Gauging Indian content opportunities for gaming 12 November 2009 03:15 PM
BY ROHIT SHIRKE
LtoR: Prakash Ahuja, Shahid Ahmed, Anand Ramachandaran and Samir Bangara
The panel ‘Publishing Indian Content: Is the opportunity right?‘ consisted of Samir Bangara, COO, Indiagames, Prakash Ahuja, CEO, Gameshastra, Shahid Ahmad, Exec. Producer, Indian Publishing and Technical Account Manager, SCEE, and Anand Ramachandran, Creative Director, A Bellyful of Dreams Entertainment.
Though the speakers in this panel had different opinions, the basic question was, "Is the time right for Indian game developers to publish their own IPs? And when and how to go about it?" as stated by Anand who was holding the session chair.
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Sony Computer Entertainment entered the Indian market in the publishing sector around January 2008. Shahid Ahmad added to this by saying, "At the beginning of 2008, we were pleasantly surprised by the sales of PS2 in the Indian market. We anticipated further growth and decided to support this market with Indian sourced content for the Indian market."
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe held a DevStation event in Mumbai for the first time outside Europe for Indian developers. Many companies registered their interest and received support through loaned PS2 and PSP devkits and greater engagement with the game developer community in India.
Adding to the localization of content Ahmad says, "Typically a top end PS2 console game in India makes around 8000 to 10000 sales in a year. By contrast, our first Indian title, ‘Hanuman: Boy Warrior‘, achieved sales of 7000 units in just six months and we have sold over 65,000 units to date. Sales were definitely enhanced by the PS2 bundle. Along with the hardware price drop we saw a doubling of hardware sales in India as a result of the Hanuman: Boy Warrior bundle. Hence we recently released ‘Desi Adda‘ developed by Gameshastra and this time we broadened the spectrum by releasing it in more territories and on the PSP platform as well. We are currently working on a game called ‘Street Cricket‘ being developed by Trine. We are engaging with a lot of developers from India and we can certainly expect an organic growth."
Gameshastra CEO Prakash Ahuja added, "The PC revolution took off when applications for PCs increased. With the development of new software people saw a point to buy PCs. Content has to relate to the developers and consumers. Consoles will take off when gamers and developers find content that they can relate to. There is no need to describe to an Indian developer how an Indian village looks or what Indian games are. Most of my developers had already played games like Gilli Danda and Kabaddi so it was easy for them to improvise." The overall production of the game took almost 15 months but Gameshastra has surely developed its skill set after ‘Desi Adda‘."
Samir Bangara, Indiagames added to the panel discussion by saying, "The way we look at IP is totally different. Indian IP gets synonymous with thematic Indian IP and hence we start talking about mythology and similar genres. There‘s local IP that is developed in India for India and there is IP developed in India for other countries- all of that is Indian IP. The right content always sells but you have to target the right market also. Ghajini as an example did over 500,000 downloads and did better just in India than many internationally focused IPs. Likewise we have crossed over 10 million downloads for our cricket games and now we are planning to launch our latest iPhone cricket game in the markets abroad- these are great examples of Indian IP."
Shahid shared, "An excellent example of global success was Mario. If a global success can be created out of an Italian plumber, developed by a Japanese company, then there is no reason why an Indian company couldn‘t create a global success with a non-Indian IP in the future. So it is all about getting global. IPs will evolve and India will definitely get there. Right now, Indian developers have a great opportunity with minis, a software platform for PSP that is about small, snackable content, downloadable digitally. Despite the minis not being available in India yet, we already have a number of Indian developers delivering content digitally on minis globally. This is a sign that Indian developers are ready to enter the world stage."
The question of creating educational games was thrown in by a member in the audience. To that Ahuja said, "Indian audiences are essentially affiliated to educational games and we have drafted ‘Desi adda‘ keeping the Indian culture in mind. We have just not targeted the gamer. We have targeted his mother and father who will see the game and relate to it as they might have played the games in their childhood and probably be willing to purchase a console after that. The plan is to expand our reach."
From the over all session the point that came forward was that the right kind of content always sells but there needs to be some kind of penetration to get to the smaller audiences which can be effectively done by localizing and that is what Sony is trying to do to evolve the Indian market.
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of BIG Animation (I) Pvt. Ltd. a part of Reliance Big Entertainment - the largest
entertainment group in India is hiring for following position for various franchisee
locations in India:
Sheen Animation Studio Pvt. Ltd. A Delhi
based Production Studio is looking for talents in 2D and 3D for their ongoing
and new international as well as national projects. If you have the experience
an expertise of 2-5 years in the relevant domain handling any of the following
functions, apply in confidence.
ANTS is seeking talented artists and teaching
faculties to be a part of the expansion team and work on various national and
international projects. Areas of key vacancies are: Lighting, Animation and Rigging,
Dynamics, Game Design, Texturing, Creative Art, Designer, Web Developer and Content Creator. Interested candidates can send their resumes and works to 
India`s No.1 Multimedia & Animation Academy
with one of the best state of the Art infrastructure requires trainers in the
field of:
