Chennai : They may be virtual millionaires in the Sim (ulated) Cities they build but PC games freaks know that legal games software only blow holes in one's purse.

Games featuring cutting-edge graphics cost anything between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 2,000 each and would at best feature 6 to 8 hours of gameplay. According to Neeraj Alia, Manager (Online Games), at IndiaGames, the largest desi games creator, piracy eats into more than 85 per cent of the PC gaming market and still generates Rs. 80 to Rs. 100 crore every year.

Now in a bid to cash in on the gaming bug and while appealing in a "purse-friendly" fashion to the legions of PC gamers, Indiagames has tied up with broadband service providers across the country to offer a subscription-based "games on demand" service.

Airtel and MTNL have already launched the service on a trial run in a couple of cities each. More recently You Telecom, formerly Iqara Broadband, has introduced the service across 21 cities, on a two-week trial basis at Rs. 200 a month.

Subscribers can choose from a catalogue of nearly 100 games from the Indiagames portal, download and play them for free. The monthly charges are akin to rental charges for the games and there is no cap on downloads.

The Indiagames catalogue already features some big publishers such as Microsoft and Atari — and popular games such as Brian Lara's Cricket and `Age of Mythology.' Mr. Alia said Indiagames were in talks with other major publishers to introduce more games in the platform in the coming months.

Digital delivery

The `game-on-demand' service operates similar to `movie-on-demand' model, where the subscriber is able to download on to a hard disk through the Internet. To prevent piracy, the games are encrypted and are playable only through a `game player' software that checks the user's credentials such as Internet address.

The digital delivery effectively addresses two important issues: it works as an alternative for the DVD rentals networks favoured by gamers in U.S. and in some European countries; and more importantly at Rs. 200 a month, it helps save a lot of money and helps combat piracy. PC gaming is already a costly hobby given the price of hardware such as graphic accelerator cards.

For broadband service providers, the service is a new driver to get customers as well as look at the future applications. According to one of the executives in You Telecom, the growth of online gaming in Korea, fuelled the broadband growth 10-fold in less than five years.

There are also other broadband applications to keep an eye on. EVS Chakravarthy, CEO and Customer Service Associate, You Telecom, said online gaming through consoles such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's awaited Playstation 3 could well become the rage in the coming years among broadband users. The current `game-on-demand' service could well become the first step towards that goal.

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