An entrepreneur and an avid gamer at heart, Ninad has 16 years of experience in the interactive media space with more than 13 years in the field of gaming. At Playcaso, Ninad is the Chief Operating Officer and is responsible for overseeing complete operations and driving Playcaso’s growth strategy to establish itself as a developer and publisher of global repute. Ninad has extensive experience in creating and publishing games across platforms like PC, Online, Wireless including emerging platforms like iOS, Android, etc.
Currently, Ninad is working on a global publishing program aimed at helping indie developers today. The first title under this program Slice the Ice was recently launched by Playcaso with much fanfare.Developed by Germany based developer Fancy Factory, Slice The Ice is a casual, puzzle based game featuring Scrappy, the blue polar weasel who is on a quest to recover his collection of yellow rubber ducks, which have got scattered across the north pole, by slicing through icy levels. Spread across 5 different worlds and 100 challenging levels, the game has puzzles to solve with fun and innovative gameplay mechanics.
Slice the Ice aims to excite players all over the world. It uses some of iTunes’ latest features like in-app purchases, iCloud etc and comes as a universal build for all iOS 5.0 compatible devices. The game will soon be launched for iPhone5 as well.Slice the Ice has been launched on the Apple App Store as a freemium game and can be downloaded from https://itunes.apple.com/us/
The publishers also plan to launch it on Android and other mobile platforms subsequently in a phased manner.
Sharing more about his new game, Ninad Chhaya who is in the midst of his new programme and upcoming titles ….took time off to talk about Slice the Ice with Animationxpress’ Ishpreet Chandock.
Meanwhile, here are the excerpts….
Tell us more about the game ‘Slice The Ice’ What was the inspiration behind the game? What is the concept?
The game has been developed by our development partner Fancy Factory who is based in Germany.
Slice The Ice is a fun; physics based puzzle game about Scrappy, the blue, polar weasel who is on a mission to recover his treasure of yellow, rubber ducks by slicing through icy glaciers. The game is spread across 5 worlds and 100 levels.
How did you come up with the concept of the game?
The game was conceptualized by Fancy Factory. The idea was to create a fun, puzzle game using situations and characters which seem slightly exaggerated but fun.
What is the gameplay? How many levels and lives does the game have?
The gameplay is about helping Scrappy recover his yellow rubber ducks and collect acorns as bonus by slicing the ice. The game has 5 worlds and 100 levels with more levels and worlds being added soon.
How many artists worked on the game and how long it took them to complete the game?
The game had 3-4 artists working on it through its development cycle and it took around 6-8 months to complete the game.
Why did you choose to make the game for the iOS platform?
The idea was to launch the game initially on iOS so that the ‘go-to-market’ time is reduced and also device fragmentation as faced on other platforms is not a challenge. The game will soon be launched on Android and Windows Phone 8.
What was the most challenging part you faced while developing this game?
One of the challenges we, Playcaso and Fancy Factory, faced jointly as a team was to reduce the turn-around time and iterations in the game during the development process, primarily caused because of the geographical and time zone difference. We however implemented processes and with the help of project management tools and instant messaging software were able to tackle this issue.
Tell us more about your association with Germany based developer Fancy Factory? How did it materialize? How has been your experience working with Fancy Factory?
We initially connected with Fancy Factory on a professional networking forum. Fancy Factory was looking for a publisher and we happened to like their concept and got in touch with them.
It has been a really good experience working with Fancy Factory and we have learned a lot during the process and hope we were able to add value to Fancy Factory as well in the process.
How has been your experience working on ‘Slice the Ice’?
It has been quite an enriching experience. While we started off on the project in a publisher-developer relationship, as the game development progressed, both of us and Fancy Factory took the association to the next level by sharing ideas and going the extra mile to ensure that we deliver a polished product.
As a publisher what kind of projects do you like to work on?
As a Publisher, we are hoping and look forward to working with companies which have innovative ideas and games which push the envelope in terms of uniqueness and creativity.
We are primarily focused on casual, social games but are open to exploring projects which don’t necessarily fall in that category as well.
Playcaso has recently launched its global publishing program. Tell us more about it? How is that going to take shape? What is it is purpose? What are the grey areas you would like to work on?
The publishing program has been designed keeping in mind the needs and requirements of indie developers.
Coming from a development background, we realize the efforts which one needs to put in – not just building a good game but also promoting it. We customize the program depending on the requirement of the developer such that it is a win-win for both the developer and us.
We like to think of this as a program designed by the developers, for the developers, of the developers.
What sort of services will you be offering?
Depending on the requirement of the developer we customize our plan and offer the relevant services.
