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It all started with Dhruva Games, which was founded by Rajesh Rao in 1997, when there was no one else making games in India. With humble beginnings and a conservative service oriented business approach, the Industry grew at a slow pace until the recent smartphone revolution that caused the number of game developers to sky rocket overnight. Today, the Indian gaming industry is represented by over 200 gaming studios. It is said that the sector is poised to be the next BIG thing in India. Sounds like a huge claim? Well, with a global market value projected to exceed $111 billion by 2015 (Gartner Report Oct’13), we’re not exaggerating.
With the gaming market rapidly reaching saturation overseas, investors and market speculators are turning their attention to the still maturing market for gaming products and related services in India, the globally hailed "next billion". Mayur Bhimjiyani, a Game Designer at Zynga, Bangalore affirms, “International studios such as Zynga are aggressively expanding as Indian studios prove to be more efficient and cost-effective.”
Investments in the industry, however, are not limited to game development alone. A sizeable portion of those go towards educational institutes that cater to video game technology. This is an obvious result of the massive demand for specialized talent from the Indian gaming studios. Interestingly, this phenomenon is akin to the boom that took place in the animation sector a while ago. Animation studios and institutes sprung up all over the country to meet the needs and to capitalize on the huge outsourcing demand for animators and artists.
Game development however goes beyond just animation. It includes 3 major disciplines: Game design, Game Art, and Game Programming. Game Design is the craft of making a game fun, deciding what goes into it and how it will play out. Game Art may be 2D or 3D and students may choose to specialize in skills like Concept Art, Lighting, 3D Rendering, etc. Game Programming mostly involves learning how to script gameplay and use rendering techniques. And even though India has a vast pool of programmers, video game technology is still an unexplored field for them.
As a result, to meet the demands of talent for the Indian gaming studios, prestigious gaming schools from abroad have set up their base in India. One such institute worth mentioning is DSK Supinfogame Rubika (Formerly, DSK Supinfogame), which is operating out of Pune. It is a joint venture between the DSK group, India and Rubika group, France. It provides compelling courses that cover the entire spectrum of talent needs within game development – game design, programming and art. These courses are delivered by highly experienced instructors from the western gaming space. Additionally, real-world projects and contests give students a well-rounded education experience and the feel of the working in the industry as well an opportunity to kick start their careers. According to Zaid Ail Rasool, a concept artist at DSK Green Ice Games, “Institutes teaching game development help boost a candidate’s skills through peer learning, competition & mentorship. However, individual effort and hardwork is paramount.”
Other home-grown schools such as AIGA, ICAT and Seam Edu also provide courses for game design and related careers. Accredited colleges, such as MIT Institute of Design and National Institute of Design, have also started to provide courses for game design and animation streams.
To sum it up, the sector provides employment to creative artists, techies and entrepreneurs making it a platform for the growth of such unique skills. But a budding industry needs more than just great talent to survive. It needs the support of organizations that promote its growth – NASSCOM’s efforts have been tremendous in this regard. The NASSCOM gaming forum was set up 6 years ago, as an arena for collaboration and exchange within the Indian gaming scene. Today, it has a presence in five cities in India, namely, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore. The chapters in each of these cities regularly schedule forums and meet ups with developers to facilitate an ongoing idea exchange for collaborative growth. Additionally, NASSCOM also organizes an annual Game Developers Conference (NGDC) which is a prestigious country-wide event for all Game Developers in India. The NGDC presents an opportunity for creative professionals to share their experiences and showcase their work. Programs like the GameTantra Incubator founded by NASSCOM Chairman Rajesh Rao or the Government backed CIE incubation program in IIIT, Hyderabad help budding developers and teams work on promising projects. The office space, funding and mentorship are provided, since these are the major pain points for most upcoming developers. Such programs leverage their vast connections and network to help market games to achieve commercial success. This way, young developers get to try out something new, risky and potentially profitable at someone else’s expense and can focus on making great games.
And unlike the old days where making games meant investing millions, employing a large team and spending a few years in production – you can now make a small mobile game in under a month. Additionally, the self-publishing model on most app stores allows you to put a game on the store without engaging with a publisher.
There are developers in India who are targeting the global market and there are those who are targeting the Indian market alone. For example, the DSK group has invested in an independent studio called DSK Green Ice Games based in Pune, which aims to produce world-class titles for PC and console for the international market. But some studios have a good reason to focus on the mobile gaming market in India. “A lot of first-time smartphone users head to the playstore only to find content they can't relate to. Home-grown Indian studios can bridge this gap and provide them with apps and games that are relevant.”, says Anshumani Ruddra, Studio Head of Tiny Mogul Games, which is a studio dedicated to making games for India.
Other than common Indian themes such as cricket and mythology, studios are even experimenting with Bollywood-based games such as Kick, Singham and Dhoom. Using a mainstream movie intellectual property ensures that the game will be relevant and will rake in huge downloads due to the buzz surrounding the movie. Increasingly, promoters are creating quick mobile games to promote their movies and to sometimes immortalize the magic of their stories through this medium. And it’s not just the game industry that is inspired by Bollywood – it works vice versa too (remember the SRK starrer based on video games? Hint: Ra.One).
Looking at the bigger picture, India is the world’s fastest growing Mobile market and the 2nd largest in size. And with the popularity of Google’s Android OS and their partnership with budget mobile brands in India, it is only going to grow faster. The government is making a big push towards bringing more people under the banking system while promising a massive investment of INR 1 Lakh Crore by end of 2019 in Internet Infrastructure. Apart from the ecommerce businesses, this directly benefits the gaming industry by helping reach new users and deliver content. Thus we can say that the gaming industry is the next big thing to watch out for in India.
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