Do You Want Game Developers To 'Make (It) In India' ?
If Flipkart hadn't happened we may well have its founders, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, into gaming and its development. If gaming in India was more rewarding, global investor Amit Anand would have continued with his Mumbai-based animation and gaming studio. Well if one digs in, we all have had our gaming dreams, many of which may not have seen the light of the day.
We tried to explore the challenges of the industry by connecting with gaming professionals and community leaders like Joel Johnson and Gautam Narain. Based on their inputs, here are some of the difficulties gaming companies in India face:
Talent Crunch
Finding good talent has been a major pain point for gaming companies. While we may have many a talent, but just like in other startups, many of them move to other conventional and more lucrative professions or join gaming studios abroad.
Funding Challenge
To compete with the best in the world on quality, game developers and studios need to have best of technologies and resources at their disposal. Finding enough funding and convincing those to contribute to quality game products have been some challenges.
Neglecting Core Development
Thanks to the above; game developers tend to focus more on how to monetize their project. This eventually proves detrimental as they are unable to improve upon or add new features to the game - those that may help increase its sale and marketability.
More Learning Opportunities Needed
With most universities and colleges in India not offering courses that might help aspiring game developers, freshers from these institutes who join gaming studies are unable cope with the rising demand. Game development can be a steep learning curve.
However despite all these challenges, there are many passionate game developers and supporters who are helping game projects see the light of the day - thanks to the gaming community and their activities promoting gaming in India. The Gaming Forum at NASSCOM led by Shruti Verma for instance has been helping to drive considerable interest and support system for game development in India. Currently through their GAME JAM TITANS tour across regions, in partnership with Mindbox, they are organizing game developer competition for school students, college students as well as professionals. This series of activities will lead to the annual NASSCOM Game Developers Conference, to be held in Pune this November 2014.
Another avenue that many game developers, especially in the US, have leveraged to realize goals is through crowdfunding. Now, in India too with crowdfunding platforms like Catapooolt focusing on game projects, game developers here will have access to a host of marketing tools, funding opportunities and global networks to make the most of their passion. After all some of the most successful crowdfunding projects globally are those from the 'Gaming' categories.
With the right kind of support and learnings, gaming projects in India are poised to take off like never before. According to NASSCOM, Casual Gaming revenue in India will quadruple by 2015, with two-thirds coming from mobile devices. Furthermore, while Mobile Casual Gaming contributed to 80% of the total gaming revenue in 2010, its contribution is expected to decrease to 60% by 2015 in lieu of an expected higher adaptation of hardcore games over casual games.
Lets hope to see Indian game projects, those from Arcade, Action, Role Playing, Strategy, Sports, Casual game and Console game categories, to soon compete with best ones in the world. Count on us to keep an eye for interesting game projects and activities.