It could range from pure funding to funding plus support or even the whole suite. The focus is to chip in where the developer needs assistance and help them focus on what they do best … build games.
What is the USP that Playcaso brings to the table? What’s different about your publishing program compared to the others that are available?
To quote from Kung Fu Panda, “There is no secret ingredient, it’s just you”.
We believe that we will give our best shot to work closely with and help our development partners build games which users will enjoy playing.
If, as a publisher, you help in building and launching a game which gives your partner and you a positive ROI (ideally in multiples), and which appeals and engages users to play it again and again, I think you have found the secret sauce.
‘Slice The Ice’ is one of your first titles in this program? How did you zero upon starting your program with this?
Yes, Slice The Ice is the first title from the publishing program. Fancy Factory was one of the initial developers we had connected with when we launched the program and when we got involved as Publishers, the game was already in early stages of production because of which we decided to launch it as our first title under this program.
With such cut throat competition today in the gaming industry. How do you see an indie developer survive?
With competition getting fiercer by the day, it is becoming increasingly challenging not just for indie developers but also established studios to survive and scale.
A developer can improve and increase its chances of survival and scalability by focusing on fundamental aspects like quality of content, uniqueness of concept, monetization capability, and discoverability and reduced go-to-market time.
So, how does the team look like at Playcaso?
The team at Playcaso is an amazing combination of experience, enthusiasm and sheer talent. We have team members who have been a part of the gaming industry in India from its early years as well as young, new comers who bring a fresh perspective to the process.
How do you think the gaming sector is currently poised in India?
The last few years have seen a steady increase in the number of gaming companies out of India, especially indie developers focused on building global quality products. The mindset is also shifting from being a services oriented industry to product focused industry.
Having said that, both the services focused companies and product focused companies continue to co-exist and grow in the gaming ecosystem in India. As with every growing industry, the next couple of years will also see some amount of consolidation in this space.
Speaking about IP, do you think the revolution is truly here?
Yes, I think Indian studios are beginning to realize the importance and value of IP and are focusing on creating IPs which attract and engage the end users.
How have you been going about marketing Playcaso?
We have been pretty low profile as far as marketing Playcaso is concerned. Whatever little marketing buzz which has been generated, has been through pure word of mouth of our friends in the industry.
How beneficial is it in the long term scheme of things working on a freemium model?
Let me clarify here that the freemium model is not a magic wand which will do away with all the woes any publisher or developer faces when it comes to monetizing a game.
The freemium model is a business model which publishers/ developers need to explore for monetization depending on whether their game is designed to implement the freemium model.
Yes, studies have shown that freemium games have a better chance of generating a positive ROI in comparison to premium games but it predominantly depends on the game, its production quality, its uniqueness of concept and its discoverability and how well integrated is the monetization model in the game design.
What are the challenges you see that Playcaso faces as of now?
The key challenge we face is how to scale rapidly and find the right talent to meet the demands and expectations of our stake holders including our developer partners, our users and our investors.
What’s on the horizon for Playcaso?
New platforms to explore, new games to publish, new milestones to achieve… the horizon is the beginning of a new journey!
In terms of numbers, how many titles can we see from you in 2012?
We have 2-3 more games in the pipeline which should be getting released by end of this year or early 2013.
What mechanisms do MMOs and social games use to prevent players from “beating the game” in 40 hours, like they would a typical console game?
The thing which all developers and publishers strive for is how to keep their gamer engaged and involved for a long duration and keep him coming back to the game. It is a constant endeavor of MMO and social game publishers to keep offering newer challenges and additional content in the game to attract new users and retain existing ones. The same trend is also being followed in mobile games, both casual as well as social.
What sort of companies are you hoping to work with?
As mentioned above, we are hoping and look forward to working with companies which have innovative ideas and games which push the envelope in terms of uniqueness and creativity.
We are primarily focused on casual, social games but are open to exploring projects which don’t necessarily fall in that category as well. We are also in talks with various platform companies and monetization platforms with whom we are looking to partner to increase the reach and monetization capability of our games.
As an Indian company, will you also Indian developers and companies in launching and marketing their titles?
Absolutely! We would be glad to working with Indian developers and companies to explore how we can collaborate with them to launch and market their titles.
Would you like to add anything?
We would like to reach out to your subscribers and ask them what they think about our game Slice The Ice. The game is available to download for free from the iTunes App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and has been getting good reviews both from the end users as well as some of the review sites like fun2tap.com (Rated 5 stars) and 148Apps.com (Rated 3.5 / 5)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slice-the-ice/id543874829?ls=1&mt=8