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Netflix greenlights Pixar veteran's animated series 'Ghee Happy'
Netflix just approved Ghee Happy, a new series by animator Sanjay Patel. The colorful show will follow Hindu deities as children discovering their powers in a deity daycare, Deadline reports.
Hindu group continues to protest SMITE, asks QuakeCon to pull the game from the lineup
Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society for Hinduism, has made a point of protesting the addition of Hindu deities to the lineup of Hi-Rez Studios' upcoming MOBA SMITE. He's now taking that protest to the next level by appealing directly to the organizers of QuakeCon 2012, asking that the game to be removed from the competitive lineup due to its offensive usage of religious figures. Zed asserts once again that making deities (particularly Kali) into characters in a video game hurts the devotees of Hinduism, claiming that Hinduism is the only tradition portrayed by the game that is still active. The Hindu American Foundation has also expressed displeasure at the way the game has handled figures from the religion, although the HAF has also stated that it is working closely with Hi-Rez Studios to ensure that the information contained within the game is at least accurate. The organizers of QuakeCon 2012 have not publicly responded to the request.
Religious group calls for removal of Hindu deities from Hi-Rez's SMITE
In Hi-Rez Studios' upcoming action-oriented MOBA, SMITE, players are able to play as a variety of gods, goddesses, and miscellaneous deities from multiple world mythologies and religions. If you recall my impressions of the title from PAX East earlier this year, you'll remember that I got to play as Kali, the four-armed, scimitar-wielding Hindu goddess of change and destruction. Well, it turns out that the Universal Society for Hinduism has caught wind of the fact that SMITE players can control Hindu deities such as Kali and Agni, and the organization's president, Rajan Zed, is not pleased. Zed claims that "controlling and manipulating goddess Kali and other HIndu deities... is denigration as these deities are meant to be worshiped," not "reduced to just a character in a video game." As such, Zed called for the immediate removal of all Hindu deities from the title. Hi-Rez, however, has no plans to do so. The studio's COO, Todd Harris, gave the following response: "SMITE includes deities inspired from a diverse and ever expanding set of pantheons including Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, and Norse. Hinduism, being one of the world's oldest, largest and most diverse traditions, also provides inspiration toward deities in our game. In fact, given Hinduism's concept of a single truth with multiple physical manifestations one could validly interpret ALL the gods within SMITE to be Hindu. And all gods outside of SMITE as well. Ponder that for a minute. Anyway, going forward SMITE will include even more deities, not fewer."
Indian-developed Hanuman irks Hindu devotees
We applauded Hanuman, SCEE's first Indian-developed PS2 game, for opening up the games industry in the region. However, it looks like India is quickly following America's footsteps in protesting a video game.Vamsi Krishna, spokesperson for Sanatan Sanstha, contacted us regarding Hanuman, a game which was described as "very disrespectful, disgraceful and an insult to all those devotees of Lord Hanuman and followers of Hindu dharma." Krishna then added that Hanuman is a "senseless video game with an aim to commercialize this role model for all devotees" and that SCEE's investment in the burgeoning Indiana development community "shows insensitiveness [sic] towards the feelings of others and ignorance towards a certain faith by Sony Corporation."Any mainstream retelling of a religion is bound to some form of controversy. Looks like SCEE's attempt at expanding the Indian games market, while well-intended, didn't go as smoothly as expected. We hope that this minor PR blow doesn't curtail their efforts in making India one of the next premiere game markets.
A non-violent first person Hindu shooter using the Unreal engine?
Escapist Magazine has posted a fascinating article detailing the attempts of an heir to a furniture fortune, and graduate students from the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa to create a non-violent first person Hindu shooter.It sounds crazy at first, but when you look at the actual thought and effort that went into the game, it isn't that dissimilar from today's RPGs -- "We had Vedic abilities: astrology, Ayurvedic healing, breathing (meditation), herbalism, Gandharva Veda music, architecture (which let you purify demonic areas) and yagyas (rituals). During the game, you could acquire the siddhis of clairvoyance, levitation, invisibility, shrinking and strength. Your aim was to achieve pure consciousness by cleansing your six chakras in ascending order. But your current karma (depicted as a gray pall over your character's silhouette), if it covered any chakras, prevented you from cleansing them. So you had to remove karma by completing quests before you could purify yourself."The only way to actually win the game would have been to complete it without harming or killing any other living creature. You could die and be reincarnated in a number of different forms like a human, a pig, a dog, or a worm -- but whatever form you came back as would limit the way in which you could interact with other characters in the game. They had licensed the Unreal Warfare engine for use in the game, but eventually things began to fall apart because the graphics looked sub-par, and the producer had to face the facts that the development was beyond the team's ability to create.Still, at least they tried to do something new that wasn't another standard shooter clone and featured some true innovation. It's refreshing when someone takes a risk every now and then and puts something truly unique on the map.
