This is the second part in the two-part series by Neelesh Mukherjee who had a chat with Paul Steed and Chris Whaley
Chris Whaley has been in the gaming scenario even before I could say Mama, the most striking feature about Chris were his convictions which he stood by throughout, he is an ardent sports fan and he has applied his passion for creating games that have garnered numerous industry accolades, he served as the Executive producer for the Playstation’s hugely successful NFL Gameday sports title which went onto become a platinum seller.
Chris is sure of the fact that gaming in our country is going to penetrate through all barriers and we shall be major consumers in the world market, this is not a vision he sees, but is a reality that is gaining momentum, this reality however is true only of the online/mobile world and he had a very important fact to validate his belief, piracy in our country is rampant and there is very little that can be done to prevent its tentacles from growing further, so games like WoW and EverQuest will be void from security issues and will have a larger user base than any single playing game has ever achieved on our soil, the mechanics works similarly for a country like China, so the chance to build upon this idea and Monetize it should not be foregone. Their company was in the process of arranging funds for our very own game, in addition to that the mobile gaming industry is set to beat console gaming because of the sheer number of sets being sold, there are about 800,000 downloads for mobile games in India alone on a yearly basis, so how do you turn a blind eye to that. Gaming is going to be a different affair in our country we might not have a history in gaming but our rich heritage and culture can substitute that.
RZ2 games develops full fledged games, they are not an outsource company, since he was more than happy to tell us about his current projects although he did not divulge huge details but it was not a big secret as Exigent, their company just finished working on a SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) game to be released shortly and a game for THQ on the PS2 and Wii platforms (a sports game is my guess…). Chris is of the view that the world of virtual reality shall be dominated by the PS3 because of the amount of technology they have invested in the product he thinks that the Blu Ray disc shall prove to be wise decision in the long run.
I had wondered why Sony had always goofed up with first party games, besides the hype machine at work. Games like Killzone was touted to be a Halo Killer (why I still do not know for Halo is not revolution its merely an evolution in FPS genre), the ad campaign for Getaway actually asked you to throw Vice City away, Primal could beat Lara without the breasts, but all these games failed to live upto their hype what was the prime reason behind this, Chris told me that with the PSOne Sony gave a lot of support to first party companies to develop on their platform, hence the games churned out by these publishers lived upto the quality of gaming standards. With the PS2 they concentrated on third party support, his own studio received development kits almost a year later than E.A. who were flown specially to Japan to look at what the PS2 could actually do and I believe they are paying a heavy price for this joyride, “Solid Snake may actually have no where to hide” in this generation, but Chris still held his ground on the PS3 being the market leader in due time because of their previous experience in the market, they know how to avoid the tigers claw escape unscathed.
Japan a country with a closed culture will never accept the western term for defining games, they are a nation who believe in protecting what they believe is right, so the Success of the PS3 is evident in Japan. It was interesting to note that Chris loves Cricket and was disappointed when our players were thrown out of the World Cup tournament, he also loves Hindi movies and loved Dhoom 2 and Lage Raho Munnabhai, I hope Bollywood is listening to him cause he can make SRK the king of millions of virtual hearts spread across the globe!
–Neelesh Mukherjee