The telecom revolution has ushered in many a change in the Indian lifestyle. One industry whose existence can be attributed majorly to the telecom revolution is India's gaming industry.

Day 3 at CgA world had a panel discussion devoted to 'Game Development'. The Panelists included Indiagames Founder & Director Vishal Gondal, Dhruva Interactive CEO K Rajesh Rao, Milestone Interactive Software Business Director Sachin Naik and the Reliance Industries promoted Paradox Studios CEO Anurag Khurana.

In a discussion that lasted for around two hours, the panelists opined on various topics related to The Indian Gaming industry.

Amongst the many topics discussed and debated, an indication that the Indian gaming industry was all set to expand was a comment by the panelists on the issue of recruitment.

The panelists said that amongst the four companies represented by them, they were looking at recruiting 300 professionals in the next six months. These would include programmers, graphic designers and visualisers. The panelists were also open to the idea of grooming talent on the pay roll.

The discussion focussed on some issues in detail. They were -
- The need to own intellectual property rights
- The need to feature a popular brand or icon in the games,
- Costs and time involved in developing a game.
- Recruitment and the skill sets required of a professional pursuing a career in game development

Developing original intellectual property, purchasing licenses and the need to feature brands in Games

The panelists more or less agreed on the advantages that owning products offered in the context of a global market scenario.They had different ways to approach the subject though, which reflected in the nature of work each one was currently doing.

Indiagames founder Vishal Gondal opined that: "Earlier when we used to visit the US and meet game publishers, we used to pitch our services on the low price factor. Now it is the quality that we pitch on and it has made a big difference."

He pointed out:"From being mere service providers we have now become game publishers. Indiagames recently purchased the rights for and successfully launched Spiderman for the Mobile platform. We have purchased licenses for a host of other famous titles and are working on developing games around them"

Defending his strategy on the need for a popular brand or hero figure to feature in the game, Vishal added : "It is necesscary to differentiate your product in the huge clutter. Even market leaders like Electronic Arts have hero figures featured in them".

Dhruva Interactive CEO K Rajesh Rao though clarified that the main feature of a game was a good concept or a good story and even though majors like Electronic Arts did have brands or hero figures they were added as an attraction after a good gaming concept and appealing design were already in place.

Milestone Business Director Sachin Naik had a slightly different take on the whole issue. During the session and also when contacted later on he said: "There is no doubt that licensing and developing of games around popular icons and brands is here to stay and grow, as understandably, icons and brands already have a high level of acceptance in the market besides which there is also a need to differentiate the product in a clutter of many."

"However there is a school of thought that believes in developing and owning original intellectual property as against purchasing licenses to already developed properties. Otherwise we are simply acting as promotional vehicles for films and Television series. Milestone is one of the very few in India who are registered developers for Playstation 2 as well as XBox." added Sachin.

The cost factors and time involved in developing and launching games

Discussing the time and monies involved in developing games, the panelists did agree that as far as the mobile platform was concerned the advancement of technology and the lowering of prices of feature rich cell phones had made their tasks a tad bit tougher.

Paradox CEO Anurag Khurana speaking on the time involved in developing games for the mobile elaborated: "Earlier we used to come out with one game a week, now with the technology used in mobile phones improving by the day, a single game takes around three months to develop, test and release"

The panelists also agreed that it takes nearly 2 years to develop a game for release across multiple platforms including the PC and console. A risky proposition involved in developing a game for multiple platforms was that the publishers also had to identify in advance, trends that would be prevalent 2 years hence.

On the costing front a major factor seemed to be the cost incurred on purchasing licenses. Vishal Gondal whose company Indiagames' strategy is to develop games around icons and brands, commented that "The cost of developing a game for the mobile is roughly around $800,000 if you count the licensing fees and other expenditure involved, whereas the cost for developing a game for the PC or Console can be anywhere between $ 5-10 Million."

"In case of games where featured brands and hence licensing fees are not involved the costs could be much lesser even in the range of $100,000 to $2,00,000" chipped in Paradox CEO Anurag Khurana.

Another high expenditure incurred by the developers was that of testing their games on different carriers and across different countries "The cost of testing a game per carrier especially in the case of BREW is $1,000. If you test your game for around 10 carriers the cost for testing becomes a significant part of the total costs incurred in developing a game"Khurana added.


Willingness to groom talent on the pay roll

The Indian Gaming industry is one industry which is open to the idea of grooming talent on the pay roll.

One of the reasons could be lack of any formal training course in the country. The other reason could be that each company deals with different genres and develops games for different platforms, the nature of skill sets required for the job being specific to each company, a fair amount of retraining would be required for any professional.

Discussing the qualifications and skill sets required of an individual to join the gaming industry, Paradox CEO Anurag said : "Some companies have strict specifications where they accept resumes from engineers and other highly qualified people only. At Paradox we are open to taking in graduates oe even those who have only passed HSC."

" In fact two of our employees work part time and are attending college too." added Anurag.

Indiagames' Vishal made an open offer to the students in the audience saying that if there was anyone amongst the audience wishing to pursue a career in game development , he was ready to take them on provided they had already developed a sample game to show.

The panelists also expressed surprise that many of the people that approached them for jobs came without a sample of any game they had tried to develop.

"Most applicants when quizzed about their interest in game development cite their love for playing games as the reason that they want to pursue a career in game development" said an amused Rajesh Rao.

Addressing students among the audience, Rao cautioned "You have to be very perseverant to make a career in game development." he also had a good word for the programming community saying " Some of the best game developers in the world are from the programming community."