It is a clear game of monetisation versus content: Say Gaming Experts
Mumbai, March 14, 2013: The ongoing 14th chapter of Asia’s foremost conclave on Media & Entertainment – FICCI FRAMES 2013, Day III, today hosted a session on ‘The emerging ecosystem: what it means to the gaming industry in India’.
The big names from the content providing business who participated in the panel discusion included Anuj Tandon, Co-founder & Director, Rolocule Games; Siddharth Nautiyal, Director BVP India; Aakrit Vaish, Country Head, Flurry; Samir Bangara, Former MD Digital, Disney India; Ninand Chhaya, COO, Playcaso and Rohith Bhatt, Founder & CEO, Robosoft & Ninety Nine Games. The panel discussion was moderated by Manish Agarwal, CEO, Reliance Entertainment – Digital.
Anuj Tandon, Co-founder & Director, Rolocule Games, commented on the current state of gaming in India saying, “Gaming is evolving, but it is still at a raw stage. While we have seen many gaming companies come up in the past few years, there is a need to clearly inovate to keep the users engaged.”
Siddharth Nautiyal, Director BVP India, agreeing with Anuj commented further on the potential of the sector and called out the big need of investment. “Investors are beginning to see the potential in gaming for various reasons, the growing app ecosystem being one of the biggest. Also India stands at no. 3 position when it comes to the number of downloads of games. Having said that, downloads do not necessarily lead to profitability which is the current state here. More investment in creative content creation and innovation will churn the wheel and define a leap in the gaming industry in India.”
Manish Agarwal, CEO, Reliance Entertainment – Digital, however stated that a lot has to be done in the innovation and investment space. He shared quick statistics quoting US mobile gaming being a 5 billion dollar market, followed by Japan, which stands at 1.3 billion.
Aakrit Vaish, Country Head, Flurry, batted his case on monetisation and stated, “India is the third biggest country that faces an issue in retention of users i.e. gamers coming back to the game they download once. This leads to the concern on monetisation for game developers. If compared to US, an Indian game developer earns 1/10th of the revenue as apposed to his counterpart developing in US.”
Samir Bangara, Former MD Digital, Disney India felt a little different from the rest saying, “India has a huge propensity of becoming big in gaming. While the monetisation part is critical, key priority on a new launch, or even on existing properties is to engage users.” He adviced the game developers attending the panel discussion to focus on content and driving engagement rather than focussing on raising money at an initial stage.
The session ended on a positive note from Ninand Chhaya, COO, Playcaso, who sees localisation of gaming content happening in India soon. Taking examples from successful local content like ‘MTV Roadies’ and ‘Chota Bheem’ in television, he firmly believes that there will be development of local and sellable content in gaming as well, in the times to come.
