(1 December 2007 5:40 pm)

MUMBAI: There are a few statistics which are quite well known about the gamers in India. As per ICube 2007, there are about 2.8 Million online gamers in India, and about 75 per cent of these gamers are males.

Now Reliance Entertainment's gaming portal Zapak and IMRB International have come out with a whitepaper to describe among other things the patterns of gamers.

In terms of the core gamers, there are four types. The subjugators are the first category of serious gamers. They believe that there is a challenge in a game to overcome and feel they can master everything. They may want to show off, but are driven by an internal strive to defeat very challenge.

Networkers, the second group, are the social interacting genre of serious gamers. The main motive of gaming in a multi-payer situation is to have a good bonding experience with people. They feel it an opportunity to meet people and develop relationships.

The escapists as the name suggests game for the promise of escape. They had faced difficult situations and challenges in their real life or are complacent. They game to face and overcome artificial challenges; to satisfy themselves by being completely opposite of their original self.

The learners are a different kettle of fish. Their main purpose to game is to explore different environments and conditions with a motive to learn something from their experience and then progress and excel in it. Their main aim to hone their skills in everything possible.

In general core gamers spend at least 4-6 hours a week gaming and play Lan-based, MMOGs and MMORPG’s. There may be many reasons which drive this genre of gamers to game online. They are community based gamers, who generally have a peer group into gaming; they prefer multi-player games over single-player games; and are not as easy to understand as the casual gamers.

However, at the moment, it is the casual gamers who are leading the gaming industry in India. They play for the sake of having fun or for a quick break. When in office, they find time in short intervals to play for 10-15 minutes, when in Café, based on the time left for their session to complete, they get on to gaming.

Casual games typically include games such as Chess, Poker, Sudoku. Casual Games may be further classified into Action, Arcade, Racing/ Driving, Puzzles, Sports and Strategy games. Various games sites have put up either all or majority of these genre of games.

Drivers of Online Gaming in India: The factors that will drive the growth of online gaming market in India can be broadly classified as: Consumer Pull and Game development activities by market incumbents.

Consumer Pull: The youth segment, which is the biggest segment on the Internet, is driving the demand for games on multiple platforms like PC, mobile handsets and consoles. The gaming market in India comprise mainly of young men and college going students falling within the age group of 17–25 years. They form the largest segment of the active internet user base; are more technology savvy and most of all carry an attitude to try everything new.

Increasing broadband penetration in Indian households will drive usage of online gaming and vice-versa as the gaming experience is enhanced due to higher speed and bandwidth when compared to Dial-up connections.

International experience suggests that online gaming took off as in-home penetration of broadband increased in countries like South Korea and China. Broadband ISP’s are also offering Games on demand packages to users to encourage them to spend more time online.

Entertainment seeking behaviour on the rise: Entertainment appeals to internet users of all age, gender and affluence. As a genre, entertainment related applications are accessed by 54 per cent active internet users (Source: I-Cube 2006).

Online gaming will add another platform to whet the appetite of Indian users. Causal games can be positioned as another arena for entertainment to appeal to no-core segment like women and older men.

Increase in Mobile gamers: Mobile gaming has grown many-fold in India and downloads of mobile games is a fast growing component in the overall Mobile Vas pie. Mobile gaming is serving to introduce a large base to gaming notes the whitepaper. Over a period of Evolution of Gaming In India time many users who seek an enhanced gaming experience can be graduated to online gaming.

Game development activities by market incumbents: In India the focus in online gaming has traditionally been on content development for the overseas market. Now to grow the domestic market several companies are taking various initiatives such as:

- Localisation of games/content to better address the gaming needs of the target audience: Though most of the development work is being done for overseas market,
however, in future the focus would shift to the domestic market. Currently several Indian companies are starting to focus on customising content for the Indian market using local themes, icons and games.

It would also include spicing-up the available international content/ idea to appeal to a larger audience. Kreeda.com and Games2win.com are focussed on customising the online gaming experience for the Indian palate.

- Creation of gaming zones/ Organised cyber café chains: They play a critical role in development of the online gaming ecosystem and various companies are doing different things to maximize this opportunity. Some are opening their own gaming zones while others are tying up with existing café and helping them upgrade to gaming zones by providing marketing support.

- Mainstream Advertising: To drive traffic and build awareness, Zapak.com has taken the mainstream advertising route. This is generating ineterst and driving traffic to the site. The key challenge would be to retain the users through sticky content.

Zapak says that its mainstream advertising would also help other companies operating in the space as it is working at popularising the category per se. Once users get hooked on or like the experience of gaming they would also look at other avenues fro online gaming.

- Enabling payment mechanisms: Recognising that the low penetration of credit cards & debit cards can be a potential bottleneck, several companies are taking the initiative in enabling online payment though other platforms. This is all the more important because the core gaming segment of users, school and college students do not have access to bank cards.

One of the initiative being experimented with are Pre-paid gaming cards. These cards would enable both subscription for the gaming service and purchase of in-game add ons.
Value chain- From concept to the end user. The value chain for online gaming is fairly complex and encompasses a host of entities: IP owners, developer & ed users. It also encompasses a host of activities such as Conceptualisation, Production.

The chain starts with the IP owner owing a concept around which a game may be developed. Are usually the content or game developers. For game developer, preproduction work consists mainly of concept art, game design and game dynamics.

Production constitutes final concept arts, modelling, animation and programming. Testing tends to be a big task for game developers; there is a wide range of formats and platforms that the games have to be tested for.

In a majority of cases, for operational efficiency and financial benefits forward or backward integration has taken place in the Indian market. As a result, either there are development studios which publish the developed games themselves or development studios which own the idea/ intellectual property based on which they develop games.

There are several companies who are producing their own games and distributing these in India. These include players like Nazara Games, Level Up, etc. Out of these, Zapak is
a prominent one, producing their own titles and distribute these through their portal platform.

Carriers, portals have the technology medium for distributing a game to the audience. Established publishers/developers directly approach the portals and carriers, while the smaller ones have to go through Aggregators. Indiagames is one of the aggregators offering Gaming on demand service.

Gamers determine the kind of business a game would do – average, above-average, or below-average based on the acceptance and usage of a game title. Most portals and carriers have developed accurate mechanism for estimating the time a game would take to break even.