How to build a Social Gaming Company out of India?

By Phil S on April 27, 2012 2 Comments / 1276 views

This is not a blog post, but more of a Quora like question thrown at the Rodinhoods. Am not sure how many of the interesting, smart, techy, awesome people in this community would see and care to contribute/answer, but I am a great believer of ‘Curated Crowd Wisdom’…..let’s see

So, I have an idea for a Social Game and i wish to build a company around it, in India.

Few specific answers I am seeking: The idea is to build a Social Game, that’s more meaningful than the Farming/Fishing and Drawing (no offence to any fans)

What kind of tech platform should the game be built on? (It’s a game to be built for Facebook) – flash, html5 are the options but, what all do I need to know before I choose one of them, in terms of scalability, features and shipping.
How to build the team and what should the team comprise of?
How big the team should be (rather, how lean the team can be), If I were to give myself just 3 to 6 months of time to get the prototype/MVP done and get into beta.
If I were to think that, we can build a billion dollar company on a simple idea of social games, like Zynga, out of India, with the kind of engineering talent we have, am I thinking crazy?
Anyone interested to join this enterprise?

~ Phil S

[Who am I? A Computer Science Engineer and an IIM Calcutta Graduate and currently heading Sales & Operations for the state ot Tamilnadu for Dabur India Ltd. ]

Comments

Phil S

2 Comments

Mahesh Khambadkone May 11, 2012, 8:04 am
When it comes to games, your biggest challenge will be to have a great game idea that is fun and can be implemented. And the pursuit is not to make your game more meaningful than the others, but equally fun as those.

On your Qs :
- What kind of tech platform should the game be built on? (It’s a game to be built for Facebook) – flash, html5 are the options but, what all do I need to know before I choose one of them, in terms of scalability, features and shipping.
Flash or HTML5 is a decision for the front-end. If it’s interactive, I’d stick to Flash – get the game out. If it’s more RPG-esque, HTML is a good idea. (remember you don’t have to be HTML*5*). See Mafiawars.

Your backend is going to be important in a social game – think PHP and mysql to start with quickly.
- How to build the team and what should the team comprise of?
At minimum, you need a social game designer, a artist and programmer for front-end and back-end. Typically the front-end programmer is game-aware / has strong design or gameplay sense, and back-end guy is your architect / API-builder type of person.
- How big the team should be (rather, how lean the team can be), If I were to give myself just 3 to 6 months of time to get the prototype/MVP done and get into beta.
As above. But again, your game design is very important.
- If I were to think that, we can build a billion dollar company on a simple idea of social games, like Zynga, out of India, with the kind of engineering talent we have, am I thinking crazy?
You are not alone. Games2win believes the same thing 🙂
- Anyone interested to join this enterprise?
I’d ask you the same thing.
Milan Bavishi July 6, 2012, 5:40 pm

@Vishal khandelwal: Several traders and investors across the world have a similar concern that you have.

For the ‘smarties’: There are two ways to research any market. Fundamental & Technical.

Fundamental analysis is about understanding the business and reading its balance sheet & P&L. And then you try to forecast future. And based on that, you value the company.

Technical analysis is about reading the price history and psychology behind the price movements. It is a well defined art. For India it is relatively new, but internationally Technical analysis is well a accepted discipline of trading and investment. Infact Technical analysis as a study is used since last 400 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homma_Munehisa

Hope this helps, Vishal Khandelwal. 🙂

about me: out of my eight years in stock market…i have invested 4 years in fundamental research (including i-banking) and the other 4 years i have grown with technical research. 🙂