Meet India's indie game developers

According to a KPMG study, the gaming industry in India will grow from 290 million USD in 2016 to 1 billion USD by 2021. This will mainly be fuelled by India's huge youth population - while the average gamer around the globe is in their 30s, in India, they are in their 20s. International studios are clamouring for a piece of the Indian pie and several big names like Ubisoft, Zynga and Electronic Arts have already set up studios in India.

A still from Mukti

Unfortunately, most of these studios are cheap outsourcing outposts for games originating elsewhere, filling up the details of someone else's creative vision. The industry is further populated by studios that make games as a service for corporate clients from around the world. Most of these games use rehashed game concepts like Connect 3, discover hidden objects, endless runners etc. They require little creativity and are not exactly ground-breaking.

So, while we clearly have the talent to create videogames, the lack of grit comes in the way. We spoke to a few indie game studios that dared to take on these monster studios. to find out how they went about creating their game studio and how hard and how lucrative it is to work in the gaming industry.

Zainuddeen Fahadh

What does it take to create a game?
A game always begins with an idea. Thereon, it is taken to the prototype stage where the gameplay is tested for engagement and fun. "If the prototype doesn't align with the fun factor, we drop the idea and start over. Also, in its very early stages, we take feedback from friends and visit local meet-ups to show our prototype," says Himanshu Manwani of Xigma Games, a Bengaluru based game developer.

When the prototype gets the go-ahead, other aspects of the game like gameplay, programming, art, design and sound are worked on. Once the game is ready, it's a long process of polishing the game and squashing the bugs. This may seem like a job for a huge team, but budget and talent constraints force indie developers to work with skeletal teams comprising game designers, programmers and artists. Funding is a hurdle. Since they do not want to cater to only the service side of the industry, many studios are self-funded or they set the ball rolling with crowd-funding.

Himanshu Manwani

When Zainuddeen Fahadh from the Hyderabad-based Ogre Head Studio started his company to showcase games featuring Indian themes, he didn't want to answer to any investor. Along with a friend, he bootstrapped the project with '6 lakh, borrowed from their parents. The money ran out in six months, but by then they had already built a prototype for their now award-winning game Asura. They showed the prototype at a trade show in Dubai and managed to rope in customers. The resources earned from the Dubai gig were channelled into finishing the game.

Arvind Yadav from Pyrodactyl Games went the crowd-funding way, and ran a successful campaign on Kickstarter for his game Unrest. While this game got the desired funding, a lot of games in his stable are self-funded. "For a small indie developer, making sure you have enough money to live while finishing your game is key," Yadav says.

A passion project
In spite of the gold mine of potential that the domestic gaming industry holds, there is little help from the government. And, even in the sea of talent, the right kind of talent is also hard to come by as most minds lack the vision or the perspective to design a videogame. Burdening indie studios further, is the competition with service-based International outfits that offer good perks and salary. "It would really help the industry if they could provide some support in the form of funding or tax reliefs. The UK government, for instance, provides tax relief for their game development industry," Manwani says.

The government here provides no subsidies or financial assistance. It's no surprise then that over the last few years, a few studios from India have moved base abroad to reduce costs and tap into a better support system. The studios that remain here, however, choose to stay optimistic. "We might see some good successful titles in the coming two years from Indian studios. Also, AR and VR are picking up and we hope to see some revolutionary gamified utility products soon," says Vaibhav Chavan, whose Mumbai-based company underDOGS, after six years of working on Mobile games, are currently working on their first PC title 'Mukti'.

Vaibhav Chavan

Why go through this struggle when clearly the odds are stacked against you, we ask. Fahadh believes that the games they create are art. "They are a medium to showcase design or narrative skills, similar to what an actor or director showcases in cinema. It's a matter of passion," he says.

According to a KPMG study, the gaming industry in India will grow from 290 million USD in 2016 to 1 billion USD by 2021. This will mainly be fuelled by India's huge youth population - while the average gamer around the globe is in their 30s, in India, they are in their 20s. International studios are clamouring for a piece of the Indian pie and several big names like Ubisoft, Zynga and Electronic Arts have already set up studios in India.

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