Wanted : Better Indian Casual Games

By Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly 'Game Invader' column in The New Indian Express

The recent spate of 'election' themed games on many Indian casual gaming web sites has led to some amusing coverage in the press.

Many paragraphs have been devoted to explaining how 'gaming companies' have 'developed' games based on the elections in order to 'educate' players or give them a 'feel' of politics. Some people from these companies have even given us the usual sound bytes about how they wanted to provide 'this experience' or educate players about 'that aspect of gaming'.

Which is all very well – except for one thing.

The games mostly, er . . suck.

Creating a poor 2-D platform jumping game where L.K.Advani or Manmohan Singh must run, jump over obstacles, avoid 'political opponents' and collect 'votes', is no different from Mario running and jumping over obstacles, avoiding 'koopa troopas' and collecting coins. And the latter is much more fun.

A game like this, despite the ridiculous claims by the marketing or PR people who make it, does not educate players about the election in any reasonable way. It is nothing more than a cheap attempt to cash in on a current topic – which is fine with me, really. That's what casual game developers need to do. Only, please stop claiming that it's some major design innovation with lofty goals of education and the like.

It's not just an election thing – I recently read about a 'stock market' game where players would have to 'catch' stockbrokers or investors or whoever, who would leap out of a building window, presumably to commit suicide. Yeah, just like Kaboom. Or Fire. Or a hundred other games from the classic arcade game era.

This, according to the company whose web site it is on, is supposed to educate people on various aspects of the recession. What the WTF?

Indian casual game publishers – hear this. We appreciate your efforts and investments into expanding gaming markets in India. We love the way you have introduced casual gaming to the average Indian office goer or college student or housewife. Full power to you.

But we'd appreciate it even more if you also spent some resources to develop truly original and interesting designs which would help us get the quintessentially Indian, topical 'experiences' you claim you want to deliver. How about a true-blue Rajnikanth style fight game? Or an election game where you need to lie and cheat your way to victory? Or an Autorickshaw racing game that actually captures the unique physics of a rickshaw, and is not merely a vanilla racer with Autorickshaw models replacing the usual cars? There I knocked off three ideas that wouldn't be too hard for your developers to make. And it took me all of five minutes. Surely your people can do better?

A little more thought into concept development and design can lead to an exponential increase in the quality of games on the Indian casual scene. And no. I'm sorry, just swapping characters and assets from an existing design with 'Indian' people and objects doesn't make the game Indian, or even topical. Was Yoddha an 'Indian' game just because it had ostensibly Pakistani terrorists and . . er . . Pepsi bottles? Nope. It was just another bad shooter, period.

So show us some love, publishers. Put on your thinking caps, and give us some games that will make us laugh, scare us silly, or get us thinking. Hire the youngsters who are playing your games – they'll surely be glad to help out.

And for heaven's sake, stop your idiot marketing / corporate communications people from making stupid, ill-informed and downright LOLworthy statements to the press.

Worried about your child playing videogames ? Read on.

By Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly 'Game Invader' column in The New Indian Express

I have a six year old son who loves videogames. I love videogames. So this works out great for the family toy-shopping budget. But this article isn't about how to cut your monthly expenses by having offspring who share your taste in digital entertainment. Nope. That will have to wait.

I still meet a lot of parents who are concerned, and sometimes even shocked, that I let my son play the kind of games he does. This is to share my experience with them and those among you like them, who are confused about letting their children play the games they seem to love so much.

First things first – I don't let my son play violent, twisted, or morally ambiguous titles. No GTA. No Mortal Kombat. No Resident Evil. Cartoonish violence is fine with me though. I'd prefer my son to play Street Fighter IV rather than watch supid TV serials where ordinary people (just like the friends and family he relates to) lie, cheat and even kill each other due to money, ego and sex. Now, that's some truly sick shite, and yet I don't hear too many parents expressing concern about kids watching these works of art.

But the really interesting part? Left to himself, my son naturally gravitates towards games where you create things, as opposed to destroy them. In the past few months, the majority of his game time has been spent building things in the Spore creature, building and vehicle creators, building his own levels in Boom Blox and Little Big Planet, and making music in Wii Music. Yes, he'll sometimes prefer a session of SF IV or Super Mario Galaxy, but it's surprising how much he prefers to build and create, using the tools provided by games.

