GAMES : cant stop innovating ..

GAMES ?????

When i start thinking about it .. First thing which comes to my mind is CRICKET! May be thats bcos thats the first and I think the only game I have been playing for some many years.

Few days back .. my colleague asked me .. "Chal .. lets play AOE?" .. and it took me few secs to decode ... AOE is 'Age of Empires' .. and i said nahhhhhhh, not interested! Then came our NFS competition. Oh I was better here, I atleast knew what NFS stands for! :P but when it came to car racing I was interested and did my bit to compete well.

Its all about games now a days and gone are the days of basic Mario, Ninja or Tanker or PacMan. Its really interesting to see how this business has evolved over the years. We in our team, always talk about innovations and doing a simple thing differently. Its this difference which makes you better than others. I remember thinking about this sometime back. One of my friends told me, her husband works in company which develops games! He's into gaming all the time. That just didnt interest me at all. I was like .. what more can anyone do into gaming!

But that was somtime back and now I have realised there's so much to do here .. Today I was going through the details of XBOX Kinect. (I need to install SilverLight to see demo, which I will surely wont install :P) http://www.xbox.com/hi-IN/kinect/

Today, its all about keeping your consumers 'engaged and involved' all the time. These are few words my CEO mentions all the time :) . But I realize its importance and YES, its all about ideas and keeping your consumers engaged!

Nintendo coming up with 3D games on a dual screen handy box and PS3 and Xbox coming up with seventh generation games, we as customers have a lot to choose from .. These ideas have succeeded in making a a gamer get out of his couch playing games to actually performing actions to win a tennis game on his XBox:) And I think, this is a win-win for both children and their parents :P sochenge .. bachha atleast kuch activity kar raha hai!!

Well lets see where these new ideas takes us in coming years in field of gaming! and for me .. It will interest me only if i can play a cricket game with a bat in hand and hit Shoaibh Akhtar for a SIX .. thanks to one of these gaming inventions :)

Weekend trips .. after long time ..

Its been more than a year, I havent been able to get out of Bangalore on my usual trips, treks, bike trips to relax and njoy the nature ... Well the reason, many things, more so my classes on weekly basis which kept me in the city. Thanks to classes, I could visit Jamshedpur, which i wouldnt have otherwise. Last 6 months though, office work kept me occupied almost 24hrs a day. Forget my trips, I could not even go to my home, Mumbai in last 6 months.

But now am done with my classes and also through with the biggest release of my product. :) So .. really waiting for some plans ...

Well it has started well actually. Within a week, with my family, we went to Ooty in Tamilnadu, Hogannekal Falls, again in Tamilnadu (or is it in Karnataka?? better we dont go in this discussion :P ). Then we even a had a quick bike ride to Banyan Tree, around 35kms frm city. All in all it has started well for me :) .. and hope we could plan few more outings.

Kaam ya Araam ???

Have you anytime entered office and found soon that you have no work to work??? All is done and you have no idea whats coming next?

I am experiencing the same this week, for the first time in last 5 years. Don't remember a single day earlier, when I have spent any time doing nothing. This week has been literally the week to relax. Looking at it, all seems great!! Everyday office and no work makes Mukul a TT boy! :) Its just games and games all the time. All looks good!!! but lemme tell u ... its boring!!

Why is it, that when we used to work 6 days a week, work from home on Sunday and 24hrs available for our customers issues, we desperately wanted some time off .. and now when we have all the time, I want work! May be, last 6 months of non-stop work has put me in that mood and am not enjoying this free time.

Its not just me, even my bosses are free (i guess) n on a vacation!! :)

All learning should not be on job, learning can and should happen in an informal way.. so dont waste time, take interests in other aspects of your work, research, think, learn .... ye sab mai nahi bolta ... koi aur bolta hai! mai sirf sunta hun! :P Ideally every word is true but does that really happen?? Are we so sincere to learn something on our own ... lets hope I do a better job in this department from now on ... as I dont see much work coming my way in next few weeks! :D

So, trying hard to njoy my relaxed time at work .. and at the same time .. I will keep in mind that 'Learning does not necessarily happen while only on job. Its your interest and efforts that makes the difference'