IIT Bombay to auction games designed by students

Mumbai: For the first time, IIT Bombay will be auctioning games designed by its students for a mass production. The auction has been scheduled for July 7.

"Students from Industrial Design Centre (IDC) and Electrical Engineering Department have been designing games which are available for commercial and educational purposes. Some of these games have design registration completed, while more recent ones are in the process. We are inviting industries involved in child education as well as toys and games manufacturers so that these games can reach people at affordable prices," said Prof Uday A Athavankar of IIT.

"We are going to put up 14 games for auction," he said. The games come in various formats: board, electronic and card games.

IIT has a two-year programme on gaming in its IDC. Some of the games that were displayed on this occasion included 'Chuna Chunao' and 'Ulitipolity', which explain the functioning of the parliamentary democracy. 'Lumino Trapz' and 'Delta Attack' are based on strategic thinking, while 'Magneteyez' and 'Feel Fill Fit' are designed to develop visualisation.

'Cric-Tric' develops cricket-specific strategic thinking. There are also educational games such as 'Roll it Green' which teaches about green initiative. 'Tread Raid' is a rapid card game.

"IIT-B is also introducing, for the first time in India, haptics (science of touch)-based interactive e-games such as Hap or E-snooker, Hap-painting, Hap-paulin," said Prof Subhasis Chaudhuri of Electrical Engineering Department.

"Here the interaction is through a force-delivering platform and not through keyboard or mouse. We are exploring the use of this new technology to develop interactive games...these devices are becoming quite inexpensive now. We expect these games to be very popular," he said.

One of the interesting games is 'The Singin'Guru', developed at the Digital Audio Processing Lab of IIT-B under the guidance of Prof Preeti Rao. It utilises a patent-pending technology for evaluating singing talent.

Athavankar, who specialises in games/puzzles designing, said, "There is a need to invent new playing possibilities in the games for children to interest and educate them. Over the years, the games designed by students have been picked up by various toy and games manufacturing companies like Funskool. This is the first attempt to open this scheme to all the toys and games manufacturers."