One morning earlier this year, Vikash Jaiswal, the developer who created the online game Ludo King, received a strange phone call that woke him up. It was from a young man in Bihar, calling at 5 am to demand the cheat code for Ludo King. His entire town was playing it, the man said, and people were betting on it. Pleading for the cheat code, he said, “I’ll share the earnings with you.” That was just one of the things that brought home to Jaiswal how widespread his game had become. Ludo King, made by Jaiswal’s company Gametion in Mumbai, is currently India’s most popular free online game, and was launched on Google Play in January 2016. By mid-2016, Ludo King had fuelled an obsession in India and beyond that now involves millions of players and over a hundred similar apps on Google Play alone. Jaiswal says the game has been downloaded around 120 million times. The ludo craze in India has ranged from large numbers of fellow travellers playing the game on Mumbai local trains to...
Sajid Nadiadwala’s ‘Baaghi 2’ goes international as the filmmaker once again ropes in action choreographers and technicians from across the globe. The second installment of the ‘Baaghi’ franchise gears up to set new standards and is touted to be one of the most expensive action films of Bollywood. Every film project curated by the filmmaker has been grand and that of an international standard. With Baaghi 2, the sequel has got on board action directors and technicians from Thailand, Hongkong, Los Angels and China amongst others. While ‘Baaghi’ set a benchmark in action films with its high-octane action sequences and authentic martial arts, the sequel is all set to raise the bar higher in the action genre. The team along with director Ahmed Khan has been working for over 6 months to develop the sequences that are never seen before in Indian cinema. Tiger Shroff, who is known for his remarkable action stunts and moves after ‘Baaghi’, will recreate the magic in ‘Baaghi 2’ ...