Indian Air Force (IAF) is in the final stages of a bid to develop an air combat game that will showcase its planes and get youngsters interested in joining it. This is the first time any of the Indian defense forces has taken to gaming as a propaganda tool. A tender seeking bids from parties interested in developing mobile games for the force was put out in July, and the final decision on the same is expected in a fortnight. As per the tender, IAF wants to release the game on Android and iOS with multiplayer support. The game also needs to have social media integration and would be targeted at those who are older than 13-years. The game developer will have permission to create mock bases, apart from customised versions of aircrafts and weapons while developing the game. Gaming has been used as a propaganda tool by American government for decades now and the first commercial home gaming console, the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey, was developed by Sanders Associates, a US defence contractor. Similarly, many of the flight and driving simulation games that we find now can trace its roots to US military initiatives from World War I era. After 9/11, US released a free shooter game, America’s Army, which has been downloaded more than 40 million times since its release. According to a 2008 study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined.” Considering this…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...