Chp 601. Reaching the 250

Needless to say, the fact that I haven't updated my blog for a month shows how busy I've been lately. Last month, I broke our company's record of coming to work for an ENTIRE month. Yup, that included the four weekends in the month of February as well!

The one day I didn't go to office last month was on 10th, but that was because I had to travel to Mumbai for a client meeting (the celebrity who invited us over to his house). So technically, that still counted as being present at work :P

Now I'm not going to bore you with what I do at work, but in this post, I'd like to cover one of the biggest stress relieving factors I've been experiencing the past few months, and that is playing games.

You might consider that ironic - Why would somebody who spends every day, from 8 AM to 10 PM developing games, finally gets to sit and relax by… playing games? Well, that's the difference between being a Game designer and being a Gamer. When I'm at work, I do just my work. But when I'm immersed in a game outside work, I just enjoy the flow. I don't need to think about the user onboarding, the core game loop, the level design, the game economics, the retention and monetization strategies, the branding and promotional campaign etc etc… I. just. enjoy. the. freaking. game. :)

Recently, on Steam, a very popular online gaming platform, I managed to reach the "Game Mechanic" milestone! That means I now own 250 games!


[click on above pic to view more details]

"Owning" a game at Steam refers only to games you have actually bought. It doesn't apply to F2P (free to play) games, unless you have bought the retail licenses of those F2P games as well. I'm just a "1 Years of Service" badge owner at Steam so yeah, it may look like I've spent a lot to own 250 games in such a short span of time. But actually, I didn't. 

I mean, yeah, I did spend quite a lot, but I only buy games when there is a sale going on. So the actual worth of all the games I currently own is much much more than the price I paid for them. I may be a noob in terms of Steam experience, but many of my friends who have been on Steam for 6-8 years gave me a very important advice - "NEVER buy a game on Steam unless it's on discount. And believe me, it WILL be on discount one day".

And so I wait for the best weekend deals…



the bundle deals…



the franchise deals…



the publisher weekend offers…



…and when there is no good discount available, I utilize the discount coupons I get when I craft a new badge.




And so thanx to all that, I am now the proud owner of 250 games on Steam. Do I regret spending money on games? I actually feel good about it because of all those years I used to spend downloading pirated games. This is my way of paying back to the game dev community. Now that I too am a game developer, I totally understand the hardship and sweat one must toil in this industry. Like I mentioned in the very beginning of this post, I didn't even get a single day's holiday throughout last month.

Ps. I'm not trying to get all preachy or sanctimonious on you. If you wanna continue downloading free pirated or modded games, hey that's up to you, bruh. I'm not judging you in anyway. But if you do come across an extremely good game on torrent, especially one that had been developed by an unknown Indie studio, it would be nice if you could purchase the game or make IAP (micro-transactions), just to show your support to them.

After my last blog update about Steam games [November 2015: Bitten by the Steam sale bug] when I bought the Valve Bundle, I went on a couple of more shopping sprees :D 

I usually buy bundles. Buying a bundle is very effective for a new Steam user like me because, it's very likely that I don't have any of the games in that bundle yet. But to a seasoned Steam user, there's a good chance that he or she is already in possession of some of the games in that bundle, hence making the Bundle offer useless.

Here are some of the new games I have bought recently.

How many of them are you too playing, and which is your favorite?

[Click on all pics to enlarge to a new window if you want to have a clearer look at the titles]



As you can see from above, "The Cave" is one such game I downloaded via torrent a long time ago. Beautiful game, great concept and intriguing level designs. I bought the game this time just to show my support to the developers.

Awesomenauts is another game I think most Dota players will like. It's a 3v3 platformer version of Dota, with different heroes and upgrades. As I'm not a Dota fan, it didn't excite me that much, plus there is no concept of "team match-up balancing" factor as in Team Fortress 2. I was in an online match on a pub server when my two randomly selected teammates either disconnected or rage-quitted. Instead of balancing the game and making it 2v2 from 3v1, I was given two lame-ass bots as teammates.



