This weekend Gaming Central attended The Coalition, the festival of creativity. Initially launched two years ago as a boot camp for individuals who wanted to transform their innovative ideas into successful business models, The Coalition covered 11 Streams of the creative ecosystem in three days. There were over 300 creative industry leaders, experts and innovators from all over the world that provided an insight in the streams of Design, Content Creation, Publishing, Makers, Journalism, Fashion, Music, Gaming, Food & Beverages and Art & Photography through talks, workshops, networking sessions and mentorship. This provided a platform for those professions and fields which existed in silos to come together and be a part of the larger cultural community in India. In short, The Coalition was the space that was much needed for the out-of-the-box minds to collaborate, exchange notes and learn about the business of creation and creativity.
When we folks at Gaming Central learned about the first-time ever we knew we had to be there. We were certainly intrigued by the assortment of panellists from across the globe at the all-day session held on Friday, 4th March 2016.
Gaming at The Coalition covered every category in gaming – from PC, Console, Mobile to E-Sports and Social Casinos. Questions arose about the coming up of Virtual Reality and what is the reality of working as a Gaming Entrepreneur. Is it enough to be a kickass gamer? And what does it take to be a Developer? The day started with Norbert Cellier of Supinfogame Rubika in a very encouraging talk on “Kickstarting Your Career In Gaming.” Cellier provided his audience with ample reasons to switch from their daily lives and start their own business in something they love, clearly Gaming. He gave us all tips and tricks of the trade on how to manage and sustain one’s business in the Gaming industry. “Dawn of E-Sports” was another interesting session, held by TL Taylor, which put light on the thriving global E-Sports community around the world and its history, in “three phases.” Investment and funding in the gaming industry were discussed in further talks, along with a talk on how to how to optimize this intellectual property to its greatest capacity with “Games Just Want To Have Funds” and “Making The Best Of Your Intellectual Property” respectively. An insightful panel discussion on “The Era Of Social Casino” was held which included panellists, Rahul Bhardwaj (Junglee Games), Manav Arya (Octro) and Srikanth Reddy Peru (GSN Games) and was moderated by Poornima Seetharaman (GSN Games). It was an hour long discussion that gave a comprehensive overview of the social and mobile casino games market, one that has a projected combined revenue of $2.8 billion and is a staple among casual gamers worldwide. But what really got us enjoying the all-day session was the panel discussion “Made In India”.
Mediated by Amitesh Rao of MTS India, the panellists included mobile game developers such as Amit Goyal (Supersike Games), Surojit Roy (BYOF), Roby John (June Softwares) and a PC game developer, Arvind Raja Yadav (Pyrodactyl Games). The panel discussion started off with topics such as Creativity in which panellists spoke about finding the right creative gaming talent for the development of games in India. We saw that every panelist had a different view point or idea about working with gaming talent: while Roby from June Softwares was open to collaborating with student drop-outs, Surojit of BYOF was more inclined towards having an in-house team, which posed quite a challenge with the current number of gaming talent pool in India. Talking about how much of creative talent existed – some said there was just enough but Arvind couldn’t agree about it on the PC front. A very valid point was made by Amit, who said that genres in gaming, like art are not so developed in India, which leads to a bit of a setback in the process of developing world class games.
The next topic that Amitesh brought up was Monetization. Can you really earn a good living out of developing games in India? The industry experts were extremely candid with this one. Surojit Roy claimed minimal gaming monetization. Roby John, who has achieved much success from his game “Chhota Bheem Race” said that the only way to achieve monetization is to learn and continue learning – but that learning is not present in Indian markets. One needs to venture out to other markets, fail and rise and then success and money would follow. Arvind made a very legitimate statement, “We’re always aspiring to play the best games…We’re starting at a handicap. Whereas globally they have 10-20 years of experience.” Amit felt that India was not ready for investment in gaming, something Roby, from his experience, disagreed on. This, in fact, led to a discussion on Social Casinos and investment in gaming to which our gaming experts had only one thing to say about and to the investor community (if they’re listening): The investor community needs to mature. Even though the Social Casino market is a multi-billion dollar revenue generating industry, they are only following the herd mentality by putting all their eggs in that basket. The other gaming industries have a bright future as well, but investors need to try and tap that potential.
Going to the next topic, Bring E-Sports onto Mobile, Amitesh gave the floor to Surojit who had a background in E-Sports. He clearly said that there is a market for E-Sports in India but our games need to evolve. The concept needs to evolve on mobile. Roby and Amit agreed about the increasing rate of gamers interested in E-Sports and considered developing a game for that audience on mobile devices in the future. When Arvind was questioned about whether he would convert PC games into Mobile games for E-Sports purposes, he did not comply, due to technical difficulties such as controls, etc.
The panel discussion concluded with a topic on Why Develop Mobile Games over PC Games? As we could see that the representation of Indie-Game developers was highly disproportionate even among the panellists with Arvind clearly in minority as a PC game developer, it also highlighted the fact that the gaming industry in India is majorly developing smartphone games for casual gamers, across the world. When panellists were asked about why there is a disproportion – they all stemmed their answers from their own personal founding stories. Roby John felt that when June Softwares was founded they were at an unfair advantage in the market and Surojit Roy felt that the market was blossoming when they dived into the mobile gaming industry with BYOF and well, it was easier to create these games. Arvind was asked why he created PC games over mobile games, knowing about the market scenario. He just simply said that when he wants to create a game he just asks himself “What game do I want to play?” and his answer (or shall we get cheesy and say, heart) always points to a PC game. Amit of Supersike Games wrapped up the topic with quite a perspective. He said that he has actually seen a shift from mobile to PC game development lately in India. But the motivation for a plethora of mobile game developers in India comes mainly from their own personal stories and the fact that the learning curve is simpler.
The panel discussion of “Made In India” was concluded with a round of Q&A with the audience. Among many questions, one that caught our attention was on their viewpoint on the future of gaming with Virtual Reality and whether the panellists were ready to dive into it. Without much hesitation, the answer given was simple: Not just yet, VR is too expensive for the Indian masses.
The Coalition turned out to be a great place for the gaming community, specifically game developers, to get a reality check on how the industry and market actually work. It was a platform apt for learning and getting an insight, but it could have been an even better event if more space was provided for networking and personal questions from these industry leaders as well as those fellow developers who attended the session. Apart from this, we at Gaming Central are looking forward to the next Coalition and are game to see what they have in store for us next time!
