Indian Game Developer Summit (Feb 2010) at Bangalore

I attended the Saltmarch Media's Indian Game Developer Summit 2010 in Bangalore on 27th Feb. Now someone may ask, Why? After all, I am no game developer. I can't even write a few 100 lines of programming code to save my life. I am an investment banker and what the hell is an I-Banker doing at a conference mingling with the tech geeks? Well, being an I-Banker doesn't stop someone from being a game enthusiast (check my twitter intro: http://twitter.com/swapstick) and it is in this capacity that I flew to Bangalore on Friday (26th Feb) night. 

The flight was delayed by an hour and a half ensuring that I'd only reach Bangalore on Saturday (00:20 hours to be precise). I told myself that things can only get better from hereon. Except that half an hour later, I got a call from my travel agent that the bus I was planning to take for my return journey was cancelled. Anyways, I reached Bangalore by 00:30 am and reached my friend's place by 2:00 am. After a little sleep (yep, that's what I call 4.5 hours of sleep), I was at the conference venue (Nimhans Convention Centre) by 9:00 am. After registering myself for the event (and receiving a nice blue bag), I entered the IGDS arena (believe gamers like that word).

The opening keynote ("Envision, Enable, Achieve") was delivered by Carl Jones, Director - Global Business Development for CryENGINE at Crytek. Carl spoke about how Crytek was founded in 1999 by a small team of 10 people in a smallish town in Germany. And how within 10 years of consistently pursuing 'AAA' success and focusing only on organic growth, it has become one of Europe's largest independent game developers. There were a few demo videos which demonstrated the capabilities of Crytek's engine (understand that the latest version would be made more affordable for developers shortly). It was also interesting to note that at Crytek, game designers don't focus too much on having detailed design documents. Instead the core design framework focuses on documenting the game pillars supported by various game features and according the developers more flexibility. In the Q&A session that followed, I wanted to ask him as to why don't they look at inorganic growth strategy (esp since EA has been growing this way) but the clock struck 10:20 before the microphone could reach me. All in all, it was a fantastic opening to what would eventually turn out to be a trend-setting event.

From thereon, three sessions ran parallel in three halls. So the next session that I attended was "Creating Successful Online Games" by Robin Alter, Co-Founder and CTO at Kreeda Games India. Robin emphasized on how important it is to involve the client (i.e. publisher) throughout the game development process by providing them with prototypes, animation modules etc. At Kreeda, the developers follow Kreeda Development Methodology comprising 5 Ds: Discover, Define, Design (enterprise-level), Develop and Deploy. Robin also touched upon a new game they are developing and announced that the Beta version would be launched shortly. A good session but once again I couldn't ask my question in the shortish Q&A session.

In college, we were the perennial LLBs (Lords of Last Benches) but here, sitting at the back was costing me the opportunities to ask my questions. So I broke the norm and sat among the first few rows for the next session, "Create, Distribute and Monetize your Games using Adobe Flash Platform" by Harish Sivaramakrishnan, a Computer Scientist and Platform Evangelist at Adobe Systems. In the 'Create' subsection of his presentation, Harish talked about powerful runtimes like Flash Player 10.1 (beta) which can be used for porting PC games to mobile platforms and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR 3) for desktop games as well as tools like Adobe Stratus. He also touched upon 3rd party libraries which could be used for creating different applications. But for me, what took the cake was the next subsection, 'Distribute'. Here, Harish introduced Adobe Distribution Manager, a powerful tool that can be used to add Adobe applications (like games) to social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle etc.; track and analyse user engagement (eg no. of gamers) and distribution data; create campaigns & make MONEY (through ads). Finally, he had just enough time to introduce Shibuya (still in Beta version) which can be thought of as an online marketplace for AIR applications. This time I had an opportunity to ask a couple of questions. But there was one little problem. Being technologically challenged (i.e. TCed), I didn't have any. 

Did I forget to mention about the various exhibition stalls by various sponsors like Nvidia, Adobe, DSK Supinfocom, AIGA among others? On display were state-of-the-art systems, demo videos, information on various gaming courses etc. This truly enhanced the value proposition of IGDS 2010. 

My 3rd session was "Business of Online Games" by Tridib Roy Chowdhary, Director of Products at Adobe Systems. Now this was one session where I expected myself to be an active participant. Tridib started off by talking about the typical value chain in the video game industry (developer -> publisher / aggregator -> portal -> gamer and advertisers who bring in the revenue). The depressing part (if you are a developer) was that in the traditional value chain, typically only 5% of revenues reach the developer. Given that advertisement in games is still under-penetrated, Tridib suggested trying other gaming genres like advergames, dynamic in-game advertising, social games etc. But all these pale in comparison to the Mochi model. In the Mochi model, developers can earn as much as 50% of the revenues and publishers thrive on volume-play. And finally I did ask a question (about developers building their own brands) and received a satisfactory reply. A great session and a perfect way to go into lunch.

The food served at lunch was tasty and hygienic & quite frankly, I was pleasantly surprised. A big thanks to the organizers as they ensured that none of us had to go out for lunch. That left us some time to visit the stalls and network.

Post-lunch sessions are always tough (at least from what I can recall from my college days). So once settled into the comforts of the audi chair, I should have been excused for taking a little nap. But the prospects of my next session ("Sell Your Game, Adopt a Game Designer" by the DSK Supinfocom team) kept me awake. It was a decent session wherein the importance of game design was emphasized. It was also useful to watch a couple of game review videos (from Gamespot.com) and appreciate the difference a good game design makes.

"Preparing for the Great Indian Social Gaming Rush" by Sumit Gupta was my next session. At the outset, Sumit (CEO and Founder of BitRhymes) defined social gaming and for the sake of "TCed" people like me, I'll repeat the same here. Social games are casual games designed for non-gamers urging them to play with their friends for 5-10 minutes daily. Having evolved from Asia (China, South Korea and Japan) and spreading to the West, India needs to catch up. Growth drivers for the Indian market include continued growth of social networking sites, low cost of production and convergence of business models towards virtual goods. It was interesting to listen to Sumit explaining how iteration is a critical part of social games, post-production is longer than pre-production, cost of gamer acquistion is very low, and how BitRhymes (set up 2 years ago) started making profits from the 1st quarter itself (truly inspiring, I must add). At ARPUs of $0.4/month(for good games) to $1.0/month (for top games) in the US, this seems a great idea.

Time for the last session, "The Creative Core Team" by Jithin Rao, Producer at Ubisoft Pune. Going into the session, I thought this would be more about how to assemble a core team for a startup studio. However, this session was more about how important it is for an established studio (typically spending mega bucks on each title) to have a core team who complement each other very well (given that so much is at stake). Having said that, it was a good session since it gave us a fair idea as to the involved parties in the development of a game (of course, most of us don't think of this while playing a game). Producer, creative director, art director, lead designer, lead level designer, lead sound designer, lead programmer and brand manager. All of them play a very important role in making an entertaining game. For small studios, most of the core team members play a dual-role.

That brought an end to a thoroughly entertaining, exhausting and enlightening day. I couldn't attend all the sessions even though I wanted to. To compensate, the organizers have promised us soft copies of the presentation materials and video sessions. And to round it off, all of us received a T-Shirt and certificate as a token to mark India's first game developer summit. 

A word of thanks to the organizers for putting together a fantastic show. The planning and execution of this event were absolutely top notch. Keep it up guys. Remember what I said at the start, things could only get better. They certainly did.