Why IPL should be a Video Game: Introduction

Some pretty neat Paint skill, I have, no?

When I say I.P.L. should be a video game, I mean a proper game title like I.P.L '12 or something like that, and not the mod (of EA Cricket 2007 I believe) that has been doing the rounds since the first edition. What I am aiming for here is for EA to pick up I.P.L. and run with it. To make a game like no other, because I think "The force is Strong with this one".

In the coming few weeks I will try to explore, why Cricket has not achieved the goal of becoming a simulation phenomenon, and also, how the I.P.L. can actually help. So take this ride with me and tell me, if you agree, disagree, or just simply don't give a damn.

For this argument to really begin, we need some background.

The first per-requisite is obviously knowing what the I.P.L is all about. So everyone welcome to I.P.L.-101. The I.P.L. or the Indian Premier League, is an cricket league currently played by 9 teams, during the March-April window in India. The matches are played under the T-20 format and is controlled by B.C.C.I (Board Of Cricket Control In India). While club cricket is not new to the cricket world in general, the I.P.L teams are not state/district/club oriented, instead these are franchises based in cities and financed/owned/managed by various Business organizations (for eg.United Breweries own the Royal Challenger Bangalore). What this does is allow the franchises to assemble teams, irrespective of state (or even national) boundaries. Thus you have all-stars team, star-studded with both national and international talent competing against each other. The tournament has enjoyed huge success in the Indian sub-continent and has already served as a launch-pad for various athletes in its 5 year run. In a time when T-20 cricket is changing the appeal and penetration of cricket, I.P.L. is bringing local loyalties to a game which has been country oriented for a long time.Check out the IPL 2012 advertisement that aired on TV this year below:

 The second per-requisite for this argument is in understanding how the Sport-simulation (roughly speaking video games about sports) market stands today. EA (electronic arts), pretty much rule the roost here. Annually, titles like NHL (Ice-Hockey), NFL (American Football), FIFA (Soccer), UFC (Mixed Martial Arts) receive yearly iterations bringing the best of what the sport and technology has to offer. Cricket used to be part of that annual EA cycle, but somewhere it just got lost. Codemasters gave it a go bringing out International Cricket 2010 (which is the latest you can get to playing cricket on X-Box360) and there is a Move-Street Cricket for PS-3, which is currently the cover title in India for the PS-3. None of those past games however have been able to do justice to the gentleman's game, and I think I know why.

For starters:

Currently there are only 8 good international teams (compare that to the 32 teams that play the Fifa World Cup and you get the picture) who can perform and compete in all forms of the game. This just goes to show that not many people like playing cricket. For the record cricket has 3 official formats: Tests, One-Day, and T-20.

What this tells you is that its difficult to master Cricket...

But that holds true for American Football (I don't think even USA has a national team for that), UFC (half the world don't even know what that means) and Golf (I mean come on). Europe and North-America, the two big spots for video games consumption contribute only 2 teams to the cricket world (West-Indies and England). Every single game-development company focuses their marketing strategies on these two areas, so while Europe will have major focus on Fifa and Tennis, USA will see games like NFL and NBA having their time in the sun.

Add to this the prevalent grey market and piracy in the Indian Sub-continent, it means that the market which is the most likely to play Cricket, does not like to buy original Cricket games. The piracy situation is also compounded by the fact that console penetration in India is very low, with most people preferring to stick to PCs, where the games are easier to pirate (hell even the originals are dirt cheap).

All the consoles you can buy....

These are issues, however which will resolve themselves in the coming years. Now that console makers such as Microsoft and Sony take India seriously, its only a matter of time before the game developers do too. The sales of consoles are on all time high, which is resulting in an over-growing market which is currently being fed games made for the west or for the east.

Initially the Indian gaming scene had more of a single player emphasis, especially in consoles, with multi-player being shunned completely in the favor of exciting local game-play. With the advent of faster broadband speed however, online-multiplayer is fast becoming a viable option, and for that more and more people are choosing original games over pirated ones. So games like Battlefield-3, and Modern Warfare 3, are all finding buyers in India, which is telling the people over at EA and others, that there is indeed a market for their games away from the established USA, Europe and Japan.

With games like Hanuman, Street Cricket and others, we are already witnessing games tailor made for India. Even if these games are humorous attempts at game-making (Ra-One was as bad as the movie), it does show that someone out there, wants to know what makes Indians tick, and is willing to make a game about it. Its only a matter of time, before we get our very own tailor-made marketing drive by EA, centered around what else but Cricket (or Sharukh...or Sunny Leone...who knows...but I hope its cricket).

With that ray of optimism in my heart, and on my blog, I try to answer the first hurdle in creating a successful Cricket based franchise. This also ends my first entry in this ongoing discussion. Please feel free to comment and tell me what you think.

