Level-Up games is one of the few gaming companies that has been around for quite some time in India. GameGuru.in went and met the Managing Director of Level-Up India, Mr. Venkat Mallik and had a little chat with him. Here is the whole interview.
GG: Please tell us something about yourself. Your professional background.
VM: I am the Managing Director of Level-Up India. In my previous career, I have worked with companies like Leo Burnett, JWT, Euro RSCG and Uniliver. For the last few years, I have been working with Level-Up and looking after the India operations. I took over the India operations after Ragnarok was launched. I started working on various other projects including Ragnarok from 2005.
GG: Coming to Level Up games, can you please elaborate a little about the company. Which countries does Level-up have a presence in?
VM: Level-Up is a four-year-old company. We work in three markets right now, Philippines is where we started. After that, we extended in to Brazil and later into India. We are essentially a game publishing company and we publish about fifteen different games across these countries. In India, we introduced Ragnarok first, and after that we introduced Gunz Online last year. Plans are afoot to introduce multiple pieces of content over the next few months to cater to the growing demand for online gaming in India.
GG: So what made you choose India, considering the fact that gaming in India is at a nascent stage?
VM: Actually we were inspired by the experience in China, which has been similar to India in many different ways. The Chinese market exploded between 2001 and 2005, from literally zero to the estimated numbers of online gamers of thirty million, as per the most recent reports that we have got. We expect that at some point of time, India will go through the same path. Our company has wanted to be first movers in India as also in Brazil. We were also the first movers in Philippines. That’s part of our stated philosophy and yes, there would be a point of time, when India will grow quite rapidly and we look forward to that day, pretty soon actually.
GG: Do you find the Indian markets different from the other markets?
VM: Yes. As you said, the Indian market is significantly more nascent than the other markets that we have been into. There are a lot of challenges that we have faced over the last three years of our existence. Clearly, infrastructure is one of them that everybody talks about. PC specs and broadband connectivity are really what constitute infrastructure in that area. The other is a lack of a strong gaming culture in India, which is in a sense linked with the infrastructure being available first of all. India is also a country where the opportunity is a lot more spread out because it is a large country with a lot of different people. And therefore, it takes longer to tap opportunities than in other countries which have a single language and are geographically more aligned. So that’s the other difference. And therefore to tap this opportunity that exists, takes you a different kind of effort.
GG: Why did you venture into the MMORPG arena?
VM: The belief was that MMOGs are the one genre that actually combines people into a single large community and is a genuine community experience. This continues to be still true, except that there are different genres of multiplayer gaming that may be easier to access in India, compared to MMORPG, which have more detailed concepts. But over the next two or three years, we may see the evolution of not only casual gaming but also of casual multiplayer gaming as well as MMORPGS depending on the content that’s put out.
GG: Will you publish other games in India?
VM: We have introduced Gunz last year; we will come out with two more pieces of content over the next month or two. And hopefully, many more during the rest of this year.
GM: Does Level-up develop any games in-house?
VM: Not at the moment. But yeah, we will be open to considering the possibilities around that.
GG: Are you planning to do any promotional things for the games?
VM: Yes, of course, plans are afoot to build the business quite significantly. We will be having a series of tournaments for Gunz. We continue to have a lot of in-game events and programmes for Ragnarok. We are also looking at doing tournaments for Ragnarok by having a tournament server. So, there are quite a few plans to push both these games as well as the new ones which we are launching.
GG: Can you tell us about the performance of Ragnarok and Gunz in India?
VM: We don’t really talk the statistics, but we can just tell you that for Gunz, which is a more recent launch, the reception has been pretty good. Ragnarok continues to be by far the largest online single game community in the country. And while it’s an early stage market, there are challenges with it. Both these games have been fairly popular in the genres that they represent.
GG: So are Indian gamers accepting the MMORPG games?
VM: Yes, they are. Obviously, we would like them to accept the MMORPG format in much larger numbers, and that will hopefully happen in the next two or three years as the gaming culture evolves and people understand gaming a lot more. But at this point of time, if you look at what exists in the country, a lot more people are playing really, really simple games which are PC or console or CD based games. But there is a very strong, loyal community for the MMORPG and that is something what you will experience when you will actually meet gamers. There is a completely different world in which those guys live. It’s quite a fantastic experience.
