Indian desi games from Sony

The Greek mythological battle for Pandora’s Box or the military games played by the US army will now have to make way for Indian epic hero Hanuman and rustic games like ‘gilli-danda’ and ‘kabaddi’ as the Indian console gaming market gets set for launch of locally developed games.

Indian console gaming enthusiasts, who have been trying their skills manoeuvring in alien land of Greek in the ‘God of War’ or tried a hand on ‘Uncharted Territories’ with alien military warriors, could now have some “desi” flavour with Sony Computer Entertainment all ready to launch eight games developed by Indian developers on Indian themes, in the next one-and-a-half years.

“So far, 100 per cent of the console games are imported,” said Sony Computer Entertainment’s country manager Atindriya Bose. “Though India has a strong IT infrastructure and animation talent pool, we have not seen any Indian-developed games for the console market,” he said.
Most of the current work being done was more of an outsourcing work, he said.
“Roughly, out of the 150-odd animation and gaming firms, an estimated 20-30 of them are involved in the outsourcing component for the console gaming segment.”

In view of the rapid growth in the Indian gaming market, with the console market having grown seven times, Sony Computer Entertainment has tied up with Indian firms to launch eight games, four of which will be out by early 2009 and the remaining four between 2009-end and early 2010, he said.

The first one to be launched would be the ‘Hanuman Boy Warrior’, to be developed by the Hyderabad-based firm Aurona Technologies. The game story line would involve Hanuman’s teenage adventures, where he has to face various challenges thrown by the Asuras and negative protagonists, Bose said.

Another game being developed under the Indian rustic rural games category would have the good old games played back on the muddy courtyard of Indian villages which tests agility, alertness and quick reflexes.

The old-time favourites kabaddi, gilli-danda and kite-flying are among those that would feature in the game being developed by Hyderabad-based firm Game Shastra.
“There would be a story line, but the focus would be on skills and the setting would be Indian rustic,” he said.

Two other games, quiz-based ones, are being developed by a Bangalore firm, Candela. The first one would be a general knowledge quiz game while the second would be a game targeted at medical and engineering students studying in India and pursuing academic courses here.
In addition to these games, Sony Computer Entertainment is planning to launch four more games all revolving around Indian themes and local developers. Talks with various firms were on in this regard, he said.

Bose said though there had been games built on Indian themes, like ‘Singing Star’ or ‘Buzz’, this is the first time the console game would have both an Indian theme and an Indian team developing the content.

Talking about ‘Singing Star’, which is a Karaoke game developed in the UK, he said the game has been a great hit among not only Indian gamers but also those in the UK, US and Middle-East. The game has several Bollywood songs where a player could sing along and points are awarded based on the quality of his voice and the rendition of the song.