7Seas develops virtual Big Fight involving presidential hopefuls.
With the US elections rapidly approaching, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have intensified their oral slanging match.
Now imagine the duo draped in a sports attire delivering heavy knockout punches and deadly flying kicks at each other in a boxing bout to settle the issue — virtually though.
This Obama versus McCain battle has been orchestrated not by the American electorate but by 7Seas Technologies. The online game called ‘The Big Fight’ has the two presidential hopefuls battling it out for the coveted US crown — not with words but fists.
“The idea behind developing this game is to fuel interest in international news events like the US polls, and provide entertainment to gamers at the same time,” said L Maruti Sanker, managing director of the Hyderabad-based independent game development firm.
The Big Fight, the first such game to be developed in India, involved three months of development time and an investment of Rs 35 lakh.
All the gamer needs to do is pit the presidential candidates against one another in a “street-fighter style” battle using a mixed bag of techniques, including boxing, kick-boxing, karate and wrestling. When the opponent loses his fighting ability, the player will go to the “congrats page”.
Also on offer with this free game is the presidential polls concept, through which the gamer can vote for his favourite leader, the results of which will be displayed via a percentage bar.
Targeted at an audience above 14 years that has grown up with gamepads and joysticks, the game will be available on the company’s portals — www.onlinerealgames.com and www.neodelight.com. It will also be available through over 50 aggregator portals in a week to 10 days from now, Sanker added.
Though this is 7Seas’ first foray into political gaming, the genre is about five years old. The first political fighting game – Iowa Game – was launched in 2003 by the then Democrat hopeful Howard Dean. Later, 20 other games followed suit including The Political Machine, Frontrunner and President Forever with the latest being “The Street Fight” on Obama Vs Hillary Clinton.
“With the US elections expected to generate intense interest worldwide, as in the case of earlier years, we hope to garner more than a million unique users, about half of them from the US alone, till the show (elections) is over,” Sanker said.
The company expects to garner Rs 2 crore revenues from The Big Fight through game licensing to portals and aggregators, and online and in-game advertising.
7Seas, which currently offers 260 IP-owned free online games, also plans to develop similar games on political situations in other countries from next year.
“By the end of the current financial year, we plan to add 40 more free games across genres including racing and Indian traditional concepts like wedding and cooking,” Sanker added.
7Seas Technologies reported revenues of Rs 7 crore last year and expects to close the current fiscal with revenues of between Rs 18 crore and Rs 20 crore on the back of The Big Fight and the 60 online and seven 3D mobile games that it has launched so far this year.
