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At India Gaming Summit - Gaming Platforms – Online / Mobile / PC / Console
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WATGame was invited to the Zapak Gaming Summit 2008 I Mumbai. We reached late. Session 3 and 4 were what we were able to attend. In this two-part article, we give a rather detailed overview of what was discussed in the summit.
Session 3 was on Gaming Platforms – Online / Mobile / PC / Console
Moderator – Alok Kejriwal, Co-founder and CEO, Games2win.com
Panelists –
Ajay Khanna, EA
Ninad Chhaya, Executive Vice President, Jump Games,
Muslim Kapasi, Excel Productions
The Session started by Alok asking questions the way the business model works for different platforms. The different panelists were from companies making Games for different platforms. While EA (Electronic Arts) has been traditionally been a console and PC game maker, Jump Games, now a part of Reliance ADAG group, makes games for mobile devices.
Ajay described how the business model works. According to him, the whole idea is to create and invest in properties. Game properties. These are the brands within the games that we know. It might be a movies like Lord of The Ring, a person, like Tiger Woods or an independent IP developed by the gaming company, like Need For Speed. In each case, the idea is to build on this property. So, with time, we see more versions of the games based on a property. We identify a property by the series of games build around it. Thus starts the monetization of the property.
The marketing is done through popular retail channels, where they keep the game on the shelf of thousand of stores. In here the purchase is driven mainly by impulse. Another sales channel is direct marketing, where a user might be allowed to download the game directly to her PC. This is a BIG HIT – BIG MISS game, made for the big players.
Ninad started by giving a comparison saying that if EA was like a movie studio, Jump games was more like a TV producer. The scale is different and so is the consumption channel. So the business model is make a game, and then distribute it to the telcos. The revenues-sharing with the telcos over game downloads is what brings in the money. He also pointed out that the placemen of the game in the stack of the games is very important. A game, if places on the first page of the download lists, is sure to get decent downloads, than the one placed later on.
Kapasi touched upon some pints in visual merchandising. He stressed the needs for creating different touch points for the consumer. These are the places where the consumer can be engaged and be potentially turned into a customer.
Alok Kejriwal went on to explain how the VCs do not explain the online gaming business properly. That’s one of the reasons for stagnant growth in this sector. Alok also put forward the point of Edugaming, that is, games for education. All the panelists agreed that Edugaming is something that ha s a lot of potential. Alok was also very confident on in-game advertising. His “front-of-envelope” calculation shows that in-game advertising will grow to be around $500-800 million. In-game item sale is also something that can fetch a good part of the revenues.
A very interesting question that Alok asked was – Why not Moser-Baer effect on the games? Why not make them available for Rs.50? Ajay replied to this by saying that the cost of game development doesn’t gives the freedom to cut prices to those levels. PC games cost around Rs.50 crore in production.
Regarding the question about what has changed in the last few years, Ninad replied that iPhone has come now. According to a report, the iPhone is the single largest distribution channel for flash games now. Earlier, the consumers used to go to the games, now the games have to come to the consumers.
A valid point of piracy was rasied in the discussion, to which Ajay replied by saying why not let the piracy flourish. He gave the example of Napster/MySpace. How unknown bands are now distributing their music on MySpace. Kapasi says, its theft. The circumstances are different. The unknown bands on MySpace are the ones which are not putting in considerable investment in producing their music. Whereas, the commercial music production costs money and it’s important to get the returns on investment. Piracy, thus hits the music companies.
A very good example that Ajay gave was of China. Once we was in China, in a street full of people selling pirated DVDs. One of the sellers put an offer in front of him. He said that if Ajay busy four DVDs from him, he will give him the membership to his club and he can buy the subsequent titles at a much lower price then. Just an eye opener on how far have the pirates gone.
The Session concluded by everyone foreseeing more gadgets everywhere, capable of playing games. There will be games all around us. And causal gamers will only increase.
(Via - WATGame)
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hello there…
can u plz tell me the upcoming pc gaming events in india.m a hardcore gamer but wont find any gamin tournaments to take part into…or else gimme any website that gives me the idea abt future tournaments..
thanks