IIM Indore was in the scene again with its annual festival IRIS. This time they hosted their biggest online gaming event, Klueless 2 simultaneously throwing it open to everyone and not just students participating in IRIS. This had over a million players including myself going mad trying to play the game and reach to the next level. According to Vivek Mishra of the Klueless 2 team, they had almost one million hits a day. The comments and postings on the discussion forum are testament that some players would go to any lengths to just finish the level. You only have to read the 2000 plus entries on the forum (last time I checked which was a couple of months ago) to see people staying up for crazy hours, staring at puzzles and begging for clues.

The plot line of the game was innovative though frustrating depending on whether you finished the game or not. A crime has been committed. The player get to be the modern Sherlock Holmes, pipe, cap and all but who is extremely tech savvy armed with laptop, mobile and all the latest gadgets, with Watson and a host of other characters. It is cheeky and tests a range of skills and not just your logical ability. Also, you end up learning a lot while playing which is the best aspect of this game. It has no horrific violence like bashing someone's skull or spurting blood to reach the next level, which is something I enjoyed but Doom fans won't like this aspect. It has 21 levels and leaves you wanting for more though you do feel a sense of accomplishment at the end. Registration and buying is not needed to play this game. In fact, anyone with an Internet connection can play it and there is constant monitoring to make sure that no sassy blogger publishes the answers to the different levels. It is completely absent of any crappy strategies that online gaming websites employ to get your details. This doesn't means that it is an easy game to play and complete the levels. I do know several folks who are still stuck on level 7. Arthur Conan Doyle would have been proud of this new avatar of Sherlock Holmes but for few grammatical errors.

Today, the gaming industry is a trillion dollar industry with the US, the UK and even Finish companies competing for a share of the market. Despite India being called an "IT superpower" we still don't have a share in the gaming industry, let alone a respectable number of companies that produce games

I finished the game but the website made me wonder about gaming in India.

Where are the Techies?
A business school like IIM Indore came up with this game for the second year in a row, but the likes of IIT, REC, BITS and the rest of the techie colleges don't even hold an online event. Premier technical institutions of India are not producing programming pundits. Instead, these technical schools have Mardigras and Festember which are just annual fun festivals. There is no improvement as it is the same events year after year that satisfy the art cravings of some of the writers, musicians, quiz masters and artists that reside in the deep recesses of the would be techies. Nothing wrong with that except the same thing done for over 30 years without even a few variations like an online gaming event! Sure, they have some completely closed events like Pragyan (an annual event held by REC/NIT, Trichy) which tests innovation and research. It is a technical festival not known beyond the REC/NIT circle and outside Tamilnadu though they have companies sponsoring the event and the prize money is huge. Again, no gaming event is seen. Technical institutions could have made a better ones as Klueless series doesn't have great graphics or the desired controls. One doesn't know why there are no engineering students who can't present a game for their final year project instead of the usual thesis. Is this because gaming doesn't rake in the moolah as a BPO career may? Is this why the gaming industry is almost non-existent in India? Why is it that engineering students, who are avid gamers during school and college, just stop playing after they get a job? Why do technical schools in India not have an annual game showdown and it takes a business school to come up with one? I have seen it happen to several of my friends and acquaintances, both here and abroad. It's extremely puzzling.

Klueless 2, IIM-Indore's outline gaming event, has players staying up for crazy hours, staring at puzzles and beggining for clues

Corporations Clueless?
Klueless 2 is the much anticipated sequel to the first event Klueless held in 2005. This gaming showdown, possibly the biggest in the world, attracted almost no media attention and no corporate sponsors which show that companies (both in India and abroad) seem to have no business sense when it comes to gaming events hosted by Indians or games made by Indians. It would have been so easy to get the required global exposure to your company or product by offering to sponsor a portion of this event, if not the whole event. One cannot escape the irony that this is an event hosted by one of India's top business schools. This makes one wonder if our business leaders even understand the PR opportunity being offered by such a gaming event and Indian PR agencies sorely lack the skill to use such online gaming events to promote their brands globally. What a waste of an excellent PR opportunity and extreme short sightedness on the part of businesses and media to get maximum publicity at minimum price. According to a member of the Klueless 2 team, they couldn't get any company to sponsor or media to cover the event. Are media and companies, including IT companies, not Internet savvy or do they think that it is somehow beneath them to be covering or sponsoring a gaming event? This is truly mind boggling as to be tied up with brand IIM and to have your product/logo on display on the Internet catching the eyes of over one million possible consumers, possibly forever as you can play the game even after the competition period. It makes you wonder if the companies, multinational and Indian, are the ones who are truly clueless. More people play this game than watch any movie or TV serial or read newspapers in a day. Since they tend to stare at the puzzles for a long while, the name, brand or product would definitely register with the player as it is not really fleeting seconds like the email accounts or other websites. The majority of the players would be in the age group between 18 and 40, business savvy, smart, well heeled, professionals and students who have Internet access and like having fun. Surely, this is a target group which comprises of the major consumer group in India.

Anti-gaming after Graduation
Why are there very few online gaming sites or gaming companies in India? I remember 10 years ago, many of us used to buy PC Quest magazine just so we could play the games on the CD that comes free with the magazine. Sure, all the sections were interesting but the Game section on the CD which only contained demo versions of new games or originals created by young Indians, many of them students, used to be the rage. Just to have your game featured in the CD was a big deal. Some used to even dream of running their own PC gaming companies one day. What happened to those dreamers? Today, the gaming industry is a trillion dollar industry with the US, the UK and even Finish companies competing for a share of the market. Despite India being called an "IT superpower" we still don't have a share in the gaming industry, let alone a respectable number of companies that produce games. Is this because we can now buy games which we could only enjoy demo versions of 10 years ago? Or is it due to the traditional aversion to sports (we are happy with just one medal in the Olympics and it doesn't even have to be gold) and as a result, anything related to sports, even computer games? Or are we repeating the pattern of sports in schools and no sports once we get a job, the great Indian culture that our parents drilled into us? It seems to me that even avid gamers who are engineering professionals would rather do medical transcription than write a PC game. Maybe, it is the innate Indian in us who cannot get over the fear of gaming without a Net.

This doesn't mean there are no Indian companies that produce games. We have companies like Chennai based Karadi Tales that work on educational games and they are pretty successful. I am sure there are several hardcore gamers hidden in the various parts of India who could set up fantastic PC gaming companies. If business schools can make Klueless 2, this means there are business people and technical people in India who can and will invest money and time in making a kick ass game, produce, sell it and more. We are a country rich with stories, myths, mathematics and puzzles just waiting to be made into games. Instead of remaking old movies, why can't we make PC games out of them? Also, what about games that supplement Indian movies or even TV serials like KBC, CID, Yaar, etc. Would go a long way to publicize and expose the global audience to our culture and entertainment.

Time to take the plunge folks and take our share or better still dominate the trillion dollar gaming industry.

Here is to more games, online gaming events, Indian game companies and global gaming showdowns.

Happy 2007!

Deepa Kandaswamy
The author is the founder-moderator of the IndianWISE e-group
mail@dqindia.com

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