As you can see from above and below, I really love games with great narrations. To me, that's one of the first things I look for in a game. How deep is the plot, the concept, the progression. I like playing mindless hack-n-slash games too, but at the end of the day, the game that I truly enjoy is the one that just takes me on a journey. A good game is something that should make you feel like you've just read a great book. 



I really am not fancied by rich graphics and sfx that also require top end processors and RAMs. An exception to that would be "The Talos Principle". It is one of my favorite games so far. Beautiful rich graphics, more than just playing the game and solving interesting puzzles, I am thankful for the awesome experience the game is giving me. If I was to recommend one game to you from this post, it would be this.

Lately I've been playing a lot of co-op games too.





I've also bought games I already have on my mobile phone, like Hexcell, Hook, Lyne, Super Hexagon etc because I like those games, and they also have steam achievements and steam trading cards :D Steam achievement is a great way to track your progress (and also boast to others about your performance). Steam trading cards let you craft badges, which levels up your Steam XP. Currently I'm a level 27. :)



My only complain about these "small" games is that, most of them do not have the ability to sync your progress across different systems. I have Steam installed in both my home and office PC. When I play TF2 or a campaign on Torchlight, I can easily continue my progress when I go to office or vice-versa. But sadly, smaller games don't have that option. I gotta play all the levels again, even though it shows that I have already unlocked the achievement (from the other PC). 



Perhaps one of the weirdest games in my recent collection is "Shower with your dad simulator". The very name itself is WTF. And it is weird and funny as hell. There are different types of challenge modes, and much as it is fun and "different", I realized a lot of my colleagues had stopped sitting next to me in the cafeteria after they saw me play this game in office, lolz.



There are a lot of games I haven't installed yet. As I said before, I buy the games only when they are on discount. I also try to make sure they have an "overwhelmingly positive" or at least "very positive" review from other Steam users.

Right now, I am reliving old memories again. I recently purchased the Age of Empire bundle, which included all the AOE, AOM and RON series, along with the Total War bundle which included all the Total War games, the Company of Heroes franchise, and the huge Eidos Anthology pack which included all the Lara Croft Tomb Raider series, the Thief series, Deus Ex series, Hit Man series etc. That was definitely my biggest bundle package after I bought the Valve Mega bundle last year.





As of today, I am currently stuck in mission 4 of the "Joan of Arc" campaign of AOE II's "Age of Kings" game. And believe me, I've played all these games a long time ago, but I used to play most of them using cheat codes. Now, I cannot use any cheat codes if I want to unlock Steam achievements, and so that really brings in a new gameplay experience for me. Remember woodstock, pepperoni pizza, bigdaddy, marco, polo, cheese steak jimmy's? I still do to this day, hahaha. But yeah, I won't be playing like that now.

Hence a campaign can easily go to 2-3 hours without cheating. Which I guess is a good stress buster for me :)

So do add me on Steam, I have also gifted many games to my friends :) My steam id is Mizohican. Cheers y'all. 



  

Chp 600. Pune - A year ago and now

Today, exactly a year ago, I thought it was the end of me when doctors suspected I had the dreaded H1N1 swine flu virus.

20th February 2015 was a Friday. Back then, I hadn't moved to Pune yet, so we would travel from Mumbai to Pune on a Monday morning, spend the entire week in Pune, and then head back to Mumbai on a Friday evening. We were accommodated at our company's guesthouse during our stay in Pune.

That Friday morning, I started feeling unwell. In case some of you might forget, January - February - March 2015 was the peak of the unfortunate H1N1 outbreak in India, with the worst affected states being Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. The swine flu outbreak claimed more than 2000 lives in India, so yeah, it was scary to live in regions where contamination was high. It was even more scary to fall sick at such places.

My friends and I were supposed to head back to Mumbai that Friday evening. But when I started getting the chills and running a temperature, I told them I wasn't in a condition to go back to Mumbai, so Dev, Tanmay and Hemant went back to Mumbai without me. Three other friends - Sumeet, Abhilash and Pratik, were staying back in Pune for the weekend so I wasn't alone at the guesthouse.

But in the evening, I got worse. Apart from fever and chills, I started becoming delirious. Sumeet rushed me to the nearest hospital, where I was immediately suspected of being infected with H1N1. I was admitted in one of the wards, hooked up on various IVs.

I'll forever be indebted to Sumeet, Abhilash and Pratik, because after they admitted me in one of the wards and I had passed out from all the medications, they were about to go back to the guesthouse. But as they were leaving, they overheard one of the doctors talking to one of the nurses, who described the ward I was in as an H1N1 isolation room! It was then that they found out the other patients in my ward were all H1N1 positive! They were pissed as hell, because I wasn't a confirmed case yet, it was just merely a suspicion. They stormed me out of the hospital that same night and took me to a much better private hospital. You can read the rest of my hospital ordeal in my blog post link above.

Had they not taken me out from that isolation ward that night, even though I was cleared of H1N1 later, I think I could have been infected with it. Much thanks to my friends indeed!

While I was recovering in the guesthouse, I had unexpected visitors. First, it was my flatmate from Mumbai who drove all the way to Pune to see how I was doing. And then there were these two Mizo guys, Lalrinpuia and Remruatkima, who's the secretary of PMCF (Pune Mizo Christian Fellowship).

And that is what I really love about our Mizo community. As mentioned earlier, I hadn't moved to Pune yet as I was still living in Mumbai, and so I didn't know any Mizos in Pune. And none of the Mizos in Pune knew about me. However, these two office-bearers of the PMCF heard from people in Mizoram that there was a Mizo dude currently being treated on suspicion of H1N1 in Pune, and so they searched high and low to find out who I was. Finally, from one Facebook mutual friend to the other, they managed to trace me and paid me a visit!

Gotta love our Mizo society for that :)

Today, a year later, I am now a proud resident of Pune. Though I still haven't interacted much with our Mizo community, I now have my fair share of Mizo friends here in Pune. It's really hard for me to meet new people because of my hectic work. I spend most of the weekends in office as well, especially since we're almost about to launch our next big game.

Our next game is going to be huge and awesome, I promise you that, because it revolves around Salman Khan. That's an open secret so I don't have to be discreet about it. However, there's another celebrity we've just tied up with, and I don't think I can talk about that yet. But the other day, I along with the top management of our company went to meet him. And dear Lord, my knees fell weak when he shook my hand!

I mean, it's one thing to meet a celebrity. I've lived in Mumbai for 8 years before moving to Pune, so I have seen my fair share of celebrities, especially since my apartment was at Carter Road, Bandra. It's just another day if you bump into Aamir Khan or sit in a restaurant a few tables away from Amitabh Bachchan. Feels awesome to ask them for an autograph or a selfie together. But to be actually invited by a celebrity into his own house, is a completely different feeling!

And so we woke up at 5AM, left Pune by 6, reached Mumbai by 9:30 and waited in front of this celeb's house, whose gate was guarded by 5-6 cops inside. There were surveillance cameras everywhere. Most visitors (I mean the few who had an appointment) were frisked and x-rayed, but they didn't frisk us because we were vetted by a very high authority. There was a police van stationed right outside his apartment too. Inside his house, along with the cops, there were many private security personnel as well. He had his own private receptionist and secretary, along with an entourage of other household staff. 

We walked into his private office which was in the basement, where he greeted all of us warmly. He offered us tea and coffee. And then we talked about our game concept and proposal. Even though the meeting was just for 15 minutes, he was so into our concept that he ended up interacting with us for 2 hours! Finally, another secretary had to come in and remind him that he had some other agenda. Overall, he really liked our game proposal (not to brag, but it was my concept :D ) . He shook our hands one more time and left. I never expected a person of his stature to be so down-to-earth and humble. What an incredible man indeed.

Once our Salman Khan game is released next month, that's the next project I'll be working on. I feel blessed to have such an interesting and exciting future ahead. But alas, that comes at the cost of my social life. It means there's no time to hang out with friends or meet new people.

At least I'm glad I'm not lying in bed drowning in antibiotics and other medications like last year :)

So cheers, and keep watching this space for more news on our upcoming game.

[Pic - A photo of the sunset as I walk across a bridge over the Mula Mutha river. The bridge connects my office in Kalyani Nagar to my apartment in Koregaon Park.]