Today when we look at video games, very few have Indian representation, which is surprising considering our nation today is growing to be one of the biggest markets for video games.?
Even a game like Battlegrounds Mobile India which attained mass popularity, and was designed specifically for India had a strong western influence.
So when SuperGaming revealed Indus Battle Royale -- a made-in-India game that¡¯s heavily inspired by Indian culture and mythology -- I was curious to know how they were planning on executing it.?
I got to interact with Rishi Alwani who is one of the lore writers as well as runs communications for Indus Battle Royale, to better understand the thought behind the game and what it takes to develop a game of this level in a nation like India.?
The devs call their take Indo-futurism -- a futuristic utopian world where India is the most technologically advanced -- and according to Rishi, it was heavily inspired by the world of Wakanda and their Afro-futuristic take
¡°For us, we look at it as viewing a world or creating a universe where Indian culture is fused with a futuristic positive-looking outlook and expression. Our major inspiration for this was Black Panther or with what they did, Afro-futurism, Wakanda. We looked at it from that perspective of creating a world that is, you know, bringing the cool stuff that hasn't surfaced from Indian culture.¡±
¡°One of the other inspirations on that front was the Indus Valley Civilization. From that perspective, we thought, okay, this is something a lot of people know about because it was two chapters in history in eighth grade for everyone. So we said, why not? Let's surface cool things from Indian mythology, and Indian culture that the world may not know.¡±
Rishi highlighted that the biggest motivator for creating something like Indo-futurism was because there was a non-existent representation of Indian culture in video games across the industry, ¡°For us, we looked at other games and where they originate from. For instance, Fallout is steeped in US history and US culture. Same with the Metro Series where it's a lot of Eastern European flavour and we are like, okay, where is the Indian equivalent of that in gaming??
¡°You have Assassin¡¯s Creed that takes every passage of history and does its own thing with it. But where is India in all of that? To us, the closest representation was Beyond Good And Evil Two. But we don't know what's gonna happen with that game, and why should we wait for another studio to come out and do it when we can do it.¡±
Rishi revealed that the pursuit was to create a game not just with strong Indian influence, but also an overall positive outcome, rarely seen in science fiction depicting the future, ¡°When you think of sci-fi, usually think of a dystopian, oppressed society and a lot of, a lot of capitalism consumerism in its excesses. But there seems to be very little scope for a positive outlook or positive outcome. And that's what we try to bring with our expression of that through Indus.¡±
When doing something new, something that has never been done before, it can be a challenging affair to lay its foundation, and this was also somewhat experienced by Rishi and the team behind Indus Battle Royale, ¡°Usually if there's someone who's done it before, it becomes a lot easier. Right. In our case, we actually had to invent the language, the thought process, the codex around Indo-futurism because no one's taken any concrete attempts to, you know, clearly label it. So for us, at a very abstract level, that was the major, major point where we had to come together and fix that.¡±
¡°And it isn't just the writers like me, Ankush or Nishad on the team, it was even our CEO Roby John, who had to come on the forefront and was like, ¡®Hey, this is how it should be. This is how it shouldn't be¡¯. It was a complete company thing where we were like, okay, how do we take this to the next level? How can we define this and bring this in a way that matters? So it wasn't just putting it together and seeing what you see, but the thought process behind that was also missing. So that was the important part. How can we create Indo-futurism, if we don't know what Indo-futurism is, right?¡±
Battle royale games like PUBG and BGMI that followed it, along with other popular titles like Garena Free Fire and even COD Mobile have been instrumental in creating the insurgency in gaming in India, so we were curious to understand why another battle royale.