That's my son, building some creepy eight-legged spider-vehicle in SPORE.

Take Wii Music, for instance. When he began playing it, his attempts at making music were an absolute mess – he'd just randomly wave the Wiimote about, creating noises that would make Cacofonix sound like Jose Carreras. But now, he's showing a clearly improved understanding of musical concepts like tempo and pitch. He gets most of the pitch-matching and pattern recognition exercises correct. His jam sessions sound a lot nicer. And he just conducted an orchestra playing Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' for an 88% score, and thunderous applause from the virtual audience.

And no help from me. I just observe, and never intervene with his learning process. These games are great virtual teaching tools, designed by hardcore pros who know exactly how to help someone improve at a skill while keeping it fun, challenging and yet not frustrating. (Just ask my wife – who managed a 20% increase in Guitar Hero accuracy over a single two hour play session).

Playing with Boom Blox or Spore's creators are similar to playing with Lego or Play-Doh – stimulating the child's imagination in very similar ways. Yes, playing with physical toys provides a tactile experience that cannot be replicated in a videogame, but on the other hand, videogames open up creative possibilities and features that are impossible with physical toys.

Also, my son is a normal child who enjoys reading, cartoons, music, mucking about with toys, playing in water, painting, climbing trees, hanging out with his friends, and playing cruel pranks on his mother. He's not obsessed with videogames, nor are they a mystery to him – they're just a part of his overall scheme of things.

My point? By integrating the right videogames into a child's play mix, there are benefits to be had that many of you may not have thought possible.

Dumb, mindless fun. Highly recommended.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly 'Game Invader' column in The New Indian Express.

Playing Tigon Studios' recently released Wheelman on the PS3 managed to touch a long-forgotten chord in me – the one which makes me enjoy extremely stupid yet fun games. I'll play these for hours – with a stupid grin on my face, which confounds my wife and thrills my son.

Wheelman is never going to be counted as an all-time classic, but when it's fun, it's heaps of fun. First, you play as Vin Diesel. Unless there's a game based on Chuck Norris or Mr.T coming out anytime soon, that can't be beat for sheer awesomeness. Second, you drive a number of cars, bikes and trucks performing some wicked maneouvres on the streets of Barcelona. You'll take flying leaps from vehicle to vehicle, perform screeching handbrake turns, pull off some absolutely insane stunts and participate in truly Hollywood-style hi-speed chases. The wonderfully forgiving, floaty vehicle physics and the relatively low difficulty levels make Wheelman one of those games you'll play for hours, without even understanding why you didn't stop much earlier.

It's got a crap story, terrible acting, ho-hum graphics and annoyingly crippled on-foot shooter gameplay. But when you're driving an eighteen wheeler truck over a bridge, knocking enemy vehicles into the water, and simultaneously dodging launched grenades, you won't care.

Wheelman, at least for me personally, follows in a long tradition of games that shouldn't be so much fun, but undoubtedly are. They're not smart or clever. They don't have great interactive narratives, or layered, nuanced characters, or complex, deep gameplay mechanics. Most of them involve blowing things up, breaking things down, or slicing and dicing. But hey, they're fun to play.

Okay – I'll admit it. The whole article was a setup so I could talk about Serious Sam. Just when every game was trying to be Half-Life, by adding storylines and characters and sophistication, Serious Sam went the other route and delivered crazy, mad shooting gameplay where you just had to shoot hundreds of things that would run at you (if you could stop laughing at their ridiculousness). It was astounding, breathtaking fun – and had no right to be. Dumb shooters were supposed to be dead. People wanted more depth. More cerebral gameplay. More moody atmosphere. Right? Apparently not, and thank God for that.

Then, there's the Party Crash mode in the Burnout games that has to be one of the silliest, laugh-out-loud game modes in recent history. There's something to be said for a bunch of increasingly drunken people passing a controller around and seeing who can cause the most carnage at a traffic junction. Burnout is probably the leading racing franchise in gaming today (eat dust, NFS), but Party Crash is easily the most frivolous and addictive diversion it offers. I've never seen it fail to liven up a party.

I've also always enjoyed the Mortal Kombat titles, despite the obvious superiority of the Soul Calibur, Street Fighter or Tekken series in terms of deep, sophisticated fighting mechanics. There's something stupidly fun about MK. And of course, there's that announcer, too. I'm in fact drawing great amounts of enjoyment from the latest iteration, Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe – much delight watching Batman, Superman and The Joker getting medieval on Liu Kang, Raiden and the MK gang.

There's something about the basic, direct fun factor of games like these that taps directly into the essential appeal of gaming itself – the original classics like Space Invaders, Pole Position, Defender and Pac-Man were astoundingly simple yet undeniably addictive. Something there to think about.

Hoog Lee comics on the KKR web site

The company I work at, A Bellyful of Dreams Entertainment, is creating some comics for the Kolkata Knight Riders web site. The comics are all based on Hoog Lee, the KKR mascot which was created by my colleagues Shashi Sudigala and Raj Golay.

The comics are essentially aimed at a younger audience (approximately 8 t0 12), as the KKR franchise is looking to create a strong brand equity with this age group, presumably to leverage SRK's popularity among them. But for that, I guess the team needs to, like,win a few games :)

The two strips I'm posting below are written by me and drawn by Ashish Padlekar. Click on a thumbnail to see the full strip.







We're also doing some single-panel stuff written by Ravi Abburi and drawn by Raj Golay. Am including a sample below, but you can head over to the KKR site for more.



Will keep you guys posted on more developments.

What's so 'Indian' about Hanuman's gameplay?

By Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express.

At the recent launch of Sony's Hanuman game for the PS2, there was much brouhaha about Hanuman being a non-violent game which featured “Indian Gameplay”. Whatever that means.

While I've written in these pages earlier about how Hanuman : Boy Warrior is a significant and important effort (and kudos to Sony, Aurona and Milestone for it), this kind of ill-informed and ridiculous marketing speak won't do the game any favours.

First, it was amusing to listen to Hanuman: Boy Warrior being touted as a game that promoted values such as non-violence – when it is merely a cookie-cutter beat-em-up where Lord Hanuman essentially bludgeons a variety of assorted demons using a mace. How is this non-violent? Purely because it's a god doing the bashing? What if it were Kratos? Or Thor?

Secondly, the game uses a storytelling device that contrives to tell you that you aren't really 'killing' your enemies, you're merely 'liberating their souls'. And some stuff about how 'nobody is really evil', and 'everyone has good inside them'. Which is all very well, and commendable. But pray tell, how any of this constitutes 'Indian Gameplay', as was proudly claimed by Sony bigwigs at the launch event?

In fact, I take exception to both parts of the expression 'Indian Gameplay'. The concepts of good and evil, and 'liberation of the soul' as explained in the game are hardly exclusive to Indian philosophies or worldviews. Any number of cultures all over the world have explored, adopted and preached the very same thoughts for centuries. Hence this aspect of the game is no more Indian than it is Chinese or Mexican or African.

And also, explain to me how this constitutes gameplay? In terms of gameplay, you beat the baddies up, then they fall, and leave a glowing orb of energy (the soul, in this case) floating in mid-air. Which is exactly like God of War. Or Fable. Or Ninja Gaiden. So, instead of calling it 'mana' or 'experience', you're calling it a 'freed soul'. Er . . sorry to disappoint, Sony, but the last time I checked, that isn't new gameplay. It's just terminology, and not terribly original terminology either, used to describe or add meaning to the actions that constitute gameplay. You could call it a storytelling device, perhaps. But for a company like Sony Computer Entertainment, which makes games, for crying out loud, to describe this as “Indian Gameplay” borders on the ridiculous. No, scratch that. It IS ridiculous.

I said the same thing when FxLabs launched the ill-fated Agni, and I'll say it again for Hanuman : Boy Warrior. It's a great effort, a very important and pioneering move by Sony and their partners, and worthy of much recognition and applause. But by making silly, ignorant statements, they do an injustice to their own product. Just imagine how amusing the international gaming community will find this – it's embarrassing that India's first console game will sadly be mocked, largely due to foolish claims made in the name of marketing or promotion. Everybody loves an honest, brave effort (which is what Hanuman is), but nobody who is anybody has the patience for claims such as Hanuman offers 'truly Indian gameplay', or that Agni was 'on par with the best PC games available'.

So listen up, corporate suits. You've have done the hard part by developing a game against steep odds. Don't eff it up by making lazy, ill-informed claims that only act as fodder for ridicule. At the very least, it will make the likes of me shut up.

