The reason is not hard to understand. Other than a few hundred game geeks in Mumbai and Bangalore, no one is able to relate to these foreign games. Many of us find these games intimidating because they require knowledge about gaming that we may not have picked up by playing Pac Man or Space Invaders.

I believe that building games with local content will finally help us break through this barrier. And what better local content than Bollywood, a film industry that is as old as any in the world! My belief is that once games based on Bollywood, borrowing many of the successful aspects of Bollywood, hit the market, Indian youth will embrace gaming as another great form of entertainment. After all, gaming is as big as films in many parts of the world. In India too, I think we will see gaming become mainstream as the industry puts out games for the mainstream audience.

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Once Bollywood games show the way then I believe that other genres of games will have an easier time succeeding in the Indian market. Some obvious ones are games based on our heritage and mythology. There is enough content there to build hundreds of great titles and who knows, some of these games may even appeal to the non-Indian audience. However, for that to happen, I suspect Indian film has to cross the cultural divide before Indian games can follow suit. Other genres that may work in India are sports titles that leverage the brand appeal of a Dhoni or Sania Mirza.

While the above discussion was primarily confined to PC and console games, there has been much more visible success of gaming in the mobile space. Mobile games have largely leveraged upcoming Bollywood film releases to put our ring tones and in some cases, small game clips, to earn revenue. This market will continue to flourish, no doubt due to its attraction also as a marketing tool for the launch of games.

One recent work that we did to support the launch of a Telugu game, Jalsa, was to do both a mobile version and an online version of a simple game. These casual games provide a marketing buzz to help in the launch of a film. If there is enough of a story line, a larger PC game is a natural progression after the launch of the mobile and online version of a game.

The next two years will see some amazing developments in the game space, whether it is PC/console, mobile, or online. And all of these will at some level leverage Bollywood to gain some initial acceptance from the Indian consumer. This should mean more sources of revenue to Bollywood and more forms of entertainment for Indian consumers. Happy times, indeed!

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