The gaming industry in India is at a corner where Indian developers are gunning for global glory and attracting the world’s attention. At the recently concluded Nasscom Game Developers Conference, a report was released which gives the overview of the Indian gaming industry, market indicators, market trends, salary trends and the overall road map ahead for the industry.
Considered as the third largest mobile subscriber base in the world currently, India’s gaming industry is exploding with the smartphone penetration; people accepting gaming as a form of entertainment is also an encouraging sign for local game developers to continue developing newer and fresher content.
According to the report, the Indian gaming industry is at the cusp of major transformation.
Being the second most populous country in world, of which two thirds are below 35 years, India is poised for a Digital revolution and the numbers are a testament to that.
As per the report, 354 million users have access to internet as of Q2 2015, an increase of 75 million from December 2014. With such high numbers, the internet penetration is still low at 19 per cent but is seeing a steady rise due to the increasing cheap smartphone availability in the country. The number is set to grow by 1.5x to 503 million by 2017.
Of the 354 million internet users, most (159 million) have had their first taste of internet through mobile phones and the availability of faster internet speeds at cheap rates more people from rural areas are set to be online.
Having begun in the late 1990s, the Indian gaming industry was largely positioned as a services industry, with companies like Dhruva Interactive, Lakshya Digital, Indiagames and Paradox which started working on international games and in a way introducing gaming to a number of engineers, artists and animators.
The industry picked up post 2005, with most of the guys who had the first taste of gaming starting their own firms, and international studios like Zynga, Electronic Arts, Glu and Ubisoft opening their backend operations and studios here. Homegrown companies like Games2win, Yellow Monkey, Nazara Technologies which started social gaming on the web and casual games on feature phones have successfully managed to sustain and grow over the years.
And 2010 onwards when the smartphones emerged in the country, small gaming studios in India have made inroads in the mainstream market. Today we see more than 300 gaming studios in the country which range from less than 10 member team (57 per cent) to even more than 500 member teams (a mere 2 per cent).
Demographically, Tier 1 cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi along with Tier 2 cities like Pune, Hyderabad and Jaipur are home to most of these studios.
Arcade games have been a favourite among the Indian developers with 39 per cent of them leaning towards this genre, followed by Puzzle and Race genres at 31 per cent apiece. Other genres also include Sport, Simulation, Action, Shooter and lastly the most grossing genre – Casino.
The report also highlighted the fact that casual games like Farmville and Candy Crush have also led to a sizeable spike in the number female gamers between the years 2011-2013.
The mobile gaming ecosystem has found its footing with the free 2 play model, and a majority of the developers (61 per cent) preferring to go that way, but at the same time there are a few who have also experimented with the Premium model and tasted some success in the global market. PC gaming in India continues to have its niche following with hardcore gamers consisting of a mere 1 million to 1.5 million from the overall 50 million active PC user base. While, consoles lifetime sales are around the 3.5 million mark, which includes hand-held consoles as well, of which less than a million are still active.
The report predicts that as in the case of PC and console gaming, most industry watchers expect the consumption of games on the platforms to increase due to the continued growth of mobile gaming. These are certainly positive signs for the Indian gaming ecosystem at large, and more industry gatherings and sharing of ideas by thought leaders will lead to faster growth and create a sustainable business model for many newcomers.