Digit spoke with Yashraj Vakil, the COO of Dream11.com, to get to know more about the site and the quickly growing world of Fantasy Cricket...

Q1. You were the first to adopt Flex technology for online gaming…what advantages does it give you?

Flex is an open source framework which is used for building expressive web applications that make it much easier for people to view and interpret data. There have been some basic games and game engines developed but seldom put to commercial use. This is the first and only time so far that a fantasy sports game is developed using this technology.

It is used at Dream11.com to build a rich yet light-weight user experience for playing fantasy cricket. Flex provides a much richer user experience when compared to any other text-based interface. With the help of this technology we have created the world's first graphical Fantasy Cricket game. Dream11.com has also been nominated for the best new fantasy sports website award at Fantasy Sports Trade Association’s (FSTA) industry recognition awards. Founded in 1997, FSTA is the oldest and most prestigious non-profit fantasy sports trade body worldwide with members, which include CBS, ESPN, NBC and NFL.

Q2. What are the differences between public and private leagues?

A player can create his/her own league and ask other users to join their league. We have two kinds of Leagues: Public and Private. Public leagues are available to all users. One can search through a list of all public leagues on Dream11.com and join it without the requirement of any authorization.

A user can also make a private league wherein he/she can invite selected users by their choice. Private leagues are password protected, thus the owner must share the password with the people he wanted to invite to join the league.

For both public and private you have the ability to invite whomever you choose by entering their email address or username.

Q3. How exactly does your points system work, for players, leagues, and users?

Our point system is as mentioned below. Users compete for prizes on an individual level. Leagues can compete in a friendly manner on aggregate points. Leagues are a great way for office colleagues in different divisions, batch mates in a college and such to hold competitions. Click here for a detailed look at the point structure on the last page.

Q4. It all sounds complicated for first time users… Do you have a more comprehensive tutorial for newbie's?

If you have a look at our Fantasy Cricket game you will notice we have taken cues from internationally popular PC titles to reduce the learning curve. For first time users, we have a step-by-step interactive guide to help them create their team and understand the process.

Apart from that, there are lots other options with which users can understand the game better. The "How to play” section, apart from providing a video tutorial also has a detailed explanation with screenshots.

Q5. Who develops the cricket games featuring on your site? Any tie-ups with other online gaming sites, like Zapak.com?

We do. Dream11.com also powers Fantasy Cricket and cricket games for many websites such as Cricbuzz.com, Zeecric.com, Cricketnirvana.com, One India, Indiatimes, Amar Ujala in India. Internationally Cricketworld.com in UK and BD News 24 use our Fantasy Cricket and casual games for their users. We are also the official Fantasy Cricket Game partner for the IPL team, Mumbai Indians (www.mumbaiindians.com).

Our casual game Slumdog Cricketer was nominated at the FICCI BAF Awards 2009 in the Best Online Game Category.

Q6. How exactly do your users, the fantasy league gamers, benefit from playing on your site? What awards or prizes do you give out?

We always concentrate on giving handsome awards to players on our website. Players can win prizes every match based on their points as well as on aggregate total of points scored in each match during a particular tournament. Presently we are giving away cash prizes worth Rs. 50,000 for the Asia Cup. In the past we have given trips to South Africa, bikes, laptops and even Rs. 5 lakhs to the tournament champion of IPL.

Q7. How can a single team/user take part in different tours/leagues simultaneously? Shouldn’t each team be tour/league-based?

We give an option to our users to create separate teams for different tournaments and each of these will have a separate leaderboards and prizes associated with them. We try to give our users the flexibility to play different tournaments simultaneously and choose the tournament they would like to play.

Read on to know more about Dream11.com and Fantasy Cricket...
 

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