Who says creative games are dead?

Do not blame me if you get hooked onto this and it takes away your work time :)

Simplicity meets music meets puzzle meets great execution

Result : A awesome game :)

http://playauditorium.com/

Root Causes

After the tragic Mumbai terror attacks, the world is speaking - they are angry, they want to see a change, they want to make a difference. There are blogs, IMs, chats, forum threads on who is to blame, who should own the responsibility, who failed and what should be done to fix the issues. Well to be fair to myself, I do know the answer to "How to stop terrorists now". However I do have a vision of a better future....and this is what I think...

SOCIETY
For any society to be truly successful, it requires the society to be knowledgeable, healthy and peaceful;

• Knowledge is infinite (In my opinion, I might we wrong)
• Being healthy is a direct by-product of being knowledgeable and is also dependent on resources provided by mother earth which is finite.
• Ideally both these should result in being peaceful.
  

However, unfortunately or fortunately, human society requires a fourth measure and that is being "wealthy". This tricky factor of being wealthy spoils otherwise a perfectly balanced equation.

So let's do this again:

For any society to be successful, it requires the society to be knowledgeable, healthy, wealthy and peaceful; and the success of the society is the collective success of the people who constitute the society.

PEOPLE OF THE SOCIETY
I have used the terms White and Black, but since we humans are so obsessed in taking things out of context and proportion I want to clarify this up front. These have got nothing to with the color of your skin, the country that you live in, and the religion that you preach.

The WHITE Beings
There are few humans who can detach themselves from all materialistic needs and attain a higher level of knowledge, consciousness and peace, but I assume it will be safe to say that neither you nor I are one of them and the number of such people would NOT even be a minutest fraction of the world's population.

The SHADES OF GREY Beings
Human beings require materialistic pleasures in order to believe that they are happy. These " tangible needs" vary from person to person and can be anything from having a two course meal to owning a private jet.
Ironically materialistic wealth has become the single most important unit that defines success in the world today.
When people don't get this wealth, for whatever reason - they tend to act in reactive ways which can be considered unethical, unwise, illogical and often illegal.


The BLACK Beings
BUT, when a normal human does not get his/her basic needs - food, shelter and security of continued existence ; when s/he feels that their own or their loved one's life is in danger, they tend to act in ways which are defined to be more animal like and close to being barbaric. Like a man eating tiger, once they tend to be barbaric, it become near impossible for them to turn back even after they get their stomach full.

Of course there are some people who are born with mental disorders (like Ted Bundy) who are in BLACK category without any logical reasons, these people are ill and require medical assistance. And it is not part of this discussion.

SOCIETY and PEOPLE INTERACTIONS
To generate wealth - as in materialistic wealth that we all know off, requires resources.

However, mother earth provides us with limited resources, ideally the math should work simple – take total available resource and divide it by number of people and you get your share, to keep the sanity off this discussion and from all practical reasoning, the resource cannot be divided equally among every living being.

As the population of the society increases it affects everyone's share of these finite resources, indirectly their capability and capacity to generate wealth, creating a misbalance.
More and more people each year move closer towards the darker side of grey.

Each time the stock market goes up and you think you have made more money, it came at the cost of someone else loosing and being pushed down further. But since this is how god created this world, the more knowledgeable people of the society gave birth to the concept of "giving" - when the “haves” donate time, money and/or hope to the “have not’s”- they are unintentionally trying to help maintain this balance.

--- Top 3 richest people in the world have enough money (~180 billion USD) that can feed the entire population of the world (~7 billion) for one month (@40 INR a day), let me know if this math was confusing, I can provide some more bases to the numbers and calculations. ---

However the rate of population increase is not proportional to what people of the society are “giving back”. We need more “givers” and less “takers” to balance our current world scenario.
For example, if you give 1 hour a day of your precious time to teach a poor kid and at the rate poor kids are born, you will be soon run out of your “give” hours OR if you give INR 20 a day to a hungry, you will not be able to afford your own meals, at the rate the world’s population is exploding.

If EACH person, who can afford more than 3 meals a day for his/her family, can contribute in making sure at least one additional person on this earth does not sleep hungry. This world will be a less dark place. If EACH of you, who can read and write, can teach one person a year to do the same, this world will be a better place.

Let me clarify for all those who are reading this and jumping to negate my statement above.

Yes, there will still be barbarians who will continue to harm the society but each day you succeed in helping one person stand on his feet and have his/her stomach full, YOU WILL reduce the darker side - the folks who are young, prefect recruits for the barbarians.

Your Question might be - "Well the terrorist are not poor they are well educated in some of the best colleges in the world, how can you say helping a poor will solve this problem?"

