When Alok moderates a panel, be ready for some wacky quips, clever analogies, unpredictable questions, his wicked sense of humour and of course his legendary way of being totally candid!
So this was probably the first time I watched a gaming panel, live. ‘Gaming for Milennia’ was a part of NASSCOM Product Conclave 2015. I was intrigued ‘coz anything mobile or games is not my cuppa at all!
But I must say, the panel was engaging & entertaining and not all greek-latin-jargon as I thought it would be!
Meet the Panelists:
[Note: Anuj Tandon has recently joined Nazara Games to manage its mobile game publishing business.]
What was interesting was that each panelist’s model was different. The kind of games they create, their approach, etc. were totally different. It was like having a platter of cheese, crackers, pineapples, olives & wine – each very different in their own flavour, yet when put together make the perfect evening 🙂
I’m attempting a partial transcription instead of just sharing the highlights to give you a sample of the action. But honestly, watching the video is way more fun! Invest the 45 mins at night or over the weekend if you can’t do it right now. It’s worth it!
[you may need to increase your volume settings]
Quick intro’s:
Manish: “Nazara Technologies is the largest mobile gaming company operating in 236 countries. We’re in gaming subscription service Consumers across these countries can consume as many games for a subscription fee. Which they have to pay upfront.”
Alok:
“Gaming is entertainment – people play games to have fun!
We’re into the business of creating fun! There are many approaches to making fun. Making fun is very difficult and not always be fun. But making people believe what you made is fun, is even tougher. Because what you think is fun, may not be fun for someone else.
Game Formats:
- The big one time SHOLAY – the star blockbuster big format – one big movie – whether by design or by luck it happens. (Star Trek, Star Wars…)
“Saurabh invented Teen Patti and became the Sholay of Gaming in India!” @rodinhood
- A little more softer approach – a lot of content that people love to watch and that goes on and on eg Friends. But you don’t miss it if you don’t watch it.
- Channel business – Everything we watch. Kids watch Cartoons – you don’t remember the episode of cartoons, but you still enjoy the cartoon. The channel business doesn’t peg you down to one piece of content but the channel itself is a whole lot of fun.
Another example is Arnab Goswami (who I think is an entertainment channel). The point – someone has figured out a content idea to make it fun and engaging every day.”
Exploring the panelists’ approaches:
Alok To Saurabh: “Was it by design or while meditating did Lord Shiva come to you and say you should be building Teen Patti? What happened man?”
Saurabh: “A lot of luck! I’ve been a mobile entrepreneur for the last 13 yrs – started my first co. in 2002 sold it in 2005. Started Octro in 2006. But we’ve been doing gaming only in the last 3 years. It was just overnight that we decided to get into gaming and nothing else. The only consumer apps that seemed to be making money then, were games.”
“I came into the biz of gaming to actually make money! And that was my conviction.”
“We started off as a technology company and never imagined building content. We started building tech for other gaming cos. I wasn’t a great sales guy so when I went to gaming companies but no one wanted to buy our stack.”
Alok: “Did you go to 200 taxi players of India, did you go to the men’s room to ask people what they play? WHY TEEN PATTI?”
Saurabh: “Teen Patti was one of the most popular (physical) games in India. We were not trying to create a candy crush or the type of games Alok makes…”
[Alok – I wish I’d make the kind of money you make!]
Saurabh: “We never really thought we were capable enough that way.
All we did was looked at what was working well offline, and digitized it.
We didn’t think about how the game mechanics works – these games have been played over generations – the games have lasted for a long time – have long shelf lives.
Last year we did some calculations and we had more minutes of engagement than IPL!
That is the size and time spent on games in India!”
Alok to Anuj: “Your approach has been a little unique – you’ve taken the platform + hardware especially on Flick Tennis games that you’ve made and exploited the beauty of what the hardware allows you and gamified the hardware; at the same time built content that’s been refreshing (not the 29th cricket game like we have!). So what has been your approach? You’re the youngest of the pack – cleanest in your mind, why you did you make Flick Tennis, Dead Among Us?”
Anuj: We are first time entrepreneurs…
…all we had was 1 lac rupees when we started. We bought an iPhone and a Mac.
That was our first purchase back in 2010. That’s how we became indie game developers for iOS.
The idea initially was not to build a company, but to prove that we could build awesome games.
When we started as first timers, we wanted to do everything ourselves. We created the entire game engine ourselves, all the complex technologies you get off the shelf these days, we created from ground up. The paid model was working well when we created games. 99 cents a game and you were featured on the games store and your life was made for the next 3 months. Then you created the next game.”
Alok: Why did you make Dead Among Us?
