Confessions Of An Indian Game Industry Professional!

In a country where Indian movies, general entertainment channels, and music outsell their foreign counterparts by a huge margin, desi gamers still flock to videshi titles and portals to get their gaming fix.

Where is our Made in India AAA title? Is the curse of India's success in software services indirectly impacting the game industry?

Asking and answering such tough questions will be the panel – Alok Kejriwal, Vishal Gondal and Neeraj Roy, stalwarts of the Indian gaming scene while Manik Arora will bring the VC perspective

Let's see if the industry can walk the talk!

Vishal makes the point that when he sees gamers he sees not the 16 year old kid in Mumbai but the liftwallah, the rickshawwallah, and the jawaan on the border.

Neeraj is candid about the great promise but also the failure to achieve this promise where none of the game companies represented by the panellists have even 50 million users amongst them.

Manik a VC echoes the fact that hope has been the predominant driver of this industry but not actual performance – poor revenue models, lack of capitalization, and small endgames being the primary villains.

Alok Kejriwal puts a spanner in the discussion by saying why should Indians even game since there is so much entertainment through

TV and movies. This is a guy who's learnt the challenges of Indian gaming the hard way!

Neeraj is in full flow now dismissing the entire Indian obsession with localization and trying to make "Indian" games.

Vishal puts a positive spin on things by talking about his company's great success with the Aladdin game which got 7 million downloads. Alok counters by asking that why then is there a huge fetish for services in the Indian gaming sector?

Manik on his part refutes such a fetish and also counters the criticism of VCs not paying for eyeballs in India because there is no precedence, unlike in the U.S. Back to the bugbear of a lack of revenues on game titles in India. Is it all doom and gloom?

Vishal thinks VCs are the villains as they are not taking the risks – so it's Manik outnumbered by 1-3 on the panel now. I think Manik needs help!

Alok wants a list of 3 Things to Do! Vishal says:

1. Play Games

2. Know your Gamers

3. Don't copy your neighbours - that's a stab against China, which has been benchmarked the whole day by participants.

That's good advice to end on!