My answer is – The well educated barbarians are driven by blind faith –imparted by sadistic leaders, who are there because they preach wrong to the illiterate and the needy. If there is a terrorist camp, its lowest level recruit is a needy, is poor and is concerned about his/her family’s safety.

Each day that YOU will make a person feel secure and hopeful - YOU WILL make EARTH a more peaceful place.

Each day that YOU will forgive a man for his sins and give him the guidance for betterment - YOU will make our society healthier.

AND YES, it will come at a price, and the price will be you being less materialistically satisfied.

This world is a very big place; we cannot expect one person or a group of people to fix the world's problems. Even if magically all the politicians (that you speak off) disappear - there will be a new set of such people that will continue doing the ills left behind.

It starts with YOU and nowhere else.

Your Question might be - "If I do this – “give” thing that you speak off, what's the guarantee that everyone else will do it?"

My answer is - You must believe, you must have –hope- that there are many good people on this planet.

To answer your next question - "When will the world be a better place, if we start doing this TODAY and CONTINUE doing it?"

My answer is - Not in your life time, but our kids and their kids will see the difference, they will write in their history books - about us, the society that BELIEVED and brought the change. It has taken us years to ruin the system - It will take us years to FIX it too.

It is your choice to pour a bottle of Milk and make the difference or choose to POUR water instead and think – “well what difference will it make if I alone don't do it.

We come up with a list things that some ELSE should do, we come with ideas that someone ELSE should implement. And we expect the world to change in a blink of an eye.

We try to find the root cause to problems - "Terrorist attacked us - how can we prepare ourselves for the future?"

"Only if we fund more and equip our soldiers with better killing equipments, we can protect ourselves"

"Only if politicians were not corrupt and use this money to buy good killing equipment, we can buy more guns"

"Only if the terrorist training camps in XYZ art of the world can be cleaned"

"Only if we .... The list goes on"

If I can feed a poor kid and impart basic education, If I can make him/her understand that picking up a gun is not the answer, if I can get one less trigger happy terrorist, If I can get 1000 less bullets flying in air, If I can reduce your chances of getting shot by one of these bullets by a 1000th time – I believe that I can help my society.

A great change requires a greater sacrifice - Are you willing to sacrifice?

Are you willing to sacrifice your hunger to buy an HD 50 inch plasma television to fill a plate of rice and a bowl of soup for the needy?

I'm willing to do it and I'm already doing it and I do BELIEVE (the same way I believe in GOD), that if you ask your heart, you are willing to do this as well and you will do it.

It is just that YOU do not BELIEVE in it just yet.

Pure Fun

I thought i had enough of -crazy machines- type, puzzle casual games but then i stumbled onto this: What a killer game: http://fantasticcontraption.com/.

These are the kinds of games that make me go "I LOVE GAMES"

Right Wright!

I agree that I can’t create art in any form to save my life, however I do understand art and able to appreciate good art.
I remember painfully trying to create something (for fun) using 3d studio max and I couldn’t even create anything close to what I can now, thanks to Will Wright. Right!!!!!
Spores! Yeah finally I was able to get a copy and get going. As expected I went from single cell organism to a two legged freak in no time.

My starting organism
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My current P1-100 creature
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I told you i cannot create art to save my life.

Super fun!! I’m expecting lot of my time vanishing, all thanks to SPORES.
I love it.

Uno Rush Announced

My game (well actually I mean Microsoft’s game ;)) was announced today at E3 by none other than John Schappert himself…..Cannot say much about this game before it actually hits the market….meanwhile here are some links to drop your eyes on:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39941/Uno-Rush-Screenshots

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/puzzle/unorush/news.html?sid=6193760

http://play.tm/wire/click/2002225

Time - Where has it gone?

Hi,
It all happens in a flash. Always.

Whenever you are waiting for something to happen, it feels really long, but only till it happens.

After it happens, you go "Hey! That was fast"

Here I'm 8500 miles away from where i was last week. Driving on the other side of the road, sitting in the other side of the car, eating cold food and trying to sleep on top of a sinking bed.

The change is sometimes 0verwhelming .....

On the great side Microsoft has given me a beautiful house overlooking the lake in Kirkland. The view is spectacular. I'm really looking forward for times to come, the start has been great and i wish it continues to be the same. I leave you with some snaps.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91306143@N00/sets/72157605418434426/

Break after 3108

Today I completed 3108 days in India, developing games professionally (getting paid for).

Eight and half years is a pretty short span if you really think of it, but starting when there was nothing (near ZERO) related to games development in India and reaching to a point where the likes of EAs, Game lofts, UBI Softs, VMCs, Activisions setting up shop and a new funding happening every day, it does seem like a lifetime.

