The year 2014 saw an increase in the number of game developers in the country, and the confidence with which they experimented in genres and used different game mechanics was very encouraging for the community and a huge positive.
Drawing inspiration from the energy at the NASSCOM Game Developers Conference; which was so infectious and truly the highlight of the year; it really felt Indies have truly arrived in 2014. This year has been a process of evolution for us and everybody is equally passionate about things in the industry. Some would get it right the first time, some in second and some in their tenth attempt. Supercell is an example who had multiple failures before they hit big with their tent pole game – Clash of Clans.
I would like to see a very closely knit game developer’s ecosystem which helps and shares openly and transparently to take other games to a threshold. When I went to Finland for Slush, I saw how tightly knit the ecosystem of game developers was. They had informal Saturday chats, Tuesday chats where somebody or the other is coming and sharing their experiences for others to learn from. It’s a proliferation of knowledge sharing which is not limited to one event of NASSCOM and that is what I’d love to see next year.
Right now it’s such a small market but with a huge opportunity for everybody to have a slice of the cake. If we can really overcome our mentality of not sharing and share our knowledge at informal meet ups more often, even if it’s in smaller groups, it will go onto help nurture the gaming ecosystem in the country. Small forums could be made where developers can come and discuss work and give advice to make it better.
We at Reliance Games are starting an incubation facility out of our Pune Studio. Up to 90 per cent of the games flop. Around 1 per cent may see success; whereas up to 6 per cent do average business, while the rest eventually wither away. The incubation centre will spur game developers and also bring in some fresh independent thinking into the business. We are looking at incubating companies that have products reaching at least the beta-testing stage. We will take these games to the global market through our presence in almost all the app stores.
My single wish list would be how each developer gets to those first 1,000 users without even going to social media websites. We can call our friends and family and add users and ask other developers to do the same. Cross promoting my game and your game is what I would like all the developers to do. Feedback to the games needs to be given in a positive manner. And finally companies like AnimationXpress.com can facilitate such open forums which can develop the industry further. These are my expectations from the coming New Year!