Game On

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