Swinging both ways : Swordfighting in games.

By Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for the New Indian Express.

With the arrival of Mad World on the Wii a few weeks ago, gamers are abuzz with excitement : have we finally got the game with the ultimate sword / weapon based melee fighting mechanics?

Mad World + Chainsaw = full all-singing all-dancing joy!

Mad World is the first truly ultra-violent hardcore game to make it big on the Wii platform, and, naturally, has gamers in a tizzy over its use of the Wiimote for bloody, splatterlicious swashbuckling moves using a variety of bladed weapons.

Ever since Nintendo demonstrated the Wiimote and its motion sensor technology many years ago, people all over the world immediately began expecting great sword-based games at long last. Here was the system that would finally make the dreams of several wannabe Errol Flynns, Zorros and Luke Skywalkers come true. They could finally unleash all those twirling, whirling, skilful feints, thrusts and slashes and despatch all manner of evil foes. Much fun was expected.

But what followed was, mostly, disappointing. Zelda's swordplay was a ho-hum part of an otherwise exciting game. No More Heroes featured great sword moves, but was a generally dull game outside of combat. And the great, promised, lightsaber game never came.

No More Heroes was perhaps the first game to get Wiimote swordfighting right.

The history of sword-control in gaming is in fact varied and interesting. Sword fighting has always been an enjoyable and beloved part of videogames. The earliest ones I remember – such as Barbarian, and Jordan Mechner's original Prince of Persia – offered fantastic fencing fun. But for many years (and even to this day), swordfighting remained a series of button-presses.

And unlike fans of gunplay, who were mostly satisfied with the mouse-keyboard and two-thumbstick combinations that are that genre's norm, the sword fighting fans always clamoured for more. It simply didn't feel right, this abstract button-pressing thing. It didn't help that the bullets brigade also had light-guns when they felt like 'hold-it-in-your-hands' experience.

That's not to say there weren't valiant attempts.

The curious 'Die By The Sword' on the PC platform attempted an early control scheme where the mouse gave the player complete control of the characters sword-arm. It worked decently well in theory, and to be fair, even in practice. However, it ended up disappointing most players because you could repeatedly 'punk' on one or two effective moves and complete the game. The game didn't reward, and on the contrary seemed to punish, players who tried to innovate or experiment with interesting swordplay.

Die by The Sword was an interesting, but only partially successful attempt at a true PC based sword fighting experience.

But perhaps the biggest disappointment of all was the ill-fated Star Wars : Obi Wan, which promised to deliver true lightsaber control, but ended up being a broken, bad game that was roundly condemned by gamers worldwide. They were expecting to wield lightsabers, and were given a sad, 'by the numbers' platform beat-em-up. And, until the advent of the Wii, it was assumed that there never would, indeed never could, be a good simulation of sword fighting in the gaming medium.

After which, it was back to good ole button pressing. The Prince of Persia games. Oblivion. Star Wars : The Force Unleashed. And a host of other solid combat systems that are fun but don't deliver what true fans of swordfighting have been clamouring for for so many years.

Will 'Mad World' open the floodgates for more sword-based experimentation from game developers? Or will it be an aberration, an oddity, after which it will return to business as usual? Much will depend on how well the game does commercially (it's already been received well by critics), and I'm keeping my fingers crossed and my sword-arm ready.

Will Hanuman be gaming's saviour in India?

By Anand Ramachandran. This post is a mashup of two separate pieces I did for The New Indian Express and Business Today.

He's possibly the greatest Hero in all of fiction and Mythology. He would have ended the Ramayana war before it began, if only the Lord had let him. He even managed to turn a crappy animated film into a super smash hit that, in turn, sold a lorryload of crappy merchandise and made tons of money for the producers.

Now, Sony is hoping that he can do the same for the Playstation brand in India. They couldn't have picked a better guy . . er . . god.

Yep, everyone will agree that Hanuman is the pWnzor. The cat's whiskers. The kvlt_sh1t3. The Son of Vayu has, with good reason, captured public imagination through the ages, appealing to generation after generation with his heroism, chivalry, strength of character, and sheer awesomeness.

Which is why Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has gone with Hanuman:Boy Warrior as India's first ever indigenously produced console game. That's right, this is the first ever true-blue, made-in-India, made-for-India console game, and that alone marks it out for importance. It's a great sign that Sony is supporting and investing in Indian games made by Indian studios – surely the best way forward to tapping into the world's largest unexploited videogame market. I'm hoping that Hanuman : Boy Warrior marks the beginning of things to come.

Let's get the obvious out of the way. From the hour or so that I spent playing the game, here are my impressions. The game looks and plays like a PSOne platforming action-adventure. Although the core gameplay just about passes muster (in itself a commendable feat for developer Aurona Technologies), the game lacks polish at every level. The graphics are dated by about fifteen years. The controls (though surprisingly decent for most part) are wonky and unpredictable. The camera control is completely manual – and cripples gameplay sometimes. The level design, combat and animation all reflect the relative inexperience of the developer. There's also the definitely the possibility of budget and time constraints – the game was apparently developed in ten months.

But, in the end, none of this really matters very much in the context of this game. While it will never impress the hardcore, Hanuman : Boy Warrior is decent enough a game to offer a few hours of fun to its target audience – very young, newbie and casual gamers for whom this may even be a first-time console buy. This market is not as quality conscious as veteran videogame buyers, and may be more willing to forgive Hanuman: Boy Warrior's technical and gameplay deficiencies than someone who regularly plays God of War.

Hanuman : Boy Warrior has the potential to do for videogames in India what the Hanuman animated movie did for animated features – open up the market and raise investor interest. In that sense, this is an important game. If it does manage to become a mass-market seller, it could pave the way for more, and certainly better games to come through from India – a service that is invaluable to the fledgling Indian market.

According to Santosh Pillai, CEO of Aurona, the game was completed in nine months, which is a tremendous achievement by any standards. Of course, many of the issues mentioned earlier could be put down to budget and time-frame limitation, and Aurona has done a creditable job overall. But, sadly, the game runs the risk of being panned by critics and gamers from the hardcore segment.

The market for videogames in India is a strange beast. While the market, in theory, has existed since the mid eighties, with a number of 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo / Sega clones appearing on store shelves – it has never really gathered momentum in the mainstream. A thriving grey market continues to exist, with Nintendo's Gameboy and the PS2 itself being the top sellers. As far as the official market goes, with Nintendo's recent entry into the fray through HCL, all three top console players are now present in India – but sales continue to pale in comparison to evolved markets. Recently, at an industry event, Microsoft shared an unofficial figure of 'less than 100000' XBOX units (of course, that could even be five thousand). Sony claimed aound 400000 PS2s, 120000 PSPs and 35000 PS3 units sold. Compare those figures with international figures, which run into the millions, and the untapped potential becomes obvious.

However, price points are still a major issue. To really hit the big time, the gaming industry needs middle-class India to buy videogames. The big three consoles cost upwards of twenty thousand rupees – a major investment for most Indian middle-class families. Games, too, are priced between Rs.2500/- and Rs.3500/-, an expensive proposition for what is essentially a plaything. Also, unlike in the west and Japan, where the average videogame customer is actually aged about 33, the Indian consumer still perceives videogames as a purchase for children, further increasing the price barrier.

This is why the PS2, at a price point of Rs.6990/-, and Hanuman : Boy Warrior gains much importance – it can remove the price and cultural barriers in one fell swoop. By positioning the purchase as an ideal premium gift for children, it can push consoles into middle-class homes, creating an installed base and bringing future repeat-buyers into the fold.

Hanuman : Boy Warrior is priced at Rs.499/-, which is an interesting price point that is slightly below the norm for PS2 titles, but not so low that it could be considered breaktrhough pricing. The game has the right ingredients to work in the Indian mass market – an irresistible Hero, the Mythology factor, and an affordable platform with the widest installed base in the country.With the right marketing push, and a little bit of good luck, this could become the game-changer that the industry is looking for.

Playing old favourites in new places.

A review of the N-Gage version of Monopoly Here and Now : World Edition, which first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express.

One of my personal favourite gaming moments over the past few months came not on the PC or a heavyweight console, but on my mobile phone.

During a long wait at a bank (due to some procedural screw ups they seem to be so good at coming up with), I randomly decided to fire up a MONOPOLY HERE AND NOW : WORLD EDITION game on my N81. The game is an N-Gage port of the perennial board-game favourite, and I expected that it would help me pass a few minutes while I checked it out.

