Notes from the FICCI Frames ’09

Anand Ramachandran
First Published : 21 Feb 2009 10:34:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 21 Feb 2009 11:04:55 AM IST

I was at FICCI Frames last week, owing to their kindness in inviting me to be on the jury for the BAF (Best Animated Frames) awards, for the gaming categories. These awards have been constituted primarily to encourage Indian game developers and publishers in our fledgling industry by recognising their efforts — especially on the mobile and casual games platforms. Oddly enough, there were also PC and Console game categories where the final nominees were international heavyweights such as Spore and Gears of War 2 — which were entered by the Indian marketing/distribution arms of EA and Microsoft respectively.

However, the interesting parts were the entries on offer in the casual and mobile gaming categories. Mobile was surprisingly decent, with the winning entry being a bizarrely faithful port of Bioshock, of all games, by Indiagames. Of course, it’s an isometric scrolling action-adventure, not an FPS, but the story and sequence of events are exactly faithful to the award-winning original.

Casual games were a different story, with none of the entries being of a standard that was deserving of recognition with an award. Again, strangely, there was much debate on this among members of the jury. Those of us from the industry scored the games completely differently from those who were young gamers — leading to much amusement and introspection on the disconnect between the guys who make the games and those who play them. We eventually respected the views of the gamers, and handed out the award to the game that they felt was best.

But to dwell upon this difference for a moment more — there were certain features in a game that the designers and developers in the jury, myself included, felt were elegant and well-implemented, that the gamer crowd didn't care for and thought were bad. And certain bugs and instances of bad programming or graphics that we were bothered by, they didn’t even notice. Much food

for thought.

Amidst all this jury duty, I also found time to attend some of the sessions on the gaming industry. The most interesting thing, for me, to emerge here was that, for the first time in a conference like this, Microsoft and Sony were willing to share some unofficial sales figures. Microsoft shared an unofficial figure of ‘less than 100,000’ XBOX units (of course, that could even be 5,000). Sony claimed around 400,000 PS2s, 120,000 PSPs and 35,000 PS3 units sold. While these figures don’t sound very high in light of worldwide figures, it’s still a start. And it’s up to us to get them up — so each of you go out and convince all your friends to buy game consoles!

Overall, the gaming industry honchos sounded a lot less gung-ho and more measured and pragmatic in their talks this year. While they’re still cautiously optimistic about the growth of gaming in India, they’re not quite shouting from the rooftops about how gaming shall conquer all. Perhaps it’s all for the better, though. In fact, the dominant thought seemed to be that the only challenge for the gaming industry is that things are taking longer than earlier expected (my opinion being that the expectations were too high to begin with). Nobody doubts that gaming is here to stay; the only problem is that it isn’t going to hit critical mass anytime soon.

I also got the chance to play some Guitar Hero with a member of the development team from Red Octane, Chennai. Needless to say, I got my sorry butt whipped!

GamingIndians Interview
Atindriya Bose, Country Manager, Sony Computer Entertainment India

...

GI: Five Singstar games have been released in India on the PlayStation 2 (Bollywood, 80s, 90s, Pop, Rock), but Singstar for the PlayStation 3 is still not available in India. Can we expect that soon?

AB: We are debating that. The PlayStation 3 version will no doubt be popular, but the only issue is that the additional features that you get from the PlayStation Store are not yet available in India. We do not want to put out a product and charge an amount when gamers are not getting the most out of it. We would love to roll it out, but it will depend on the PlayStation Store.


GI: The last time we spoke, I had asked you about the price difference in games on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Metal Gear Solid 4 was recently released in India at an MRP of Rs 3,499. Isn’t there any way Sony can limit the pricing of PlayStation 3 games? It’s getting a little out of hand.

AB: We have created our own price structure – Rs 1,799, Rs 2,499 and Rs 2,799. EA is also following a similar structure. Together, this caters to 70 to 80 per cent of the market. The third parties take our advice when appointing distributors and talk to us about market size and pricing strategies. So I can play an advisory role with regards to what volumes they can expect at certain price points. Eventually, it is up to them to bring the product at their price. For the PlayStation 2, we have made a substantial investment and we have local replication for PlayStation 2 games. For anyone who is going to use local replication, we put a ceiling on what the pricing should be.

...

GI: We had spoken about Sony working with Indian game developers. Soon after that, Sony announced a tie-up with 13 Indian developers. How is this progressing?

AB: We had a developers’ conference in India. There were 50 developers present there, out of which, we picked 13. We are in different levels of talks for different projects and many of these developers have been given development kits based on the merit of the project.


GI: Are there any projects from these developers that you can talk about?

AB: Most projects are in very early stages so we can’t talk about them. The one we are definitely talking about is our tie-up with Aurona Technologies for a game based on Hanuman. Once thing to keep in mind is this is not a cartoon-ish kids' game. It will be a serious game with high production values. This will be on the PlayStation 2.


GI: Which platforms will these companies develop games for?

AB: While there is a certain level competence, there isn’t enough competence for end-to-end game development in India. Many Indian games will base their break even points based on the domestic market and the Indian diaspora. So the PlayStation 2 is the best bet. But if we see merit and competence, if they come up with concepts for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network or PlayStation Portable, we can take it further. The only thing is those projects would need to be evaluated with greater care, because we don’t want anyone to invest and not make money. We’re here for the long haul and so are these developers.


GI: Will these games be sold in India only?

AB: We are targetting the Indian diaspora initially. Sony is open to allowing these developers to approach other publishers, but if Sony is publishing the game, we will have the rights to take it to other regions. And our feeling is that, with time, many Indian games can and will have global appeal.