Gaming potential

Industry players should take lessons from the music industry to create lasting value

China’s gaming sector, the largest in the world at about $25 billion, recently had its new fantasy mobile game Honour of Kings earn more than 6 bn RMB (Rs 5,870 crore) in a quarter alone, with more than 60 million gamers playing daily. The game monetises by selling virtual items where players spend over 1,000 RMB and make new friendships online. Although India's GDP per capita, at $1,700, pales in comparison to China’s $8,100, the state of gaming in India is all set for a dramatic change.

Over the next few years, more than 400 million Indians are expected to join the banking system, and with access to smartphones and digital transactions, the gaming industry is expected to touch Rs 6000 crore by 2020. Currently, over 120 million gamers in India play mobile games for over 30 minutes a day with industry estimates of 500 million game downloads every month. Besides macroeconomic factors and digitisation, four key mantras will unlock monetisation and create large multi-billion dollar gaming enterprises.

Premium local content: It aids discovery, a global challenge for game creators with millions of titles on the app stores. In China, over 90 per cent of spending in games, is driven by games made by Chinese developers. Indian IP games like Being Salman have seen adoption in over 60+ cities, a testament to how popular culture and local IPs can drive breadth of adoption. In soon to be launched Sachin Saga game, a taste of history and real motion captures of Sachin Tendulkar, drove 300 per cent higher player engagement during tests, and more 200 minutes of game play a week, much higher than traditional cricket games.

Technology: It ensures millions of players can play your game daily and build friendships inside the game, in ways they are built on social networks. Games where players collaborate, make new friends and compete, can retain and thus motivate players to spend up to 1,000 per cent more in buying virtual items. In addition, the server infrastructure capabilities to host thousands of concurrent game play sessions, ability to match-make millions of players in real time, and strong artificial intelligence systems built around consumer behaviour are important for conversions into paying gamers. By leveraging telemetry data, purchases or personalised ads can be mapped to user persona for best results.

Global benchmarks in quality: Indian gamers are looking for best local content, but it must be delivered with great quality to drive engagement and monetisation. Fast load times, right and affordable pricing, minimal crashes and real-time synchronous or multiplayer game play need to be delivered with low latency like top grossing global games for Indian players to perceive it as value for money investments.

Studio’s culture: It can create the next big hit. Failures are a part of game development, but teams must be oriented around pioneering new game play, innovating game mechanics, taking decisions based on data, creating player and fan communities, and building games that last for years. Investment in the team's culture accelerates a process of innovation that produces best-in-class games that are built to last.

The music industry offers a glimpse of how great engagement and content can create lasting value, with 40 per cent conversion to payers in top global apps like Spotify. We are not too far away from that future in gaming, but the core mantras for success will differentiate companies that are built to last, from those that fade away in the billion-dollar future of gaming in India. Author is Vice-president, products & marketing, JetSynthesys