GG: Will you come out with an India centric game?
VM: It has been part of our discussion. There is going to be a certain amount of time before the Indian market becomes large enough for a significant investment in development to be made. But it is clearly a part of not only our company, but everybody else’s discussion frame as well to find a way of actually doing Indianised content because everybody believes that India works on Indianised content rather than adapted international content and we have seen that in the case of Bollywood and music and everything else. So, we are clearly open to that and we would be exploring that possibility, but I fancy it would take the next couple of years before any serious attempts are made in that direction.
GG: What about consoles? What is your view on console gaming? Any games for Xbox 360 or PS2?
VM: Yeah, consoles per se, I think the experience playing on a console is quite different from playing games on a PC. And to that extent, they represent a different genre at the moment. A lot of convergence is happening between the technologies. Consoles are trying to go online and you know, online games are trying to improve their graphics and there will be a midpoint where everything meets. Most new games are being launched, both for consoles as well as the PCs. In the context of India, all of us know about the challenges with piracy and there is a grey market to deal with. Therefore, the original marketers don’t tend to make too much money while they spend a lot developing their business. And that’s really the challenge that exists as far as that business is concerned. But with the effort that’s being put up in by Sony with their PS2 and on the Xbox 360 by Microsoft, there has been a significant shift in the traction for console gaming, but there again, I don’t know how much of the money actually reaches the original market. For the Xbox 360, not at the moment, but we are looking at exploring content across the board, not just limited to online. Though our focus fundamentally is going to be online gaming and that’s what we know the best. We are focused on online multiplayer gaming to be more precise. But we are studying the market to see where the opportunities are and if we think that there can be an opportunity that can be tapped well by a company like ours, we would be open to that.
GG: Mobile gaming? Will Level-Up enter mobile gaming?
VM: Actually we are open to it cross-genre while our fundamental focus is going to be online gaming. We are open to doing other formats of game as they come around. So if we think, something is exciting, we will definitely do it. Internationally, we already started doing a bit of mobile gaming work, specifically from our company in Brazil. If there are opportunities, we will probably extend that to other countries as well.
GG: How has the broadband connectivity in India affected the MMORPGs?
VM: The numbers have gone up dramatically in the last couple of years. We had next to nothing in end of ‘04, and we have got 2/ 2.1 million broadband connections as of last year. So, obviously there is a step up in the pace of growth. That definitely helps us because, while Ragnarok is playable both on dial-up and on broadband, The gunz experience on broadband is significantly better than on dial-up. Lot of the newer games also lean on broadband rather than on dial up, and therefore it is definitely looked at by us as an opportunity. The new marketing impetus that has been given by converting all connections to 2 Mbps is also something we are looking forward to, because we will be in a position to get better and better content in.
GG: Movies. Lots of video games are being made into movies. Will Ragnarok and Gunz be made in to movies?
VM: We don’t have any such plans at the moment. Also with respect to these games, we are only their licensees in India. The original IP rights for these pieces of content lie with the developers. And I guess, it would be their prerogative to decide whether they have to make movies or not.
GG: What about the future? What are Level-up’s plans for the future?
VM: New games, as of now will be a little premature to talk about. In about four to six weeks you will be able to see them online. Right now we are going to have multiple pieces of content, that we plan to introduce. We also will be strengthening the Ragnarok and the Gunz franchise. So yes, we have some pretty exciting plans for 2007. We have some very strong partnerships on the anvil right now, in multiple ways, to strengthen our access across the country to introduce the new pieces of content that seem to be very well liked. Yeah, we are also redoing the way our end user interaction is with our product, on websites. So you will find a fair bit of change over the next three to six months and through the rest of the year.
GG: What about Mr. Venkat Mallik? Are you a gamer? What is your favorite genre and game?
VM: I have learnt to be a gamer now. I wasn’t a born gamer. I used to play casual games like Tetris, that kind of gaming rather than significant gaming. Certainly as a part of my job, I need to know what’s good content and what’s bad content and I have learnt how to play games like that. I keep on trying different pieces of content because it helps us make decisions based on that.
GG: Thank You for your valuable time.
VM: Thank You.