Fight Terrorism - with Games

India has had its fair share of terrorist attacks over the years. These grim instances are a stark reminder of the crappy times we live in, where pretty much anything could happen from one minute to the next. No country in the world, be it India or a super power like America has been able to fully curb such attacks but one non-profit organization in Bangalore has taken matters into their own hands. They’re working on a video game simulator that they hope will help people cope with a terror alert.

_The real deal
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The Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) are working on an unnamed multipayer game that’ll take place in Banaglore’s Garuda mall where players will be trained to deal with such a stressful situation. The mall will be painstakingly recreated to be as authentic as possible so if you live in Bangalore and have frequented the mall, navigation should be a breeze. The game sounds like a class based one where you could play as either a fireman, police officer, security guard or an emergency worker as they try and diffuse this highly volatile situation. What’s even more impressive is that this game would be made using Crytek’s CryEngine 3, which if you didn’t know is the same one being used to power Crysis 2.

The engine may be expensive to lease but Crytek have been kind enough to share it on a non-commercial basis with a non-profit organization such as CSTEP. The assets however developed for this game like the Mall itself and the artificial intelligence (AI) will go back to Crytek once work winds up on this project.

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_The simulated deal
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A while back, Dubai’s police came up with an open world simulator for its SWAT team where players could roam around an authentically created Dubai. I honestly do hope this would be the next step for CSTEP as an open world simulator in any of India’s cities would be interesting and just plain awesome.

Hopefully simulators like these are a wakeup call for all the haters out there who feel games make you violent, lazy or just plain anti-social. If I play violent games it really doesn’t mean I’m going to turn into the next Ted Bundy. It’s stupid stereotyping which hopefully informative and innovative games like this should abolish.

We’ll definitely try and get in touch with the developers to give you a more in-depth look at this game. In the meantime do check out their website for more information.