WAM : Send Off 2009 and Welcome 2010 was in STYLE

AH, the new year eve was DAMN NICE! Freaked in a lounge cum night club attached to a open roof restaurant with live Hindustani Band. Twinkling were the stars as well as the crowd that entered the new year bash, ranging from families to teen party freaks. The New Year Bash at Atlantis – Fathima Nagar, Pune was a GALA time. Unlimited Food and Unlimited Drinks, sparkling way to start a new year!

One of the pics that came from my timing on the camera, a try out.
Toast for the 2009, a send off and a Meal for the 2010 which is yet to be explored.

CHEERS – A HAPPY NEW YEAR once again! In 2 days I will back to my routine, adventures of game development.

WAM : 2009 A Once In Lifetime Eventful Year

Here on the last day of 2009, I sit at my desk, thinking about the events that happened through out the year. Very very eventful! Majority of them being downs, the ups have their significance as they just washed away all the downs that I had. And one of the couple of ups were, my first game’s release and its progression in sales, “100 All Time Favorites” with more than 20k+ copies SOLD (actually this part is very confidential).

Very happy with what so has happened with the title, a rewarding moment after tons of set-backs when we were in production. Very happy that your first game has a rating given from various sources as 6.5/10 and above, its makes me happy for the really good start from my team, my studio and of course an unforgettable milestone in my career. Plus, the title had made me known to more people in the industry, new contacts and friends in the industry and that seems to be promising.

The energy gained from “100 All Time Favorites” seems to get carried into another adventure, but it’s still not the moment yet to be happy about. Hopefully that’s something I would see for the future to be all about in 2010.

Seems awkward, but I am happy that I had my 2 games release on the same year. My first project, started 3 years back, as a Lead Programmer (at 7seas Tech, which I left after 1 year of development) KRAZE too got released this year end soon after “100 All Time Favorites” got released. Say now officially I am not with the team any more, but I am happy for the hard work and commitment the team put up for the project. That’s a good second step for 7Seas on the PC front.

2009 has been an year full of games again. And on the personal front, its the year that my sister (even if she introduces me as her cousin, which is the fact but I call her as my own sister) Jyoti got married to Sreeji (chakkike otte changaran – mallu quote means Made For Each Other).  Her new world, her new family, her new priorities and everything changed for good and forever.

My sibling younger sister, Janani, scored really better (I really mean really better) marks than me at her 12th grade and joined for BBA, that’s another immense happy moment for me. A moment of recognition for my sweety.

Ex-Roomie’s Marriage!!! HIT – Hitendra Barse got married! Hey family MAN! Wish a Happy and Blessed Life ahead for Hit and Kiran!

Apart from the wonderful things that happened, I wouldn’t never want another year with the repeated downs from this year. Same old story of betrayal at peak, not only from one person, a couple of people at regular intervals stamped on various roles of my life which has been branded on to my memories with no solution to dissolve them at any point of life. I should be thankfully for the my GREAT friends (Roma - Malju Spirit, found her this year, 2009 (mallu + gujju, come on you are not a mallu), Nirav ( A Gujju Guy! One Roomie Power) , Yoganath (Bro- Help always on the way) and Hitendra (Second Ex-Roomie power) I had through this period helping, consoling and reminding of the spirit I lost on these incidents.

Thankful to the power behind the good health of my parents (they have been under a lot of pressure, which is not at all in my hands but all I can do now is hear to them) and people around me, I wish everyone a Wonderful New Year yet to come!

PS: No plans till now, I am gotta run off with DYNAMIC ALLOCATION of Celebration of 2009 and start off 2010 rit away! This post is not intended for a people to read, its just to remind me what happened to me in 2009. After all I am too a human, WHO FORGETS!

BTW, a resolution, mmm…. still thinking of something. I need to think of a resolution which I can break!

CHEERS, see you in the next episode of my life, SEASON 2010!

MR : James Cameron’s “Avatar” – Technically Brilliant!

The movie has been in a lot of hype for a long time now, knowing that James Cameron is one the best directors in the world whose story telling methodologies have been creating sensational flicks in various age groups of people. With Avatar, according to me, he still maintains the very same pace. Avatar is not a packaged with a base story line that’s complex or pitched for a more sequel based movies but very simple old wine in the new bottle. You know the kind of inspirational movies that shows that at times self confidence helps you win the biggest battle of your life. More than the story its the narration of this story with James Cameroon’s vision of an ET life is more than stunning than the story. He sets the standards for the industry to target for and that’s really, I mean really GOOD!

There has been a lot of movies where you had the featured ET life forms on earth and humans on their planet and all sorts of things, but this was one vision that makes me feel that I would be like to be a NAVI! Extremely detailed environment(MY FAV PART OF THE MOVIE – IT WAS WOW!) and really good creatures/animals/humanoid visions on that kind of an environment. The vision of “Biological Network”, oh boy something you will have to see and figure out is WOW, where do he get the inspirations from? Its like a p2p network we have with computers today! Throughout the movie, the humans, pictured in a negative money greedy (typical serial fashioned Indian mother-in-laws in south movies, even kill the first daughter-in-law to get a new daughter-in-law for her son with more dowry style!) being negative aspect for the movie shows 2 distinct vision of humans, scientists who says – MORE KNOWLEDGE and business men – MORE MONEY. So yeah we have more distinct people back on planet earth!

