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It's play time again

Debraj Chaudhury

As the hit single blasts away in the background, Anish Vishal quickly ducks the bullet that whizzes past him. No, the 16-year-old is not caught in gunfire but is playing Quake II at an arcade in Delhis posh South Extension market. And he is not alone. St anding next to him is 15-year-old Sunny Sastri who is fulfilling his dream of becoming a pilot. He is trying out his hand at a flight simulation game that gives him the feel of the real thing.

Like Anish and Sunny, a large number of public school kids are into video games. Anishs 12-year-old sister Kamakshi plays Phantasy Star and Chu Chu Rocket while his cousin works up his adrenalin with Spitball Sparky, Virtual Fighter and Crazy Cars.

After almost a decade of their decline, video games are back and are flashing and zapping the world including urban India - all over again. But this time they have come in another avatar as online entertainment packages that come through the Internet an d are played on the home PC. For the kids of the new millennium annihilating the invading aliens is fast becoming the ultimate sport.

Earlier it was games parlours, today it is the home computers and CDs. PCs are now the in thing and a growing number of urban school kids, college students and even pin-striped, tie-clad yuppies are seen busy playing snooker or racing cars on their compu ter screens.

Side by side, the video game parlours still exist in cities, towns and tourist spots where an estimated 10 million Indians spend well over Rs 40 crore every year feeding the rupee-guzzling arcade machines. Add to these the million-odd home consoles and v ideo/CD/Internet games in India are still a booming industry.

Back in the 1980s kids bought cartridges loaded with games that were slow and hardly had any animation to speak of. Now that era seems like the Jurassic Age. Today games come at lightening speed, with a lot more animation, graphics and sound effects. Mor eover, those games catered only to the younger generation unlike the games that are played today which have a mass appeal.

Mega business

It is not surprising then that the production of a new game is no longer a back-of-the-garage operation. Today it can take millions of dollars and dozens of computer experts to develop a state-of-the-art PC game. Thats because gaming is mega business the world over. Even in India, kids who have excess to PCs crave for the newest games.

Interestingly, apart from the kids, research shows that online games are most popular with people between 20 and 30 years of age. Which explains why the worlds leading game developers pay a lot of attention towards this segment of game enthusiasts. Compa nies such as Microsoft, Sega and Sony Corp. are offering hundreds of games to choose from, as each one of them tries to turn these enthusiasts into virtual addicts. The younger generation goes for action and adventure games whereas the adults are more in to strategy, realistic stimulators and role-playing games such as Sim City.

Sega (Japan) has launched Dreamcast in India. It is a 128- bit, game console with a built in 56k-modem. It also acts as an audio CD player. At Rs 12,900 it is being touted as the next big thing in reality gaming. Its a complete home entertainment device and we are expecting to sell at least one lakh units by 2002, says Sunil Sethi, Vice-President (Sales and Marketing), Stracon (India) Limited.

An important reason for the increasing popularity of online games in India is the importance given to them by computer magazines. Most of these publications have dedicated sections that include game reviews, news about new developments, tips on the best and worst games as also how to play and win. Some magazines also give away free CD-ROMs that have the latest shareware releases of the games.

In the online section of companies like Sega, Nintendo and Sony there are hundreds of games to choose from as all the leading games companies keep developing series that catch the fancy of young people and turn them into virtual addicts.

Psychologist, Dr Sheila Chopra, feels, Urban loneliness is driving hordes to the computer and the Internet as with the shrinking social world people are looking for activities for action and excitement. Video games provide an easy way out.

Many feel that the current craze will die down as it had earlier on in the 1980s. But they may be wrong as anyone who had played Space Invaders or Asteroids at that time would surely love to have a go at them again. In the early eighties, a series of meg a-arcades like Fantasizia and Disneyland had come up all around India and were doing booming business till lack of new games led to their closure.

This time around there will be no such problems. The video game software is available aplenty and thousands of sites on the net and new ones are launched every month in US and Japan. The impact is felt in India through the Internet and CDs.

Management games

Moreover, in this second coming, adults are as keen as kids about the games. That will assure big money rolling in. In an attempt to hook the adults, the worlds biggest maker of computer games, Nintendo, is launching a chain of adult management games. A series of games on management, stock exchanges and adult games will be launched in Japan soon and will be available by year-end in India as well.

But CD games are still restricted to the rich and upper-middle-class, because of the prohibitive costs. First one has to have a computer at home, then the price of an original games CD can be anywhere between Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 (after taxes and custom duty). With such a scenario, piracy is rampant here as well. One can get a pirated CD for as low as Rs 100 to Rs 150.

But the good news is that Indians too are throwing their hat in the arena. The low costs of development, infrastructure as also skilled manpower is giving them a huge advantage. An online portal, indiagames.com that claims to be Indias first games Inter net site has a variety of entertainment on offer.

Though most of the games on the portal may not be of international quality, they are imaginative and very Indian. Apart from the usual categories there are games relating to Bollywood and Rajneeti (politics). Theres also a game called Mission Kandahar th at centres around the hijacking of IC-184.

The Indian game developers are at a handicap as there are no professional organisations or publications to keep them abreast of the latest trends. Their only source of industry information is international publications such as Game Developer Digest and C omputer Graphics World. Also, in most of the cases the Indian game developers use imported international software.

But keeping the phenomenal potential in mind the time is not far when India would have a thriving industry that would keep the kids blasting away.

Top game companies

Sega: The Japan-based Sega Corporation is a $2.5 billion company considered by many as the industry leader in interactive digital entertainment media, offers interactive entertainment experiences both inside and outside the home.

Nintendo: The Nintendo company of Kyoto, is the acknowledged worldwide leader in the creation of interactive entertainment. To date, Nintendo has sold more than one billion video games worldwide, has created such industry icons as Mario and Donkey Kong a nd launched franchises like The Legend of Zelda and

Pokemon. Nintendo manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home video game systems.

Sony Corp: Recognised as the undisputed industry leader, Sony Computer Entertainment markets the PlayStation game console and develops, publishes, markets and distributes software for the console and the upcoming PlayStation.

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