¡°Internally for us, the way we see it is the more games in the ecosystem, the better for everyone. We're all gamers. Who wants fewer video games to play, right? And for us from a business perspective, we really like the fact that those games are there because a rising tide lifts all the ships. You can't just be a market where you have fewer games for people to play and try and experience.¡±
¡°We are looking at it as giving people more options on what to play. By our estimates, the Indian battle royale playing audience in this country is roughly 350 to 400 million people. So why wouldn't we want a slice of that and why wouldn't there be an Indian game made to cater to that audience? So that's how we looked at it.¡±
Rishi revealed how the characters in the game are coming to fruition, ¡°The process with character building is a little fluid here. There are some characters which the art guys came up with just by hearing the words ¡®Indo-futurism¡¯ and trying to find the right balance of that. And then there were the rest of us, on the lore side, on the writing side, who thought, okay, there are story beats we want to talk about. There are specific things in the game we wanna talk about and how we do all that. So it is really a mix.¡±
When asked the character he¡¯s most excited about, Rishi lifted the wraps over a cool character that players at Bengaluru Comic Con will get to play with this weekend, ¡°To me, one of the cool ones that came out of this, and this is something you'll see a bit of at the playtest in Bangalore, is a character called Big Gaj.¡±
¡°Big Gaj is a really powerful-looking character. It has a really powerful, imposing, piece of armour that players can use when they want to create fear, in the minds of their opponents on the battlefield. We did give a hint of him in our first cinematic trailer. One of the final shots was Big Gaj pointing a gun out, which I thought was really cool. So, yeah, that is one cool character or?paragon rather as we call them in-game and we have more on the way as well."
Rishi shared how they designed the gun mechanics from scratch and the challenges they experienced along the way, ¡°A really interesting anecdote for us as a team was when you are actually making a game and if I look at it versus let's say other countries, for instance, if you're living in the US and you're making a game in the US for you to design a gun, to design the bullet spread trajectory, all that, you just need to walk into a Walmart, buy a gun, you're there.¡±
¡°With us, there is a lot more we have to go through. We actually have to get licences, go to a firing range, and do everything officially. And it's not like it's easy to get access to stuff, to get stuff done, right. So for us, given our situation in the country we're in, we could have easily taken the entire weapon system we had for Mask Gun, but that wouldn't do justice to this game given the scope and ambition.¡±
¡°So for us, we actually ended up going, shooting ranges regularly. We've had licences for a lot of the team members to come in and fire to learn how to shoot and to get that right. So that goes in the game right. For us, that was really cool to actually craft and put that weapon system together and that was something which I felt adds a lot of value to the end player, adds a lot of value to the game itself.¡±
"And I say that because you have developers big and small in the West with access to guns. Be it the likes of Witchfire developer The Astronauts that can test guns in their backyard quite literally or Activision with deep ties to weapon manufacturers, for them to make their guns feel good and authentic becomes easier. But for us, we had to go work that out from scratch and it ended up resulting in one of the more complex gun systems around in terms of parameters available, for us to fiddle with and show to the end user.¡±
"In our case, it's been a crazy experience because, on one part of it, you are working with some of the finest minds in the known universe that can tell you what's needed from a networking perspective for the best player experience because of the team's years of making games¡ª you know, the actual atoms and bits of multiplayer,¡± said Rishi, ¡°And it can tell you, okay, this is how we make bullets work. This is how we make guns look like this is, how we should, put a character together. So there's a lot of consensus that needs to be done, a lot of back and forth, and the best way forward for the game. Because it's not a personal project.¡±
¡°It's a project where people are counting on us. You know, the expectation that's there internally and externally. And you're aware that, Indian game development in recent times hasn't had the greatest track record either. So for us, it's a question of, okay, how do we do this and balance this and make sure we give something people care about and love? So a lot of it is consensus building. A lot of it is making sure we're all on the right page, doing the right thing, and there are a lot of thoughts that a lot of things that come into the game that don't come in unless it makes sense, right?¡±
¡°When in another life I used to review games and it was really easy to just nuke the game and give it a really bad review. But when you're on the other side of the fence and you realise that there are a lot of hardworking people in the ecosystem, a lot of people trying to do the right thing, you end up feeling you end up realising that there's more to it.¡±
The game is still some time away from being completely ready, but they've organised a second community play test at ComicCon Bengaluru this weekend, where people visiting can try their hands at the game and offer their suggestions.
?¡°We have a community play test that's happening this week at ComicCon Bangalore," said Rishi.
¡°It's the second community play test and we're really interested to see what people think because contrary to popular belief, we read the comments, we see what people think, we see how they're reacting to stuff. And we wanna make sure we make a game that people can play for years!¡±
Keep visiting?Indiatimes.com?for the latest?science and technology?news