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A Kaali-Peeli Bombay Taxi Wins the Race and How!

Join the exciting ride with Alok Kejriwal in Getting Dressed and Parking Cars. The book takes us into the world of Games2win, a startup that dreams big in the gaming world. Imagine creating a game inspired by the crazy streets of Mumbai and the Iconic Kaali-Peeli Bombay taxi– it’s all part of the fun!

Read this exclusive excerpt for a quick ride in the taxi that’s set to win the race.

Put your seatbelts on!

Getting Dressed and Parking Cars
Getting Dressed and Parking Cars || Alok Kejriwal

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I quietly assembled a small team from my previous companies to fire up the Games2win engines and was happy to see how excited they all were. My team and I had been involved in client service for years, and we were yearning to get started on building our own products.

 

I again turned to my colleague Dinesh Gopalakrishnan and decided he would be responsible for the car games vertical. My instructions to him were clear—‘Dinu, you need to start making brand new parking and driving games. They need to be casual, differentiated and fun. Also, I need at least ten unique titles split equally between the two types. So, step on the pedal and hit the road now (pun intended)!’ Dinesh was excited and went all in.

 

Before mandating Dinesh to make casual car games, I had thought very hard about the genre. How could I make driving and parking games ‘easy to play, but impossible to master’ (the magical recipe for creating great games)? What would make these games sticky and addictive despite being casual and snacky (meant to be played for short periods)?

 

My insight came quickly.
Real-life driving was the best reference!

 

In the real world, we drive or travel in a car from Point A to Point B without colliding with vehicles, objects or pedestrians. It’s impossible to imagine driving in the real world while having mini accidents on the way.

 

Leveraging this insight, I decided to build online car games with the opposite scenario. I wanted our online car games to be designed such that it would be impossible for a first-time player to navigate the car without an accident.

 

In the online game, while navigating congested roads and avoiding collisions with other vehicles, obstacles, pedestrians etc., players would not be able to complete a mission on the first attempt. After trying and losing the first time, the player would wish they had been more careful and would take another stab at playing the level.

 

Having bettered themselves, even if the player succeeded in winning the first level, the next level would be designed to ensure that a steep learning curve would be required to pass that level (play multiple times). The rest of the levels would gradually get harder and harder.

 

I was implementing the golden ‘easy to play, impossible to master’ game-level design mantra to make my first set of games.

 

Using this principle, a simple, well-designed game with minimum content could deliver multiple gameplays while providing endless entertainment to the player.

After understanding my design concept, Dinesh took up the task seriously and started game creation.

 

When we began thinking creatively for these car games, one exciting idea we devised together was a game called ‘Bombay Taxi’. The idea’s genesis was the streets of Mumbai. The ubiquitous black and yellow or kaali-peeli taxis, as they are fondly called, were unmissable and distinctly Mumbai.

 

If you haven’t sat in a Mumbai taxi, you should bump it up to the top of your list of must-dos. The varied interiors, stickers, idols of gods of all religions perched in the centre of the dashboard, and the beads, malas and flowers dangling from every available hook in the front section will awe you. And at night, the interior lights and illuminations on offer can give the world’s best designers a run for their money! Unsurprisingly, the first ever Apple store in India, which opened in 2023, is located in Mumbai and has drawn strong design inspiration from the inimitable kaalipeeli taxis!

 

Driving in Mumbai is hard. It means being super adept at navigating choking traffic, narrow roads, marriage, funeral and religious processions, avoiding crater-sized potholes, driving through flooded streets, zip-zapping two and three-wheelers and obeying all traffic rules and signals.

 

I often tell people, ‘If you can drive a car in Mumbai, you can drive a car anywhere in the world!’

 

The reality of Mumbai driving became our game design, and Dinesh created different types of Bombay taxis (typically, older generation Fiat cars, small SUVs and mini cars) with distinctive stylizations. He designed terrific ‘street levels’ in Mumbai that featured fisherwomen selling their wares on the road, confusing railway crossings, kids playing cricket on the main streets, hawkers selling their
wares almost everywhere, cows doing their own thing, food sellers, handcart pullers and the notorious ‘three-wheeler’ drivers, all contributing to the confusion and chaos that embodies the Maximum City .