Anuj: “I think internally also, we constantly wanted to challenge ourselves – what kind of user experience we were able to deliver. If you look at traditional shooters they usually play with 2 thumbs on mobile. But when we travel to Asian countries/travel in metros – the usual game playing position is that one hand is playing the game. We wanted to recreate the shooting experience – when you play the game it has to be played with one hand. We wanted to solve that problem in a game – that excited us!”
Alok: “So you created a commuter game, but with a shooter.”
Alok to Rohith: “I really don’t know why you do games since you are so successful in the non-games biz. Rohith’s the blue eyed boy of Apple. Your approach has been very different. Very high quality, very intense, very long term game play, non-Indian and not even on android. You’re the quintessential app developer who if is on iTunes US, is at home. So don’t you like to make stuff for Indians?”
Rohith: It’s ultimately biz – for us when we started it was all Robosoft and we used to help companies build apps and build games as well. In the early days of Apps Store we saw how democratized the distribution was. Just before that, we were really struggling to get licenses from DS, Nintendo, Microsoft and it was crazy. And here was this platform came along and said distribute worldwide. We just loved it. ‘Coz as a services co. our clients were based worldwide. We were building products for our customers, winning awards for them, this should be easier – you just put it out there and it makes money. It made a lot of money for us initially ‘coz with Apple features months were made, not days.
WordsWorth our second game became the top word game – # 1 in UK, US. People still play that game.
The focus was always about building great quality titles for the world market. Initially premium, gradually freemium.
Our 16th game Star Chef which is out right now is doing extremely well for us – It’s our Angry Birds moment.
Rovio had to wait for their 52nd game to become a hit.
Fortunately we didn’t have to wait that long.”
Alok to Manish: “You’re an IIT, IIM – have all the II’s attached to you – every head hunter calls you for the next big e-com job, why the heck do you do gaming? And secondly, why would you as a professional among us bother with this industry? Pls tell us about your amazing approach…”
Manish: “When I was at Unilever, I used to handle Rin brand and used to meet lots of housewives. It was my job to understand consumer’s insights. Being an engineer, I said enough of safai ka kaam. Changing consumer habits been my passion, I’ve always believed communication really changes consumer habits. After 6 yrs at Unilever I realised technology is gonna be the greatest disruptor for changing consumer habits. That’s when I made my shift to digital.
Gaming happened to me by serendipity. At UTV I looked after 1.2 of Indiagames. To me, 2.2 of gaming happened at Reliance Games. There I figured out that games are the most beautiful consumer facing product, which is when I fell in love with this.”
I’d done e-com in 2006/2008 when e-com wasn’t huge.
But that’s all baniya-dhandha which I know, which even my chacha does.”
Alok: “You’re taking a platform approach. You are content-agnostic. You’re saying hey guys build all you want – but come to me – ‘coz I will create much more value for you.”
Manish: “My take on the industry is that studios find it very difficult after one hit, two hits and they really struggle after that. Gradually they either morph into publishers. At Nazara, we’re only focused on India. We’re not looking at the US or Europe market. We’re putting all of our eggs into a single consumer audience – first time mobile gamer.”
“I was never a gamer. I played 4 hours of cricket outdoors. Teen Patti is what I played all my life.”
“In India there is a huge opportunity to bring consumers a first time mobile game users an awesome experience – discreet games like teen patti, or create channels and give them curated games. I believe (with my marketing-consumer background) that curated channels targeted very sharply will help first time mobile gamers to understand and appreciate better rather than throwing them on Google Play where they get intimidated.
We’ve done a study to support this hypothesis. Some of the findings:
60% only know Google Play.
Within this 60% ONLY 50-60% have downloaded a game from Google Play.
How do they get games? From their friends or by side-loading at a shop.
So there is a huge market where you are already talking to smartphone users. The next wave of 200-300 billion people will still be unaware.
So there is an opportunity to reach to these people by partnering with Google Play as well as alternate distinguishing channels.”
***
Pls watch the entire video to enjoy all the insights shared by the esteemed panelists.
What follows + some quotable quotes (would love for you to add some as well!)
Engagement
Ads in games (approaches)
Bollywood in Games
“Anyone of your engaged user might become a paid user so be careful in exposing your user to an ad. The mixed approach works best” @Anuj_Tandon
“This is what I call the curse of casual games: Some of the users love the ads so much they go away from the game to watch it. They are disloyal and click on the ad, but this disloyalty is what makes us money!” @rodinhood
“It’s a very contradictory kinda world to live in, where we say, pls go away ‘coz your CTR is gonna get me some money.” @rodinhood
“Instead of saying that the Indian consumer is not willing to pay, perhaps we haven’t created the kind of content he is willing to pay for!” @aggarwalsaurabh
“Bollywood is Indian content done right” @aggarwalsaurabh
@rodinhood, @rohithbhat, @manishdiesel, @aggarwalsaurabh & @Anuj_Tandon
****
