Let’s face it. We’ve all been yelled at while spending too much time playing video games when we were kids – be it vintage arcades, PC, handheld mini consoles, gaming consoles, smartphones or tablets. Maybe some of us who refuse to grow up are used to being yelled at – while we’re busy at our gaming consoles – even today. Some things never change, you’d like to think.
But things are changing, believe it or not. And all for the better. But before the good news, let’s take a look back and revisit the beginning of the Ninety’s Attitude towards Gaming in India.
The early days
While there were a few privileged kids who got their hands on the really old arcades – thanks to their visiting relatives from foreign lands – in the ‘80s, the true gaming revolution in India didn’t start until the economic liberalisation in 1991. The early game consoles started being sold on store shelves, and before long found themselves into the living room of significant number of Indian households. That was the first stone. Before long, kids started spending more time indoors in front of television sets playing virtual games on 8 or 16 bit consoles than go outdoors.
The PC revolution really took over India through the late ‘90s over to the 2000s, and most teenagers or adolescents who convinced their parents to buy a PC at the time was dominated by one big reason – playing PC games. Parents weren’t happy to see their wards spending an increased amount of time at their terminals, but this was a crucial sensitization phase for most households. Gaming was slowly but surely becoming a part of more and more Indians’ lives, even though it was welcomed with much reluctance.
And once the internet era took off, the floodgates were well and truly opened. Our appetite for pirated games grew, as we weren’t really going to pay astronomical sums demanded by game publishers. That led to the console era completely flying past and not registering on the Indian gaming psyche. The consoles, and their games, were just way too expensive to be within reach of most middle class households.
Casual is king
But as the telecom sector took off in India, and smartphones started becoming the next big thing, suddenly a national obsession needed the perfect timely past time. What better than to turn to casual games? As soon as Steve Jobs launched the iPhone back in 2007, and changed the face of the mobile phones industry, casual gaming has become the most popular form of gaming around the world — more so in India, since we have more mobile phones in this country than toilets!
The story of casual gaming is an important one from India’s context. Because the initial rumblings of game development in India — which deals with actually creating games, not just playing them (which anyone can do) — piggy backed a ride through the IT sector. After major Indian software giants started to spread their empires on a global front, and India started to become a lucrative outsourcing destination, it was then that Indian game design studios started getting outsourced projects to work upon. This trend started in the late ‘90s and continues till date, where art design, model design, and other animation-related projects (sometimes part of AAA gaming titles, sometimes part of Hollywood flicks) being produced and developed by Indian names.
At the same time, the possibility of a mobile phone in everyone’s hand led to the setting up of several game design studios that only specialized in creating gaming content to be deployed and consumed on mobile phones. Vishal Gondal founded IndiaGames and earned a fortune developing games for mobile phones, quickly being dubbed as the first “crorepati” game developer in India. Clearly, there was ample room to grow for everyone, and so it has been.
Status quo
At the beginning of this year, according to NASSCOM data, there were more than one thousand independent game development studios based in India. No mean feat this. And the number of international studios setting up shop in India is growing by the day — Ubisoft, EA, Disney, Zynga, are already here. More are coming. Why? Because gaming isn’t just a nerdy thing anymore. It’s mainstream, an accepted form of entertainment that everyone takes pleasure in — right from your household aunties to retired grandpas, to even toddlers. And India has both the talent (to develop games) and appetite (for consuming games), unlike any other nation in the world — except probably China.
From nuisance to nourishing, what an amazing turnaround the past 20 years have been for the reputation of gaming in India.
There are plenty of opportunities to explore gaming as a career option in India, as well. I remember having a conversation with Mr. Yasuhiro Fukushima, Honorary Chairman, Square Enix, on his visit to India back in 2012. He asked me to guess how many people were employed and earning their living through gaming (game development) in India. I guessed it to be around a lakh. He countered that it wasn’t even five thousand.
Less than five thousand people in the Indian gaming industry? Just think about it for a moment. How big was the gaming industry back then? As per the recent FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2012, the Indian games business was valued at approximately $275 million, up 30 per cent over 2011. And how much money does the industry make circa 2014? According to the FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2013 there was a record 16% growth in the video games industry over the previous year, the net worth of which rose to Rs 1500 crore (Rs 15 billion / $277 million). The report goes as far as to say that the games industry in India will grow at a 22% CAGR, to surpass Rs 4000 crore ($776m) by 2017.
Things are getting organized
All said and done, the fact remains that gaming isn’t a kids or adolescent-restricted activity anymore. The serious money involved clearly shows that anyone from young professionals to retired seniors are partaking in video gaming as an entertainment activity. Training centres are being established to equip young minds in the education system the tools and gravitas to learn game design — the best example of this is a school on the outskirts of Pune, called DSK International Campus. Gaming is getting introduced to university syllabuses, too! Who would’ve that this would happen one day?
Now that we have a captive audience waiting to consume content, who will take up the challenge to design and develop Indian games for Indian audiences? Anyone who does rise to the occasion is definitely looking forward to a golden harvest of epic proportions.