After a packed second day of NGDC, everyone was looking forward to the sessions of the third and conclusive day of the eighth edition of NASSCOM Game Developer Conference. While it did not have as much attendance as the second day, it was still filled with enthusiasts ready to fill in the seats at the sessions.
One of the most interesting sessions of the first half had the respective hall absolutely packed before it even started. It was ‘Follow the market: Predictions for 2017”, with speakers like Anuj Tandon: Nazara Games, Josh Brooks: Jam City, Matthew Handrahan: GamezIndustry.biz, Roj Niyogi: Corona Labs, Brandon Sheffield: Necrosoft Games.
The panel took up the issue of what might actually be in store of developers in the upcoming year. The panel further stressed on the point that the mobile gaming ecosystem was growing at a very large pace and there was still a huge untapped potential and also a brief overview about the growing trend of Virtual Reality (VR). While most of the panel was positive about the applications of VR in the future, some brushed off the idea as superficial.
VR being something which can be tricky to use with all its devices added, AR seemed like a more feasible option for some. Finally, everyone came to one common consensus that the industry is only surging forward and developers must pay more attention to their content and monetisation should come eventually.
The session by Souvik Mukherjee titled, “Playing beyond the screen: Videogame stories and why they mean so much to the world”, shed comprehensive light upon the topic of storytelling in video games. He went on to explain how a story is never static and the perception of it differs from person to person at a given time. He put forth his views by stating, “It is our choices in a game that makes the story what it is.”
While the expo floor was still beaming with amazing games, networking sessions, interviews and more, people took out some time for lunch. Following the lunch break, the sessions resumed.
For all the indies trying to release their premium games in the age of free-to-play games, the panel of indies consisting of Ankush Madad, Himanshu Manwani, Chirag Chopra, Chintan Shroff and Siddharth Sivaraman threw some light, drawn from their own experiences. While they stated that store listings and getting featured matter for a game in order to enhance discoverability, one should not be ‘too excited’ about it, as there are other games in the featured list as well. The speakers asserted that an amazing trailer always goes a long way in order to grab attention and eventually everyone said the same thing that it is the content that matters, everything else comes later.
With that and a couple of sessions more, the lobby was filled with attendees for the closing tea. As everyone was making the final talks at the networking sessions, the crowd started dispersing and leaving for their destinations after a three day long spectacle for game enthusiasts, that was NGDC 2016.