ says Amol Lashkare, one of the organisers.

Covered By: Trisha Shishodiya