The year 2007 will be remembered well by not only the Indian gamers but also by people who are involved directly or indirectly in the gaming industry. Numerous events have taken place all over the country and especially here in Mumbai, there has been a flurry of activities related to gamers as well as the industry people.
Today at a suburban hotel in western Mumbai, Zapak along with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) organized India’s first ever gaming summit. IAMAI is a trade association that represents the mobile, e-commerce, online content and advertising industry in India. They had invited stalwarts from the gaming industry from all over the world. Some came from the United States, while some from China and some from India.
We attended the first session, which saw the Reliance Entertainment’s president, Rajesh Sawhney deliver the welcome note. The session was titled ‘Gaming Industry Overview – East is East, West is West, and India?’ and the participants were David Christensen from Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and Desmond Lu from Shanda Interactive Entertainment. The chairman of the session was Venkat Mallik from Level Up India.
In the welcome address, Rajesh Sawhney spoke about the gaming scene in India and mentioned that a gaming revolution is taking place in India currently and how ADAG, the company behind Reliance Entertainment and Zapak, is planning to be a big part of it. He compared how things were a decade ago in 1997 and how things have changed now. He then proceeded to speak about the future and how things will be ten years later in the year 2017. Along with giving numbers about the Indian economy and the booming stock market, Sawhney commented on how the burgeoning market is allowing next generation innovation to happen in India as the economy is performing very consistently.
After finishing his talk, Rajesh Sawhney declared the 2007 India Gaming Summit open and called upon the managing director of Level Up India, Venkat Mallik to come and speak. Mallik then explained how the session would progress and called upon speakers, David Christensen as well as Desmond Lu to come on the stage and deliver their respective presentations on subjects such as video games, their companies and India.
First up was David Christensen, who is the vice president of business development and international operations at SOE. Christensen said that SOE is keen to work with local partners, especially in India and elaborated on the forthcoming Ramayana MMO that is based on the comic series by Virgin Comics. He spoke about SOE, on the way they stepped into the MMO business and how they are planning to bring about different kinds of titles such as Pirates of the Burning Sea and The Agency.
He then gave a presentation on the history of video games, from Space Wars to Atari 2600 to Mario to the PlayStation and then finally to the current next generation console war as well as World of Warcraft. Speaking of next-gen consoles, he said that he was happy to see the Xbox 360 and PS3 being available in India but at the same time expressed his concern over the very high price. In fact, Christensen, who started this career in tax consultancy, went on to say that the consoles were expensive even by western standards and stressed on the fact that the pricing of the game consoles had to come down. He later stated that SOE had an Indian connection as their customer service is based in Delhi since quite some time now.
Then we had Desmond Lu who came to deliver his speech. He is the business development director at Shanda Interactive Entertainment in China. Lu began his presentation by explaining the supply and demand factors in gaming as well as how online gaming is so scalable. He later spoke about alternative delivery platforms as well as JAVA-based wireless games, consoles and set-top boxes. He then proceeded to show graphs about the various demographics. One of them was related to paying members and non-paying members. Though at first glance it felt that there was an equal number of paying and non-paying members, a closer look revealed that the number of paying members is increasing in the online gaming world.
One more thing that Desmond Lu revealed was that they have a home delivery service in China, some thing similar to that we have at pizza parlors. But the only difference is that the games should be delivered to the gamer in three hours. He said that they would be happy to share their experience with the members of the Indian industry who are foraying in the world of video gaming and stressed on the fact that besides content, customer service is one of the most important factors for the gamers. Lu later spoke about their 3C strategy that focuses on the three Cs: content, community and commerce. He also commented on Shanda’s various business strategies.
After Lu, it was Mr. Mallik’s turn to speak about Level Up and the state of gaming in India. He quickly went on to explain the strategies that his company employed in India and how this country is different with regards to video games. Currently Level Up has eighteen games on its roster, five of which are offered in India. As a firm catering to the massively multiplayer online gaming market, Venkat Mallik spoke on the importance of content in video games and noted that here content is king.
Like others who spoke at the event, he also revealed some statistics and research done by Level Up Games in India. Their data indicates that nearly 55 percent of male college-going youth does game on some kind of a platform. Mallik also said that their market research indicated that majority of the gamers in India belonged to the upper strata of society. He said that one of the main ways that a video game title gets publicity is through word of mouth and talked about the other ways that would be helpful for a gaming company to market their products.
Venkat Mallik then ended his speech after which there was a small question and answer session, where the attendees of the 2007 India Gaming Summit posed queries to David Christiansen and Desmond Lu. After the Q&A, it was Mallik, who quizzed the two speakers on the various issues as well as perspectives of the video gaming industry, especially the MMO markets.
The session then ended for a small break. We checked out the booths set up by the various media, technology and gaming companies in the hotel. We also had a small tête-à -tête with David Christiansen, which will be posted in some time. Overall, the India Gaming Summit was a revering experience and we expect next year not to be very different from this year as we are sure that there will be numerous gaming tournaments and events taking place in India in 2008 as well.