Signing Off,
Ayush "Kabel" Chauhan

Of FPS and Co-Op

For almost a year now, I have  lived alone in Bangalore. A matchstick apartment, a single bed, a lonely laptop, and an individual controller for my X-Box. All this changed however, a couple of months back when my younger brother came for a visit. From that day on, I have always shared my room with someone, be it for a month or for a few days. Fast-forward to today, and I have a stable and permanent room-mate, who is as interested and good in games as I am.

This change in my UMWELT (you don't know the meaning, check out this comic at XKCD in different browsers: http://xkcd.com/1037/), among other things has changed the way I play games. My priority (for the time being) has shifted from long single-player hours to significant co-op modes. While I have had my share of multi-player madness, (and I still do, though I suck big time at HALO:Reach) and almost every game out there has a multi-player mode, the number of games where you can share the storyline (especially on a single console) are few and far between. The following is an account of how I was introduced to and how I perceive the co-op gaming scene today.

As a wrestling fan, the first game that you share with your friends is obviously WWE (WWE'12 in this case), and surprisingly its as fun as it was when we were teenagers playing Here Comes The Pain. Games such as FIFA'12, and Cricket'2009 (indeed all the sport simulators out there) follow, and you end up having endless hours of video games for Bragging Rights.

While this maybe enough for an entry-level posse, it is not for hard-core geeks, who intend to make games for a living one day. Soon, you want something more relevant than a one-off football match between AC Milan and Real Madrid. Soon, you want something more lasting and worthy of your button mashing than a victory in a Hell In A Cell. Soon you want to be part of a story rather than part of a killing fest. This is what makes you go onto the net and search for Co-Op for the first time, and I haven't looked back since.

The first game that me and Gaurav tried was Tom Clancy: Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. I know, I know, its old but it was cheap and I am poor (so shut up and read on!). This was also the first time I was actually playing a FPS (First Person Shooter) on my X-Box, so it was kind of a big deal. The first thing that I noticed was that health meters in FPS or most shooters these days is a thing of the past. You can die with one hit, but if you survive that you can go back to "as good as new" if you lie low for a bit. This I assume is the new thing and is more realistic than a digital counter which tells you how near to certain death you are (which me being old-school, preferred). Another thing that stood out was the absence of health packs. Either they are rare (HALO, not that your health and shield are worth a shit on LEGENDARY) or they are completely non-existent (A.O.T-2 and Vegas-2). Another variation today is in the spawning, gone are the days when you died you spawned in a random flag and safe area, irrespective of where your team-mates are. Today, either you spawn right next to your buddy, or you lie down withering in virtual pain, until your team-mate comes and fixes you up. This I think is a little bland, I mean co-op is all about executing a plan and taking two routes simultaneously, which is not achieved if the two have to be together when one of them has died or is dying. Halo at least was humanitarian in the sense it asked you got into a safe area before the re-spawn can happen, but Vegas-2 and AOT-2 were unforgiving. They just like to revive you either where you died or where our partner currently is.

Okay, back to Vegas-2. The game allows a max of 2 players going through the campaign on a split-screen mode. When I did actually go through the campaign, it was more like going through a set of multi-player maps with a splattering of dialogues (there weren't even proper cut-scenes). But just the novelty of the fact that we were playing a story together was enough to pull us through for a while. So we went along doing our jobs, killing people, unlocking guns, and swearing a lot along the way.

The next game that I bought after hours of research on Wikipedia (My office doesn't allow me to open gaming sites) was HALO:REACH. The game as you might have heard is awesome, and just like it differs in game-play from other games, it also differs in its split screen. The split here is horizontal rather than vertical, which I thought made more sense, as it gave you more width than length, which in a FPS is more important. Another thing that HALO:Reach has and which I felt was awesome, was that the two of us could even play online using the same console and the split-screen. Of-course we needed our separate profiles and LIVE Gold membership, but yet the idea just made sense (BUNGIE take a bow). In a world where they want you to pay for everything and buy something, this was a breath of fresh air. A final word for the HALO series before we move onto another, killing aliens on LEGENDARY is far worse than killing terrorists on HARDEST (Those freaking ELITES don't stay in one place for a second, and have a sixth sense which tells them some-one is aiming at them).

The third game that I bought, which as a matter of fact I am in the process of completing is ARMY OF TWO: The FORTIETH DAY. The game is different from the earlier two in the sense that it truly is a co-op experience. It isn't a single campaign with a nameless Spartan added to your cause, instead you are Salem and Rios, 2 mercenaries taking on the world together (quite literally). In fact, unlike the the other games, its rarely a good idea to split up in A.O.T: T.F.D. The game cannot be a single herculean effort and the way it asks you to implement team-work and then rewards you for it is awesome. While this remains the best co-op experience I have had so far, it isn't without its drawbacks.As I said, splitting up in AOT is not a good option, as there is no concept of health packs, and if you are injured only your team mate can heal you, and if god forbid you die waiting for your team-mate or your team mate dies coming to you, its back to the drawing board. Another facet that I found lacking in AOT was the absence of multiple profiles, i.e. if you are playing with your profile signed in, only your stats, your weapons and your progress is saved. Your partner would return to his default outfit, once the game is shut down which is a real pain, keeping in mind the game was made to cater to co-op plays. With AOT-3 coming out next year, I hope EA sort this out and improves what is already an impressive franchise.