Monopoly Here and Now : World Edition is clumsily named, but surprisingly addictive and boatloads of fun.

But before I knew it, I was completely hooked, wheeling and dealing with the AI opponent with so much fervour, I almost missed my turn to meet the manager when it eventually came. An hour and a half had passed, and I was none the wiser.

The N-Gage version of Monopoly is a lovingly created, faithful translation that is sure to please fans of the board game. Within minutes, you'll be planning your empire, deciding buying strategies, improving and mortgaging properties, praying that the dice will roll up a favoured number, drawing Chance cards, and of course, making a few trips to Jail. Once you get past the very mild learning curve, which mainly involves understanding the controls and menus, you'll be enjoying an honest-to-goodness game of Monopoly.

In time, you'll grow to hate your AI opponent as much as you normally hate real-life monopoly opponents! Pity there's no cheating.

The AI is surprisingly decent – especially when trading with. Your opponent will accept or reject your offers to trade properties, come up with offers and counter offers of its own, and generally behave on the same irritating, hate-inducing way that most real-worl Monopoly opponents do. There's something about the game which makes normal, perfectly likeable people turn into stubborn, unreasonable, ruthless unspeakables. Brilliant stuff – the kind of appeal that makes for great games.

Playing Monopoly on my phone was a surprisingly complete and authentic Monopoly-playing experience that included almost every single aspect of the board game's fun factor – with the possible exception of cheating, which is one of the things purists will miss!

Monopoly Here and Now isn't a graphical powerhouse, but does feature some serviceable animation and fairly snappy presentation overall.

You'll spend many enjoyable hours poring over your title deeds, making offers and counter offers, and hoping for the favourable luck that will help you string together properties, build on them, and decimate your opponents into bankruptcy.

If you have an N-Gage compatible device, this is a must-buy game. And I'm pretty sure thare may be other mobile versions of it as well, so all you Monopoly faithfuls, give it a shot. Much joy to be had.

Monopoly is a classic example of how to tap into the delectable combination of classic gaming experiences and mobile phone technology to recapture the magic of old favourite board and card games for new audiences, as well as those like myself who rediscover these games. A huge advantage is that these are all already proven, polished and successful game designs – as long as the port is well done, you have a definite winner. It's a shame then, that so many of the ports are so badly or lazily done.

The excellent UNO and the upcoming UNO Rush, Carcasonne and Settlers of Catan on XBOX Live are also testimony to the good sense of well-made ports of existing classic game designs. People love playing these games, so developers, can we have more of these please? They're relatively cheap to make, and are almost sure-fire hits.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to roll a double, so I won't have to use my 'get out of jail free' card.

Separating the medium from the message.

What if we used the technology behind videogames for purposes other than to play? Why isn't this happening more?

Ultimately, gaming engines are a medium. Just like the printed word and pictures, moving images, or audio. Videogame technology in fact, is arguably the only completely new medium to have emerged in the past twenty years, if you're in the camp that believes that the internet is only a mashup of other existing media such as print, video and audio, with added navigational and participative functionality.

A videogame environment, on the other hand, is a virtual, three dimensional navigable space that responds in a number of ways to multiple simultaneous inputs from the user. A videogame creates a wholly unique experience where information is continually exchanged between the system and the user in a way quite unlike any other medium. Playing Call of Duty gives you a completely different way to experience World War 2 from watching films about it or reading books or comics or web sites. It's a genuinely different and credible medium of communication that offers many experiential aspects that other traditional media simply cannot.

The question is, then, why do we use it only for play?

The printed word is used for innumerable applications – to entertain, educate, inform. We have novels, biographies, advertisements, instruction manuals, textbooks, newspapers, comics and porn. Ditto the moving picture. We can choose between watching Governor Schwarzenegger battle aliens, some guy explaining the right way to use fertilizers, or vicariously explore the jungles of the Amazon. We have documentaries, blockbusters, cartoons, and abominable horrors such as corporate motivational-videos!

But the games medium (for lack of a better word) has just games, with a few notable exceptions. Underutilized potential? Perhaps.

Flight trainers use game technology to train pilots. Some armed forces and police units are using videogames to train their personnel in tactics and combat techniques. And educational institutions are finally waking up to the potential of using games as effective teaching tools in a variety of ways.