In my opinion games industry in India is getting to the verge of being recognized as an *Industry and on path of becoming main stream. Still young but promising for sure.

Exciting times lie ahead and I’m convinced that India will become a strong contributor in the world of games development in its own unique way.

My 5 predictions (things that will happen in next 5-6 years in India Gaming Scene)

1. Government of India will recognize this sector and will associate us to either IT Industry or Entertainment Industry.

2. More than 20 new game development companies will start and more than 30 game studios will Tank.

3. Games Education will be recognized by universities and various game engineering programs will start to take shape.

4. Sony Playstation 2 will become even more popular and will be known for games based on Indian Content Games (some of them will be mind bogglingly absurd too)

5. Indian team will not be ranked in the bottom 3 in World Cyber Games at least once in next 6 years.

Unfortunately for me, I will not be around for next couple of years to have all the fun.

I have decided to move.

My new job is with Microsoft Corp. in Seattle (Redmond); I will now be working with Windows Game Experience Group, delivering the most compelling game experiences to Windows gamers.

On 30th of May I will be leaving India, but surely not be leaving my community (Indian Game Developers), I will continue to yap away making new friends and hopefully not many foes.

Cheers and have fun making games.

Mallika Arora - Agni - another one bites the dust....

I ‘m a passionate Indian Game Developer and I like keeping myself well informed about the recent happenings in the Indian game industry. One week back, I read FXLabs released its action/adventure game Agni: Queen of darkness, published by Zapak and distributed by Sify. It was priced at Rs. 699/-.

I buy almost all (if not all) games (PC) made and released in India.

I went to their website and was not able to find even a single in-game screenshot, no trailers, or in game videos, or concept art. (Now they have them) There were few Mallika Arora Khan’s hot poses with things in her hands which looked like weapons.

I started getting a bad feelings about my money (700 bucks) not being wisely put to use yet again. (I have a habit of buying bad games) Nonetheless, I went ahead and paid the money (Paypal, no credit card option).

Monday first thing I received was an email that I have received a mail from FXLabs (Microsoft Internal mail room is pretty darn efficient).

I opened the package and found the cover to be pretty cool (nice packaging), the installation took 4-5 minutes and then “boom” comes the FX Labs logo.
I am not always so excited about firing up a new game, but this game was done in my country by many people who I know personally.

The main menu looked like a new concept, I know lot of people would say it is horrible, but I kind of found it to be different and not so bad.

The game starts with a cut-scene, which again I thought was pretty okaylyTM done, though I didn’t like the voice over’s but having been there and done that, I know getting a good voice talent is not easy and that too for games. The cut-scene had Agni and Betal (Snake) chatting with Tara on some shit, some magic happens and Tara and Agni become one character with an ability to transform from one to other - the games starts. I see an enemy run towards and he gets stuck in the air under the bridge, I am like "what???" I just started this game, less than 10 seconds in play and I see PRI1 SEV1 bug (FXLabs is AppLabs venture and Applabs is http://www.applabs.com/ (Software testing services company specializing in Software testing, qa testing company, outsourcing software qa testing, quality assurance testing Services)

You got be f***ing kidding me!!!!!

I struggled hard and tried to move Tara in all her seductive positions (none in the game, figurative speech) but nothing happens, then suddenly the alien just falls off the air (Manjit: Yes he really falls off the air, I have a screenshot to prove it and then he probably dies (:))

I continued playing the game for around 5 more minutes and then I end up in a so called boss monster fight, were a sort-o invisible Skelton sitting (paralyzed) on a wheel chair is shooting bullets at me, there are only two positions where the bullets can hit you, no there are no hiding places it is an open area . Dialog in Hindi suggests that I need to do something that kills the monster with his own weapon.

I am stuck here for last 20 minutes; no clue what to do…….

Gamecheats.net does not have a walkthrough for the gameJ, if anyone from FXLabs is reading this can you please provide with a walkthrough of the game?

Well, I have been developing games for last 8 years, I truly know that making a game is a daunting task and making good games is even crazier.

I am not the “cool graphics” nerd who thinks games are all about looks, but Agni’s graphics are horrible, models look less 10 polys, lighting has no sense, texturing is detail less, whatever little effects once sees is probably the engines job. The recommend PC cong is 2.4Ghz Dual core, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia 7800GTX+ cards.

I am not sure what engine they are using, if they have written their own engine, then hats off to them but if not (it looks like Unreal 2 engine), I want to know “What on earth you are trying to do” or did try to do?”
What can I say “a very disappointing effort by the guys at FXLabs”. I thought with the “might and experience” of Tony Garcia, Agni should have been way better.

Another Indian game hits my collection’s bone-yard.

My rating of the game is 1/10 till the time I cannot figure out how to make any progress in the game.