Zapak

This is a Flash "casual gaming" site, with all the usual features, membership and non-membership options, and the usual categories of gaming. But this is one with a difference. It's Indian, and it's one of the most popular websites of any kind in India, not to mention having gained a worldwide audience of several millions.

A cool feature, for me at least, is an option to switch from the "standard" interface, to a "lite" version for slow connections, which provides a much simpler, faster-loading design and only the games which themselves, are faster loading and performing. Very thoughtful, and unique in my experience.

The site is the internet face of a much larger group of business ventures which include retail games, and the first and unique chain of "gaming cafes" which offer real-world gaming facilities in many Indian cities.

You know when you call Tech Support at ATT or Customer Services at... well, just about anywhere, and you ask questions, there's often a surprisingly long delay between the responses? And you wonder whether someone is looking up the correct ones in a training manual?

Not a bit of it. The cat's out of the bag now. Or maybe the snake's out of the basket. Whatever. According to the site promotion here, at any given time, one out of three Indians with an internet connection is playing games at zapak.com. So now you know.

Featured in Live IT Magazine Top 20 web sites October 2010.