HIMANSHU GURU, OP
Most of us know of Fruit Ninja, Subway Surfers, Temple Run and Angry Birds as popular video games. The video game culture has grown as a worldwide subculture in recent years. With the advent of Internet, love for gaming has considerably increased in India. Interestingly, these games are loved by people of all age groups. Sunday POST interacted with a few Bangalore-based youth, who have graduated in game development, to know more about the various facets of video-gaming in India.
“The game industry in India started in 1997-98 with Dhruva Interactive and India Games among others,” said game developer Saswat Mishra, an avid gamer. “It has been growing steadily ever since with more and more cities opening up game studios. Currently, we have game studios in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Indore, Ahmedabad and Kochi. The studios work on all types of games from mobile games to PC and console games.”
Video games came into existence way back in 1947. As per reports, a patent was filed for a ‘cathode ray tube amusement device’ January 25, 1947, by Thomas T Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann and they got a US Patent December 14, 1948. Later, in 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney created ‘Computer Space,’ which was the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game. It used a black-and-white television for its display, and the system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green. Lately with the advent of standard operating systems for mobile devices such as iOS and Android and devices with greater hardware performance, mobile gaming has become a significant platform.
Asked about trending video games in India, Saswat said, “Games are divided into three main platforms: mobile, PC and console. Mobile games like Teen Patti, Subway Surfer, Candy Crush, 8 Ball Pool are popular among the masses. And games like God of War, Destiny, FIFA are popular among console players while multiplayer games like PUBG, Fortnite, Rainbow Six Siege, CS:GO and Dota 2 are popular among PC gamers. Interestingly, most of the gamers are college students.”
Talking about the game genres that are popular in India, game developer Sandeep Rath said, “India is a big content consuming country with millions of users having millions of choices. Since most of the games are easily accessible, players do not hesitate to try out new genres. People here like to play games from various genres like Casino, Puzzle, Racing and Arcade.”
He added, “Games in India cater to audiences of all ages. Since the audience is vast and diverse, a game is usually targeted at a specific set of players, like casino games are targeted towards adults while educational games are mostly aimed at kids.”
How does game development pay? Video game-maker Ankit Nayak said, “There are a variety of ways to generate revenue from a game. There are premium games where the player has to pay a certain amount to download and play the games. In-app purchase is another method where the player does micro-transactions like spending Rs 10 to buy 100 in-game coins. The third method is advertisements. The game displays ads in between, which generates revenue for the developer.”
Asked about the top earning game in India, Ankit said, “Most companies do not reveal their revenues, but as per market research and estimation, I believe it is either Teen Patti by Octro or 8 Ball Pool as they have been in the market for a long time and have stayed on the top grossing charts consistently.”
Though there are some negative aspects to video games, some people believe that they may have value in terms of academic performance because of the skills that are developed in the process of playing. In puzzle games, the user solves puzzles to move to the next level and needs some general knowledge and maths and science skills. Video game developer Sidharth Rawat said, “The demand for educational games is on the rise in the last couple of years as people have started realising that gaming is also a method to learn in a fun interactive way.
Educational games for kids are very popular. Now many kids have access to them on smartphones. Besides, their parents want them to learn something while they are surfing on those devices.”
Sidharth added, “After the advent of globalisation and digitisation, most of the games are released at the same time in multiple countries, including India, although we lack in terms of hardware and networking connectivity which makes it difficult to play high end graphic games and multiplayer games. However, this problem is slowly getting solved thanks to cheap data prices and hardware.”
Asked about the future of the Indian game industry, Sidharth said, “The game industry in India has a bright future as a lot of people have started developing video games here. Besides, big gaming studios such as Rockstar, Ubisoft and EA have opened their offices in India. We may see the next GTA or FIFA coming out of India. Apart from big game studios, the industry has a lot of talented developers whose number is growing steadily.”
