Gaming – Indian Context

Over the past decade, India has gone through a rise in digital forms of gaming mainly due to
the growth in the ownership and usage of digital media and applications. For instance, PC-
ownership in households has increased to 7.8 Mn, active Internet using population to 36 Mn
(Source: I Cube 2008) and mobile subscribers to more than 471 Mn (Source: TRAI Sep.
2009).

An involved user of these digital formats is young; belonging to the 7-25years of age. As a
result, services offered on these formats are generally focused towards youth. With the
assumption of continued growth in such usage and dissemination of digitized options; digital
gaming industry provides a promising future for India. Video Games have been a popular
pastime across the world since the 1970s. The popularity of video games has grown with the
advancements in digital technology, mobile communications and the Internet in the 1990s.

Gaming can be classified into -

 PC Gaming- Involves playing video games on a personal computer (PC). The

advantage with PC gaming is that it offers rich multimedia experience and easy
usability. 

 Console Gaming – In console gaming, games are played using game consoles. Apart
from a game console, it requires an output device such as a computer monitor or a
television and an input device called controller. Some of the popular gaming consoles
are Sony's Play Station and Microsoft's Xbox.

 Multiplayer Gaming - As the name suggests, this involves playing games with other
gamers (usually between five to ten players), sometimes even with players in different
parts of the globe...

 MMOGs: Massively multiplayer online game are simply video games where
thousands of players simultaneously in a virtual world.

Racing, Sports games, Action and Fighting games make up top Genres for Gaming in India.
Some of the famous online games are "Farmville", "Zynga Poker", "Mafia Wars", "YoVille",
"Cafe World", "FishVille" and "PetVille", which are available on Facebook, MySpace, MSN
Games, Tagged, Yahoo! and the iPhone.

Presently, the gaming genres are primarily derived from various sporting themes – such as
cricket, racing, shooting and the like. These genres are immediate markets as Indians seem
fanatics of such kinds of sports. Lately, however, there has been a shift in attitude of gamers
towards enjoying role-playing games and other online games that provide an option of
socialising. There is also a predilection towards platforms that offer “on-the-move” gaming
due to which some forms of console and mobile gaming are popular.

In the social scene as well, a lot of Internet users have started to go beyond the regulars like
Orkut, Facebook, iBiBo, BigAdda, etc. Virtual worlds have been in the news quite a bit in the
last year. The Virtual Worlds also known as Metaverses or Massively Multiplayer Universes
are attracting a lot of attention. The most popular ones are the World of Warcraft and Second
Life accounting for more than 20 million worldwide “residents”. The numbers from India
have not been that high, but all the same, Internet users are sitting up and noticing these

High profile launches of Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3 in India brought in a new
dimension to gaming altogether. The jittery gameplay and graphics gave way to movie-like
story line with super cool graphics and animations. The real-life simulation games, looked
less like simulation and more real life, making the game play more engrossing and
captivating. However, the high-priced consoles have still not reached the Indian masses.

The console and offline PC games are bringing in the hardcore gamers. And then with the
new emerging formats Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), Social gaming
(gaming on social platforms like Facebook and Orkut) and Bollywood games, engagement
from user side is increasing. Browser-based MMOGs such as Wanted by Zapak.com are
recent introductions in the Indian online gaming market.

Present Indian Situation

India with one of the biggest untapped gaming market in the world with less than 1%
penetration holds a huge potential with industry bodies estimating that it would reach $425
million by 2010.

In gaming industry, a number of Indian companies are changing their business models and
are moving from outsourcing to co-production models. Amar Chitra Katha, the popular
graphic novel for kids, has come up with online gaming portal for kids between 6-12 years of
age. UTV India games-India’s largest gaming company and a pioneer in the mobile and
online gaming space has expanded into the global games market.

Need for Research

A new company XYZ wants to enter Indian gaming industry and would like to have its own
development centre. They like to promote their own games in India and have been wondering
how to do it. Obviously there is need to understand gaming enthusiasts. Should we go to only
those people who are gaming enthusiasts or also to people who are not into gaming? And
then the question is how to communicate about different games with the customers. There
will be hundreds of games and how can we brand all the games. Will it be a good idea to
promote games by developing a concept of branded gaming parlours? Another idea that is
being debated is to promote their games through a web site which can provide preview of
their games. Or should they follow some other strategy? But before taking these decisions,
the company is interested to understand the Indian gamers’ mindset so that they could use the
insights to develop games which cater to Indian audience and develop an appropriate
communication strategy.