BENGALURU: In 2018, Manu Malagatti and his cousin Arjun Bandi, were playing ‘Call of Duty’ by adopting their own set of strategies and tactics to defeat the enemies. But they did not know that the game would inspire them to create a concept of ‘war-centric games’ and develop it into a business model. After a couple of months, it led to the birth of ‘Tactical Arena’, a physical space in Yeshwantpur where civilians could experience various roles from the Armed Forces in the form of a ‘game’. The concept is largely inspired by the Multi Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES) - a popular military simulation sport in the US.
Initially, ‘Tactical Arena’ was open to the people to experience the sports with integrated weaponised systems. However, the founders changed their plans during the course of the pandemic. “The pilot project started in October 2019 and continued till January 2020. However, the pandemic struck in March 2020, stopping us from fully implementing the project.
The long pandemic break gave us the scope to research and develop character-intensive military simulations, and has been built on fourth-generation technology. Participants can play the role of a brigadier, colonel, lieutenant colonel, soldiers and also analyse their shooting accuracy,” says Manu, who runs the arena along with his cousins, Manasa Malagatti and Nandish Roy.
Now, the team is ready with an expansive and advanced idea, waiting to be rolled out once the restrictions on social gatherings are relaxed. ‘Tactical Arena’ is broadly dividing its features to cater to different sets of audience, including the Indian Armed Forces, civilians and gated communities.
“Like every crisis is an opportunity, we used the lockdown time to build on our weapons, setup, and technology to cater to different sets of people. We will be introducing environment-controlled indoor and outdoor arenas for civilians,” says Manasa. Manu also highlights that corporates are also making use of military simulation to understand team-work and team building equations for better workplace culture. “We want to make the game as realistic as possible through sophisticated technologies that give them the experience of a combat zone,” says Manu.