Editors Area

Playware Studios Asia

Category:	Game Developer
Title:	Playware Studios Asia
Listing URL:	http://www.playwarestudios.com/
Description:	Started in September 1999, as a project, the initiative was in the engine development mode till August of 2001 when it completed its first engine for the real time strategy games genre. The company was incorporated in September 2002. It took the initial 6 months for the team to train, starting only with basic information (about the different genres and their peculiarities) and going right up to the tools available for development such as DirectX various engines and their websites, forums and tutorials. During our training we produced three budget games for children, which have been taken up for publishing by the Times of India group through their company the Times Multimedia. Our small initiative received a major boost when our almost Quixote'isque mission started bearing fruit. The first breakthrough was with Xtac India's first fully functional RTS game engine replete with all the features such as Multiplayer, Map editor etc. However, experienced now, we soon realized that we could not possibly complete a game on this engine as we did not have the proper financial resources to develop a game on our new engine before it went obsolete. Still proud of our achievement we like to showcase the engine through a series of small demos and budget products that we created using it. On the insistence of our clients Times Multimedia who had seen the engine, that a Game was still commercially viable on this engine we started developing a unique Real time strategy Cricket Game on it; Real Cricket allows the users to play as the Captain/Coach without burdening them with Pie Charts and statistics. It therefore turned out to be an intense electric game that it cricket is today. It has gone gold and we have great hopes on Real Cricket and expect it to do well when it hits the Markets sometime this year. Since Playware has now successfully launched a total of 13 titles (see Products page) through times multimedia and gone gold on 1 title that is awaiting release. Several other titles are under development. The rationale behind development of Budget Titles in India: Large numbers of low-end PCs are still used in India and these are unable to support the latest offerings from premium game developers. The average Indian PC is still running old Pentium chips with Win98 or Win95 and in some cases even MS DOS without the now standard AGP and 3D accelerator cards or large amounts of ram or Hard Disk Space. There are very few Professional gamers in India compared to developed countries, therefore there is no segment actively pursuing new feature in games and gaming technology or writing critiques about offerings in the Indian Market. Resultantly most foreign publishers are content with offering old and dated products in India. Premium titles themselves are highly overpriced for Indian Consumer profile. The Founder: Siddharth Jain As long time computer enthusiast and an avid Gamer he always hoped to work in the Computer Gaming Industry. With a background being mostly of Advertising and Television; his mother ran an Ad Agency and his father though a finance man established a TV Studio and Channel, he was one of the fortunate few (from his generation in India) who got an exposure to Computers very early on in life (At the time it was quite a unique position. Nowadays kids learn computers as soon as they leave the cradle). Though he's been associated with IT almost all his life, his first shot at Development came recently in '98 when he did a concept for a Long Distance Interactive Training Course for a Client. The project involved about 25 Hours of Instruction via television, Interactivity via Phone-ins and the Net and back up material available both as printed matter and on the web. It was a successful project earning kudos from all sectors it was displayed at from Financers to Govt and Institutional persons. That's where he started really thinking about realizing his dream of developing a computer game. With a small family loan he dropped out of the TV industry and started working on it as a project. The vision is to create RTS (Real Time Strategy) Games that are pure fun and killer on the tactics piled on with all the 'game play possibilities' he always wanted from games he both played and loved (Games like C&C, Warcraft and AOE which still make his head swoon). 141 Market Street, #04-01, AEC Center, Singapore 048944 Tel + 65 6224 7962 Fax + 65 6227 0225 Playware Studios Asia aims to be a premier interactive multimedia IP creation facility in Asia with a focus on developing strong cross platform franchises for the region and beyond. Headquartered in Singapore, we are creating presence in India, China and Southeast Asia by establishing studios and building strong relationships with content publishers, distributors, developers and publishers.
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Link added:	24 Jan 2007
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