Online games: Big attraction during winter holidays

In the festive fever ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations, netizens have found a way of making the most of their winter holidays through online games.

Carols, cakes, X-mas trees, Santa Clauses, magical elves, flying reindeers and snow-sports people in the virtual world are playing games built around these and more related to the December festival season.

"The festivities add more fervour to the gaming excitement as people are more relaxed, looking for a cheaper and convenient form of entertainment. Online games are the best as one does not have to leave the cozy confines of home or the convenient game cafes to play them," Arun Mehra, chief marketing officer, Reliance Big Entertainment's online gaming subsidiary, Zapak.com told PTI.

December is the peak season for gaming with approximately 600 million unique gamers playing casual games worldwide, states a recent study by comScore, a US-based marketing research company. "More than just Christmas, this is also the holiday season. Keeping this in mind, we have come up with games around Christmas theme as well as winter holidays," says Mehra.

Zapak has launched a mix of games built around Santa Claus, snow-sports like skiing and other fun games where one can jump or toy with virtual piles of snow. Popular gaming site Games2Win.com expects nine million visitors during this season.

"We have spent about Rs 10 lakhs making these games. We expect around 20,000 game plays daily. We received about 5-6 million visitors in this season last year. This year we expect about nine million visitors," says Alok Kejriwal, co-founder and chief executive of the portal.

Hyderabad-based independent game development company 7Seas Technologies, which runs the portal onlinerealgames.com has launched six Christmas themed games - Ice Xmas, X-Mas Hero, X-Mas Grandpa, Ice Ride, Swagging Santa and Santa's world tour.

"We have already invested around Rs 15 lakhs in Christmas games. Users have been increasing day by day. More than five lakhs users have played these games till now," sas Venkat, marketing manager of the portal said.

Interestingly, these games are no more being associated only with kids as more and more members of the youth brigade opt for gaming. "Games that Zapak has introduced are meant for all. Children love these games as much as the elders do after all everyone loves a good snow-fight or a good race across snowy slopes," says Mehra. Games2Win.com has gone a step ahead and even introduced Christmas games based on romantic themes for teenagers.

Christmas time is family time. Unfortunately, that also means less privacy for young lovers. So we've lined up an X'mas love game, where young lovers snatch some private moments at a family dinner," says Kejriwal.

Fun games with a festival background like 'Kiss While Your Boyfriend's Parents Are In the Kitchen' and 'Kiss Under the Mistleto' are quite popular in the 12-18 age group, he says.

For gamers, however, Santa Claus remains the most preferred character. "He is the most gamers prefer, the game play revolves around him will attract more gamers to play the game," Venkat says. "Santa is not the highlight of our gaming section. Its about Christmas and winter in general," says a company official of Zapak.