A weekend for the gamers, by the gamers is the best way to describe NASSCOM Game Developer Conference. The event was held at The Westin, Pune and had more than 1,300 delegates, more than 60 speakers and over 40 sessions built around the Indian video game industry with the sessions divided into Marketing, Game Design, Indie and Technology. Being one of the members of the Game media I felt the conference is doing a lot good for the new and upcoming game developers and artists who want to build a career in this exciting industry.
With rise of the smartphones in the country, the casual gamers seem to be the right audience for the developers and this is what we got to see at the conference. Mobile games are currently the fad and Indie developers from India are getting to the level of their international counterparts. The PC games are also back into business with special mention to Ogre Head Studio’s Asura and Pyrodactyl Games’s Unrest which are experimenting with different genres and taking the Indian gaming scene to world stage.
Industry veteran, Bob Bates was the inaugural keynote speaker and had a lot of insights regarding the game design practices that have helped a lot of different big video game studios and encouraged the Indian developers to take inspiration from these.
Speaker like Sho Sato and Oliver Jones showed how to make inroads into the different Asian markets and also how the Indian theme based games have a lot more impact on the Indian audience.
The kids from GameJam Titans were also there to showcase their games which they had developed earlier, but were now better to play as they had worked on improving the gameplay and design aspects. It was also very promising to witness the response to their games on display and the promise of what the Indian gaming scene will be in the coming years.
NASSCOM along with Dhruva Interactive’s Gametantra announced NASSCOM 10,000 start-ups, where the gaming start-ups applying to NASSCOM will receive mentoring and incubation services through Gametantra’s Bengaluru facility.
All in all the experience at the NGDC was great, with the industry touching upon a lot of young students and the veterans showing up to support them. With newer technologies also debuting at the conference (Oculus Rift), the developers seem to be gearing up for taking Indian gaming to the next level.