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Social awareness messages need not always be preachy. They can be funny and friendly too. Zapak Digital Entertainment, one of India’s largest gaming portals, has launched ‘Play Safe’, a single player game that approaches the subject of safe sex in a friendly and humorous way. “Any information, as long as it is entertaining, reaches better,” says Rohit Sharma, COO, Zapak Digital Entertainment.

“With Play Safe, the player consumes the content and gets involved in it as it is not in a plain text format,” he adds. As a game, Play Safe anchors the message across five levels in a fun and comprehensive manner. This is the first social awareness game launched by the portal.

“We have a base of three million users and we get 90 million page views a month. And, 80 per cent of our users fall in the 17 to 25 age category.

With Play Safe, we want to take the awareness across to our target group of teenagers and adults,” he adds.

In four weeks, the game has already made it to the top five games slot on Zapak with 50,000 page hits.

The objective of the game is to distribute condoms to love-struck couples in a specific colour coded order. It goes like this — the couples have decided to get naughty in rickshaws. And, the player has to make sure that he/she plays a safe game. And, delivers the coloured condom packets to the rickshaws with the same coloured signals. Arrows (operated by the left click on the mouse) guiding the condom packages on the conveyer belt have to be manipulated by the gamer to target the condoms to the right receivers.

Tongue-in-cheek slogans prompt the player to play better. “The slogans are funny and informative. They will definitely be shared by the player with his buddies,” adds Rohit.

On Zapak.com, Play Safe will be actively promoted on World AIDS Day (December 1). At the game development level, more scenarios will be added to the game. And, for better reach, it will be translated into regional languages. “We also want to tie-up with NGOs to take this game to the grassroots,” he adds.

K. JESHI

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