Remember Ghajini? Yes that game which made me scream nooooooo, turns out it won the 24fps animation award for the “Best Game Design”. Woah! Rilly? Could you please tell us who the competition included. I can only think of Hanuman, which was equally lame.

If my guess work is right, the award went to the game which sucked less than the other one, not to a game that deserved to win. Which brings me to yet another rant on gaming in India.

Do we need such pointless award ceremonies, or even categories where awards are given out just for the heck of it, to ease egos of few people in the industry. Sure, there’s nothing wrong in appreciating efforts by individuals in the industry, but does awards make any sense here? How do we appreciate companies that put in a lot of money and effort into creating games which — forget the international standards — are too buggy to be enjoyed. These games lack originality, lack a USP except the Indian-ness. The excuses range from low-spec nature of PCs in India to cost and returns, but my question is why can’t you guys think global? If Slumdog Millionaire a bollywood movie (in essence) with a UK based director can grab Oscars, why can’t we make an India themed game with international appeal and quality?

Why do the developers think the gamers here will fall for the shit that’s thrown our way? Yes, we would like to see the industry grow and for that reason we might even go and buy a copy of the game (I didn’t wait for the review copy of Desi Adda for example) but why make us regret the money we put into the game? How difficult is to develop a game based on a movie?

Take your time, don’t get bullied by the producer who thinks of games as a promotional medium rather as a stand-alone piece of art (poke poke at Ghajini).

Why not quote James Cameroon who wanted Avatar, based on the movie, to be different from the movie, not forced down by the story line and environments in the movie? Why not approach EA, Sony, or Microsoft (3 gaming cos with an established base in India) to produce the game, they do understand the production cycle of games right (Don’t put in your own money)?

The other approach would be the one adopted by UTV, buy a few studios abroad, let them worry about game production. Ultimately they have an India connect but the games have nothing to do with India except for the fact that parent company is based in India.

I think UTVs approach works better in India, of now. The parent company can set up a smaller studio in India who can help the bigger studio based abroad to develop the game. That way the Indian studio can understand India’s place in gaming world; understand how they can contribute to gaming industry. Should they be like Dhruva, who have worked on assets of tons of racing titles including Forza 3 or should they concentrate on mobile version of the game much EA’s Hyderabad studio does? As of now production work for games are spread out across the globe, direction work is mostly done out of US, coding in Eastern Europe, modeling, animation in Asia (Philippines, India etc) and all these are put together finally in US or Europe again and sent for testing to places like Bangalore.

What should be India’s role? Do we have good enough coders to produce games? Do Indian style of art (high on colour contrasts — ghajini) appeal to western audience (games needs to have an international appeal as of now unlike bollywood)? Do we have good game-worthy ideas? Are we over-dependent on mythology? A few debatable questions for which we may not have answers as of now, but the sooner we find them, we can stop talking about “India the next big gaming country” and get down to work at hand… and may be give awards to studios that has produced a game that deserves the award.