Recap 2008: Online & Mobile Gaming
Online gaming has been heavily invested in since Reliance ADAG’s Zapak.com came onto the scene in 2006 and started investing crores of rupees in this business. 2008 was a year in which online gaming players forged tie ups, went mobile and also chalked out plans to go international. The top online gaming sites of India are zapak.com, games2win.com, indiagames.com and new initiatives this year by sify in antzill.com. As far as mobile games are concerned there are multiple players but the name that comes at top of the mind is jump games and 7seas technologies. There is also hovr and the recent entrant to the Indian market in greystripe.
Lets have a look at the year gone by for online and mobile gaming in India:
The year started with our exclusive interview with Salil Bhargava of Jump games who spoke about mobile gaming and its potential in India. The year 2007 had ended with top online gaming players looking to make strides offline with increased gaming tournaments and gaming cafe’s and thats what made us question whether gaming as a form of entertainment could challenge TV?
There were also new models of engaged gaming suggested in the start of the year and a couple of gaming surveys by games2win.com and indiagames threw up interesting results like Online gaming had 3 million gamers and Gamers spend an average of 10 minutes per visit. As per plan Zapak starting making strides into launching a more aggressive offline presence by announcing a new gaming tournament for corporates! Whats more it even started luring online gamers with promise of cash to be won on their site.
The offline foray didn’t stop for Zapak at corporate gaming events it went a step further by announcing its plans to launch 500+ gaming cafes and was already looking at Russia China and Brazil markets. While all this was happening Jump Games tied up with Manchester United for mobile gaming and while jump games was doing that large portals like indiatimes were tying with ad monetized mobile games provider Hovr. Zapak continued to leverage current affairs and events in its gaming site by launching current affairs related games like the budget.
Around Feb-March-April Zapak forayed into game marketing and game merchandising in a big way for bollywood, IPL and the works. One of its first tie ups was with FXLabs for their PC Game Agni based on Malaika arora. Then the launches continued with games based on cartoon network, Knight riders and their first movie game merchandising deal with Bhoothnath. Zapak still continued its offline foray and this time organised a national gaming tournament. While zapak was at this expansion spree we cornered their COO Rohit Sharma for a WATShow during that time.
As Zapak for diversifying for varied revenue streams newer players were adding gaming as a vertical to their kitty.. Guys at Indyarocks added 900+ games to their social network while Indiagames launched an edutainment section as well as tied up with US based Popcap to distribute their mobile games.
As mid 2008 approached it was clear that Zapak was betting big on merchandising revenues but what wasn’t clear was their strategy for expansion outside India. It was being said that Zapak was looking for acquiring gaming companies in China and US. So while Zapak was still figuring out its strategy Indyarocks which had just launched its gaming channel of 800 odd games on its social network now tied up with FXlabs to create the largest gaming community on Indyarocks with over 5000 games.
As the twenty20 fever of cricket gripped the nation through summer Zapak realized that cricket was the single largest attraction for this country and even their online cricket game was a huge hit! This made them launch a special microsite for cricket games called zapakcricket.com
With all these games being launched the business model and the “how to make money from gaming?” question came into picture. This called for the launch of exclusive gaming ad network vertical by Tyroo and a gaming dedicated ad network by Games2win called inviziads. We also spoke to Shashi Reddy of FXLabs on in game advertising and its future.
Zapak was going strong on it game merchandising plans and tie up with Lovestory 2050 to do their merchandising. The same movie had a 3D game developed as well which was done by Rocking Pixels whom we interviewed on WATGame.
As the year crossed its mid mark we compared zapak’s strategy to that of games2win’s and we also questioned whether social gaming was the future of gaming. While we were asking these questions on the online side of gaming the mobile side of gaming was booming with zapak launching its mobile versions and Hovr tying up with yet another publisher in NDTV Active.
As the year moved more into its second half the slowdown started showing its signs.. Zapak admitted that downloads was not a good business model and hinted that they would be looking at selling gaming discs as a better revenue stream. While zapak was grappling with revenue model issues UTV acquired True games a US based MMORPG gaming company to complement its acquisition of Indiagames which had been done in 2007. We followed up with UTV to know more about this acquisition and their gaming strategy. Soon entertainment companies started waking up to the potential of gaming and production and content houses like Endemol announced their plans to venture into the gaming space.
The final three months of the year saw us talking to Rohit of Zapak again this time to know about his MMORPG and Merchandising strategy. We also did an indepth comparison of International strategies of both games2win and zapak. The year end was also filled with news of international mobile gaming players looking to launch or launching in India. Players like greystrip and gameloft were the first few to make their way to India. Zapak ended the year with another tie up to bolster their merchandising foray i.e. a tie up with Pringoo.
All in all the online and mobile gaming segment saw a lot of action in 2008 in terms of tie ups, new entrants and diversification of business and revenue models as well but the Indian scene still looks like a nascent market which has forced the top online gaming players to look international. In this year that is 2009 I expect gaming to consolidate its position and come up with better monetization tools and ideas for brands as well. Also gaming companies would start focussing on longterm engagement vs shortterm bursts in traffic.
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My views:
Mobile gaming has a very bleak future in India, at least for the next 2-3 years. Might take off after that.
I remember a mobile monday event in Mumbai (http://www.watblog.com/2007/07/17/monopoly-operators-holding-back-gprs-growth-mobile/).
‘I am providing Mobile Games for download completely free of cost on my site – would I face resistance from you as an operator?’ was a question directed at Mr. Harit Nagpal (Marketing Director, Hutch) by a representative of HovR.
The answer was a blunt – YES.
Mobile games are not going to make you money. A lot of people know that and are staying away from it. A few are betting on the future.
The profits are not there currently, advertising via mobile games is unheard of in India.
Zapak may benefit by having pre-installed games on Reliance handsets.
No one downloads games. No one likes to pay for downloading games.
Maybe a few users in Mumbai do…
but you can’t survive on them!