Having played co-op for a while now, I did realize a few things. The first thing that co-op does is that it gives you opportunities, we got a lot of opportunities to put strategies in place and execute them which in a single player or even with AI would have been difficult to implement (try telling your AI buddy to hide behind that blue box on the left side while you go towards a bent pole). I also realized that having another human player alongside, allows you to up the difficulty a bit. The fact that, I haven't played anything lower than the hardest difficulty since is testimony to the fact. Another thing that gets easier with a human companion is cheevo-hunting. If the game asks you to kill 100 guys with a shit-pistol, you can do that without having to compromise on fire-power cause your friend got your back. It also lets you express yourself a bit more while you co-operate. The swearing when you fail, the victory dance when you succeed, everything is more pronounced than it would have been in a single-play. Co-op is fun for the very basic reason cricket is more fun than shadow batting, and football is more fun than wall passing; it has human interaction.

The future promises more as games like Dead Space and Far-Cry step into the co-op domain. With the devs around the world understanding and exploring the power of two or more; I hope the co-op partner that you share you screen with starts getting as much importance as you do when you have the whole screen for yourself.





 Signing Off,
Ayush "Kabel" Chauhan

EA Press Conference E3 2012

So, from Microsoft we will move to EA.

EA my dear friends stand for Electronic Arts. In the gaming industry it also stands for the biggest game production house on the face of this earth. With studios in USA, Canada, Australia, across Europe and Asia, EA is like the Undertaker of Gaming i.e. even if you are not into gaming, you must have heard about them.

EA's USP has always been Big Sponsorship deals with Big Sports Associations (NFL, Fifa, NHL to name a few) and it was on display this year too with trailers of both Fifa'13 and  Madden'13.

This year however, there were some IPs which are not sports related. Dead Space 3 comes to mind immediately. The super hit cross media series has become one of EA's most money making ventures, and the first game-play on offer during the conference showing off Drop-in and Drop-out Co-Op Campaign, showed no signs of letting its fan down. A new frozen planet, new spider like necromorphs, and a new protagonist (Issac is till there and kicking ass, so don't sweat) all make for a new experience which I am willing to spend my money on. A lot of fans think that making the game Co-Op will take away from the fear factor of the game. While it may be true in some way, I think I will give the game a chance first before branding it as non-scary. Check out the Dead Space 3 trailer below:

Moving on, the other big news was that UFC is now EA. That's right UFC licenses have been bought for a "Multi Year; Multi Product" based deal (that's what the guy in the suit said) while Dana White was ecstatic that he is finally made it to EA(which he mentioned like 4 times in the 5 minutes he was on stage). UFC games were until recently made by THQ, but with THQ's current financial trouble, they decided to concentrate on their core brands(Darksiders, Saint's Row) and let UFC  go into EA's hands. So now that UFC is one of the many sports brand attached to EA expect yearly outings for the brawler instead of more far apart releases from THQ.

Next on the list is NFS: Most Wanted. This NFS game is being made by Criterion this time round (guys who made the last Hot-Pursuit), and this time they draw inspiration from perhaps the most watershed NFS game ever, you guessed it, The Most Wanted. The game is gonna be an Open world "Cops chase you while you race" game with the blacklist concept from the earlier game shaping into a Multi-player score board from the Single-Player campaign it was earlier. So this time when you earn points or "heat", you move up on a scoreboard which includes your friends playing the game too, the ultimate aim being to become the Most Wanted among your friends. Apart from that, the game looked good(NFS rarely has looked otherwise) and that's all I want to talk about cars for now. Check out the gameplay trailer below:

Along with this the conference had announcement for Fifa'13 and Madden'13 both boasting of all new physics and improved realistic game-play. The only news here is that you will be able to carry your profile from Fifa'12 to Fifa'13 and carry on from the same level. There was however, a video used as a Madden'13 intro, which I absolutely loved. Check it out below and tell me how you liked it:





Wrapping up,Battlefield 3 announced new DLCs and a new premium service, while Star Wars: Old Republic also announced new missions, new species, and a brand new planet for their MMORPG. I am sorry if I am not paying much attention to them, but I am not really of fan of either, and I dont think new DLC are worth a press conference. So that's that... this is what EA has to offer to its fan during the nest 12 months. I am excited about Dead Space 3, while all the others were typical EA announcements. Check out the the complete conference below, just to confirm if I missed something.: