The Indian Air Force (IAF) recently on 3 July launched a 3D mobile in a bid to target the youth brigade of the nation to think of a career in the air force in the future.
Launching the 3D mobile game ‘Guardians of the Skies’ (GOTS), Air Marshal S Sukumar hailed the event as a significant milestone in encouraging youth to join IAF and also expressed concerns over tapping the best of the human resources from the upcoming generations.
“It is indeed a significant milestone in our consorted campaign to connect to the best of the boys and the girls among the nation’s youth and motivate them to join the air force so as to become great patriotic men and women ready to serve the country in any situation,” he stated.
“We are getting the numbers, but we want to attract the best of the boys and the girls to join the Air Force,” added Sukumar, who is also the Air Officer-in-charge Personnel.
GOTS, which is freely available on android, windows and iOS platforms for mobile, has been conceptualised to showcase the might of the air force in a virtual format with users being offered gripping air combat scenarios and realistic graphics.
“The game is targeted at the youth, to give them the feel of the excitement that we in the Air Force experience everyday in our lives,” he said, adding “only the information (of IAF) available in public domain has been utilised in the development of the game.”
The game has been developed by Threye Studios for the IAF following an open tendering process with its first phase launching on last Thursday and the next phase to be launched in October.
GOTS features a storyline where the IAF is engaged in defence missions against a fictitious nation named ‘Zaruzia’, which is politically and economically unstable and has also witnessed a military coup.
IAF had issued a tender in July 2013, seeking bids from mobile game developers for this game. Interestingly, the founding team of Threye comprises a retired fighter pilot, who was part of the Kargil campaign. Sameer Joshi is an ex-NDA and ex-IAF fighter pilot with multi-aircraft and multi-national flying experience and also the creative director at Threye.
When AnimationXpress.com logged onto the game page to understand the kinds of reviews that the game has been getting, it’s rather surprising that the same studio which launched Operation Morning Glory (and it has a striking resemblance with GOTS as well) has managed to get nearly 10,000 plus downloads within the span of 5 days.
The multiple downloads can be attributed to the tie-up with the IAF as well, since the youth is really keen on battle games and there is a feeling of patriotism that comes thorough with this association. There have been reports of a few glitches and bugs as well, but the studio is trying its best to fix those in the updates.
The game size is another issue being on the higher side with a 44 MB file size, as it takes long if not using Wi-Fi connectivity or 3G connection speeds. But, it’s certainly a great attempt by the Indian Air Force to seriously grab the attention of the youth of the nation with such ventures and things like these must be supported and encouraged by all the stakeholders of the industry.