 

Dinesh also amazingly recreated the sounds of Mumbai roads, featuring a cacophony of cars honking, hawkers shouting, trains, buses and trucks blowing their horns, street music and other typical Mumbai sounds.

 

The final car-driving game he produced was fantastic. The moment I started playing it, I couldn’t stop. When I finally did, about forty minutes had passed!

 

No sooner did the game go live on games2win.com than it became a super hit! It was bound to be.

 

***

Get your copy of Getting Dressed and Parking Cars by Alok Kejriwal wherever books are sold.

Cars through the ages

Cars are such an intrinsic part of our lives that it is difficult to visualise a world without them. Although they are the second biggest villain when it comes to air pollution, some villains come in attractive packages and arouse varied passions in the human heart. Gautam Sen’s articulate and extremely readable look at cars, ‘The Automobile: An Indian Love Affair’ gives us a peek into the past and how this industry has evolved. An insight that traverses down the memory lane giving us snippets of information that creates a clearer picture of a familiar and well-loved subject. Knowing about the evolution of the automobile is never a dull subject because all of us regardless of what generation we belong to, have witnessed this gradual unfolding of the multitudinous avatars of the four wheeler.

The Automobile||Gautam Sen

The biggest patrons of cars in the early 20th century were the several princely states during the British Raj. For the Maharajas owning cars was more of a quirk than actually a means for transportation. There are exceedingly entertaining anecdotes of how the Maharaja of Bharatpur converted his Rolls Royce into a hunting car equipped with a howdah (a seat for elephants usually) and how another Maharaja after being insulted by the sales person in London proceeded to buy a whole fleet of luxury cars that would only carry the garbage of the city! Let’s not forget that the Indian royalty were genuine connoisseurs and patrons of the growing automobile industry. The love affair with cars in India continued as industrialists joined the royalty in their predilection for cars. Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Jaguars, Cadillacs and Mercedes Benz were some of the names that became commonly known amongst the upper class in the country. There are interesting instances of art collectors from princely families tracing and acquiring rare vehicles. Owing to a desire to embrace modernity a lot of these erstwhile owners of fancy luxury cars abandoned them, but for some it became a passion of a lifetime to salvage them.  Protap Roy a prince from Bengal and Roni Khan from Mumbai were two such individuals. Like-minded people created the Vintage and Classic Car Club of India and a passion for maintaining old cars as the auto heritage of India manifested in the shape of the Auto World Vintage Car Museum.

Moving on from the romance of the classical styles to the more functional ones over the decades post independence, the evolution of cars and their influence on society and culture is not without its own drama. In Hindi films we saw a surfeit of Impalas, and the films generally ended with a car chase where breaks would fail over a precipice. Fiats and ambassadors were the most common cars seen on Indian roads during the 60s and 70s. With the advent of the 80s the tiny Maruti made its debut on the scene and there was a rush to book this car of the future. In Indian villages folk songs were composed in praise of this car and the owner of a Maruti car was judged as someone quite successful in his life. However, these were still times when families owned just one car, the family car regardless of its size. Cars weren’t air-conditioned and it was quite an agony to be driving in the hot Indian summer with the car packed with the entire family.

Slowly with liberalisation and globalisation the Indian economy took off, and since cars are truly the barometer of the economic health of a country, a variety of new cars could be seen on the Indian roads. New competition made Maruti bring out more luxurious and larger cars into the market. Korean, Japanese, American motor companies were some that found a willing market in India.   Recent history is something we are all aware of, there are cars available for every taste and to suit every pocket. Easy car loans make it possible for the young to buy a car fairly easily. In fact now our problem is a surfeit of cars and the horrific traffic situation in larger towns. One also sees more women drivers on the roads as the easy availability of cars is synonymous with the independence and safety of women in our country. Most families have several cars to facilitate all the members of the family and most people are constantly looking to upgrade their mode of transport depending on their financial situation. A love for travel and adventure sports has brought in a variety of SUVs, larger utility vans as well as jeeps into the market. Culturally we aren’t really very different from the western world when it comes to emotions aroused by a car. So these lyrics from the Tracy Chapman song Fast Car make a lot of sense when it comes to young dreams:

You got a fast car

I got a plan to get us outta here

I been working at the convenience store

Managed to save just a little bit of money

Wont have to drive too far

Just ‘cross the border and into the city

You and I can both get jobs

And finally see what it means to be living.

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