Inside the Making of the Movie

Coming back on the story telling, James Cameron just touched the expectation that I had for the movie, good story telling, very very convincing display of his version of the ET life forms, using the the latest CG techniques and technologies known and created for the movie AND the movie a is great EXPERIENCE! You will need to EXPERIENCE it, its a must watch if you are James Cameron/CG/Sci-fi/ET/Hollywood Movie Lover. There would be a lot other sites which can give you an insight of what is in store for the movie, but I stand with director for not breaking the experience that’s there in the movie for the viewers. So you guys should go and watch the movie, its 200% money value entertaining movie!

My First Trip to ‘PANDORA’ was AWESOME! I wanna go for the trip once again may be not in 3D this time, want to know the experience it in 2D too!

HATS OFF to the LEGENDARY VISIONARY – JAMES CAMERON!

CHEERS!

GC/GNEWS/TFF : Tegra for the Next Nintendo DS?

nVidia has disclosed that they have come to deal with Nintendo in getting the next gen Nintendo DS to have Tegra in it. As Tegra has claimed to be the next wave in handheld console gaming, as said by the nVidia CEO, seems to get the Big Fish in the league, but Nintendo is yet to disclose on it. Until Nintendo says so, I am not gonna, you know, expect this. It’s NINTENDO, they do anything, and they do it own their WILL! They had once upon a time refused to use the Compact Disc Technology from Sony, later adapted it for Wii.

So it’s not easy to convince Nintendo like that. Let’s see whether nVidia has been able to convince Nintendo or not. According to me, Nintendo should be doing it, we need to see a platform (handheld) to compete with sony so that the market improves.

Right now, DS is lagging only with the quality on visual experience, and Tegra can enhance it, a new feature addition may or may not enhance but the thinking of the possibilities of games like God Of War for a handheld like DS with the innovative hardware features like mic and touch plus a competitive graphics processor can really push the user experience to a different envelope, provided the game developers exploit it.

Well, I am not that old enough to give a suggestion to Nintendo, they know the market too well and they know to how to get people buy their hardware and their games as well, hope they will do something I would like to see them doing.

CHEERS

WAM : “100 All Time Favorites” kept me busy!

Finally, now I have the right to talk to the world about what I was working on for the past 8 months. 100 All Time Favorites – Ubisoft Pune’s first in-house production for Nintendo DS was successfully launched this Oct 27th in US and Nov 19th in EMEA. Since it was the first of its kind in India, promotions are some thing I am working more on these days, of course keeping my next project in wraps.

There are a couple of my feelings I would like to write in out somewhere. I feel today is the right day for it. I have my first Media Exposure on the title’s promotions and I got my hands on the original cartridge too! YAPEEEE!!!

My Official DS Copy of “100 All Time Favorites”

Thats the link to the first surfacing of the Interview with Animation Xpress’s Gaming Division, Gaming Xpress : LINK, the December Edition of Animation Xpress is to be having the article on the title too. Eventhough there are a lot more articles to follow, I will keep it in wraps again until these surface.

Even if I am happy with all the proceedings happening for “100 All Time Favorites”, a small sadness still pricks me. It may be very much only to me, there is a lot of things that I want to tell to the media on the Production, who worked day and night hard enough to re-invent and re-write a lot of things which weren’t right for the title at the first place! They always got me what the core team wanted. I remember days when they freaked out and said its impossible, but next they come back and tells “Jithin, we tried it like this and its working and so we can do it”. They just DON’T GIVE UP! May be I am a bit OBSESSED with my favorite team, may be I am not “may be obsessed”. I AM Obsessed with my team. They have no fear to improve, no giving ups and always think to get better second by second or hour by hour. I AM LOVIN’ IT!

From the testing part there were a lot of things about the QC PUNE too, the nights when they sat to get the 45+ hours game tested thoroughly making sure that the product is of really good standard.They worked hard to make sure that the hardships we went are perfect for any crowd outside. The energy they had to test a 45+ hour games more than 3 times, AH come on, I can’t watch movie (even if its the BEST movie ever made) for more than 3 shows or max of 6 hours. The commitment and energy is DAMN, really good.

These people’s credits are very much a part of their appreciation for the work they had done for the project. But for the audience of the game, all they need is to know about the game and how you made it, that’s all.

Of course the media also wants ONLY that kind of information, provided that are a couple of limited things to be disclosed too. This is the part where I am a bit sad, but that’s how it is. Hope that my team would understand it. Tremendous WORK, Tremendous COMMITMENT, Tremendous ENERGY! 3Ts for the TEAM!

Ah, it’s time I get back for the next another amazing journey of game development, long way to go and I need to play “100 All Time Favorites” too.

For the blog readers, I will some day (not committing on anything now) let you know about what I and my teams had learned from “100 All Time Favorites”.

CHEERS!