The final session on Day one of 3GSM India focused on gaming; moderated by Gopal Krishna, COO of Handygo.com, the session featured Sameer Bangara, COO of Indiagames, Salil Bhargava, CEO of Jump Games and Ashay Padwal, Head of Technology for Mauj Telecom.
Responding to Krishna’s question on 3D gaming, Bangara said that 3D games are a very small piece of revenue. On multiplayer, they are working on platforms like SNAP, and multiple platforms require large investment. According to Bhargava, the real growth is in casual gaming, and mobile connected gaming is still a few years away. Casual games can’t compete with console games, but if you look at it, Tetris is still a huge brand in itself, and it’s a casual game. Bangara agreed, and mentioned “Skipping Stone”, which is a one button award-winning game.
Padwal spoke about billing leakages being a big issue, and for sampling to be evolved for gamers. On reports on gaming, Bhargava said that they see the reports but never get to talk to the analysts on how they reached the figures that they mention. He also mentioned the “rubbish” that floats around in the name of gaming, wherein people who spend Rs.50 on games get awful games. He also feels that there are cases where people download games and can’t find them on the phone – there is a need for consumer education. Pay per play really worked for Reliance, and 60 percent of consumers who sampled games returned for more. The subscription model, which was a huge success, was pulled for technical reasons, but will be reintroduced. Padwal feels that side loading using PCs will happen, but the operator needs to get its act together.
Bangara mentioned Hutch’s sunset policy, where games that aren’t doing well get pulled to ease the consumers discovery process. He mentioned that Diner Dash became quite popular a game among women, so it’s not that women don’t game. I asked the panelists for their comments on multiplayer gaming, p2p games and embedded games. Bangara said that Nokia has stopped doing embedded games, and prefers to offer a catalogue. He has doubts about MMOG space unless residential access increases. Gamer sampling needs to be improved, since penetration is currently sub-1 percent. The p2p games on GSM has problems of the OEM not building any DRM – the moment they launch games, they’re available on Russian sites. Bhargava mentioned that a couple of companies tried to start p2p games in South Africa, and had to shut down. The MMOG space is going to happen, though it isn’t happening just yet. Try before you buy is an operator issue, and the billing needs to accommodate that.