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MUMBAI:
One step for Paradox, a giant step for Indian owned IP in gaming
and animation.
A glitzy
do, filmstars and a fair sprinkling of the media marked the release
of BattleDust: The Championship, India's first 3D game for the PC,
released by the Reliance owned Paradox Studios yesterday.
The game priced at Rs 399 is published by Cyber Multimedia, a subsidary
of CMIL(Cyber Media India Ltd).
Battledust
: The Championship is Paradox's first effort at developing a game
for the PC platform. The Studio has been involved in the development
of games since its inception in 2001. Till date it has developed
over a 100 JAVA and WAP games with new titles being added every
quarter.
Some
names that come to mind when talking about wireless content are
Indiagames and Dhruva Interactive, both of which have been in this
sector for a long time now. Indiagames has been succesfully securing
licenses for the mobile platform to International brands (Hollywood)
like Buffy, TDAT and Spiderman.
The
launch of 'Battledust' is significant as barring a few Tenali Ramas
and Chota Birbals in the animation sector, and the Buffy and TDAT
mobile games in the gaming sector, the creation and develoment of
intellectual property in the Indian animation and gaming sectors
has been slow and far apart.
Marketing
initiatives involving cross media promotion being the order of the
day, Paradox has produced a FMV (Full Motion Video) entitled 'Fight'
with Indian Rock band Pentagram providing the background score.
The fully 3D animated FMV is currently airing on MTV.
The
video features hand key-framed high resolution models - with a polygon
count of up to 20,000 - animatedly enacting the story, amidst high-quality
special effects.
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Paradox
CEO Anurag Khurana with Bobby Deol answering a barrage of
queries from the media.
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Proudly
announcing the launch of Battledust, Paradox CEO Anurag Khurana
said that, " With the launch of this game our endeavour is
not only to offer the country's gaming aficionado a product which
truly meets international standards but also contributes in promoting
the gaming culture in India."
Cyber Multimedia CMD and Publisher Pradeep Gupta says," Most
of Indian expenditure in developing content for the PC has been
in the field of education. As disposable incomes rise the market
for games all across Asia is going to grow considerably.We expect
to sell around 10,000 copies of Battledust in a year's time."
The
launch witnessed a fair share of glamour with the entire cast of
an upcoming Vikram Bhatt movie, Jurm launching the game.
Also present were officials from Indian and international cellular
operators, which partner with Paradox in many, a wireless content
deal.
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Paradox
CEO Anurag Khurana with Milestone Interactive business development
head Sachin Naik
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Sachin
Naik, Business development manager for Milestone Interactive which
is also a player in the game development space was present at the
occasion.
Commenting on the camaraderie shared by the Indian gaming community,
Naik said that, "We (Indian game development companies) are
quite cool with each other. Though we are all in the same business,
the market potential is so huge that there is space for another
40 companies."
Battledust' features 7 warriors, and 8 selectable levels. It boasts
of high level AI (artificial intelligence) wherein if a player gets
lazy and begins to rely on a certain set of moves, the oppponent
gets smart to it and begins dodging them easily.
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Indian
character Major Veer
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The
game requires players to go through gruelling combats with opponents
at each level. The final opponent is in true Indian fashion termed
as Lord Moksha.
Indianness is also evident in the names of some characters such
as Major Veer. Another interesting add-on bundled with the game
is a 44 page full colour comic that explains in depth the story
and the background of the characters and the motives for their fighting.
The
development cycle of the game lasted for around 2 years with the
pre production work taking close to 4,800 man hours. 52,687 lines
of coding, 600 code files, 10,000 frames of animation are some of
the game facts mentioned in the launch press release.
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