But these are exceptions, novelties, news-items. These applications for videogame technology are hardly as mainstream as documentary films or educational publications which enjoy far greater parity with their entertainment counterparts.

There is a need for the industry as a whole to separate the medium from the message, and wake up to the potential of using gaming technology and techniques to impart new kinds of experiences, apart from purely fun-oriented products that are now the norm.

With so many experts shouting from the rooftops about how experiential learning is superior to a classroom environment in so many ways, it's a great opportunity for game developers. With gaming technology so sophisticated today that it can deliver so many unique interactive experiences and virtual simulations, there is no reason why it cannot be used to deliver experiential learning solutions of many kinds.

Just think – a virtual survival experience for geography students where they have to use tools available in the wilderness to survive harsh conditions and fierce beasts. A retail management simulation where a store manager has to efficiently manage a very large supermarket. Fire drills for workers in large buildings where they have to memorize escape routes and procedures in a virtual replica of their own building. The possibilities are endless, and the techbology is already here and affordable.

In breaking out of the 'game' mindset, we can take our industry places that it deserves to be in – proudly sitting beside print, audio-visual and hypermedia as an important medium that has many crucial uses.

Killzone 2 – Should you believe the hype?

This article first appeared on my weekly 'Game Invader' column for The New Indian Express

First, let's get this out of the way. Killzone 2 is the best looking console shooter of all-time. It's a frenetic, furious and intense FPS that is far and away the best PS3 shooter, and one of the best games available on the platform. It's taken a weak franchise and made it a force to reckon with in the highly competitive genre.

But is it a game-changer? Is it a hall of famer? Will it be remembered fondly ten (or even four) years from now?

When I recently suggested that DOOM was the most important FPS ever, a lot of my knowledgeable friends responded with the inevitable Wolfenstein 3D argument. Wolf predated DOOM. No Wolf, no DOOM.

I find it hard to disagree. Wolf was the single, one game that made me fall in love with gaming, and see the mind-boggling potential of the first-person viewpoint. Within minutes of playing Wolf, my head was spinning with mad, wild love. This WAS the coolest thing of all time.

In my opinion, DOOM is the single most important FPS ever made. Disagree? Argue with THESE guys.

But DOOM took the baton from Wolfenstein 3D and raised the bar it to a different level. It was the Usain Bolt powered anchor leg to Wolf's already impressive first three, but that's what gets all the great press. Wolf was exciting, DOOM was piss-in-your-pants scary. Wolf looked brilliant, DOOM was photorealistic, back in the day. Darker, more violent, and in every way a more definitive experience, DOOM is what made the FPS hardcore gaming's dominant genre.

Many also forget that DOOM introduced network play to the FPS. Up to eight players, over LAN, could shoot each other in the face until 3 a.m. Ever heard the term 'Deathmatch' ? It was invented by DOOM. DOOM was also the first FPS to be moddable, giving users the power to create their own levels. Has there been a more important game?

Half-Life and its evil twin Counter-Strike are next in the ladder. Half-Life is the definitive modern FPS, showing how shooters could be so much more than glorified duck-shooting galleries. More than any other game, Half-Life delivered the experience of starring in your own action movie, something that every action game today tries to emulate. Today's design convention of never exiting the game engine, was first demonstrated by Half-Life, the first game in my memory never to break your suspension of disbelief, not even for a single moment. No cut scenes. No loading screens. Nada. A stellar work of art.

Other uncontested all-time greats?

Counter-Strike, for showing the world how much fun multiplayer shooters could be, and making multiplayer an essential component of FPS design. And for creating millions of fanboys who love it so much, they refuse to even consider playing anything else.

Halo showed the world how FPS could be done right on a console, and established several genre conventions that are followed to this day.

Halo, for showing that FPS could be done right on a console, and launching a billion-dollar industry. Halo was responsible for single-handedly raising the profile of consoles in the eyes of the hardcore, and showing the world that consoles weren't only for kids, the casual set and Japanese adults. With XBOX Live, Halo was the first title to establish the ground rules for online multiplayer on consoles. Along with its sequels, Halo continues to be the finest online multiplayer experience in console gaming, breaking new ground so other titles could follow.

So our answer to the Killzone question is a resounding 'Nope'. It's quite simply an amazing game that is a must for every modern gamer, but it stands on the shoulders of giants.