With the Reliance Games led Gamehack event coming up, it is time we take a more in-depth look at the Indian smartphone market. We explore in the gaming sense how the industry adapts to marketing in these modern times and how India is shaping up as a marketplace for this industry.
Joining us in the discussion is Roopak Nair, the lead behind Reliance Games Digital and Social marketing. Roopak heads marketing globally at Reliance Games (Reliance Entertainment) ADA, (Formally known as Jump games, then as Zapak). His key responsibility is driving and engaging consumer experience with mobile games.
Media and Public Relations
We start with marketing as he tells us about the use of POE (Paid, Owned and Earned) media in the industry. This involves the use of use of paid advertising to attain traffic and create awareness about new products and launches. Reliance has platforms that are self-maintained, like official social media, publications, blog posts and press releases. Nair then goes on to say that mentions and articles on established channels are not gained through advertising, rather indulgence with a public relation management and outreach programs to bloggers.
Reshaping Reliance Games
Roopak talks about how the last 2-3 years have re-prioritized Reliance Games’ to be more focused on the app store, due to their almost absolute involvement in mobile games. Rethinking of the company’s vision has proven beneficial to the them, evident from the success of popular mobile game Real Steel. They especially enjoy working with movie franchises and are happy with the reception these games receive.
Upcoming releases and challenges
Speaking about franchises, that seems to be the area of focus, as they have a bunch of move and television franchise games on the horizon for 2015. Reliance Games is currently excited about the official ICC partnered cricket game to launch during the World Cup. Roopak also mentions that the company is working on new IPs like World Robot Boxing.
“We are looking into a wide variety of genres like tower builders and strategy games. In addition to the in-house development we are looking for outside talent and developers to be our co-develop partners.” Opportunities like the upcoming Pocket Gamer event in Bengaluru and Gamehack are efforts in the same direction to discover and promote Indian gaming industry. In the past two years, Reliance Games has grown from 40 studios to over 200.
The Indian gaming market
Roopak confirms that the company sees a lot of downloads from the Indian gamer. Overall, the total downloads of their games has crossed 50 million. Even with such high download numbers, monetization in India is not as easy as it is in the West. Most gamers in this region prefer free to play games.
Bandwidth remains another big concern for the Indian market; “Due to limited internet speeds and download caps most, people prefer the games within 25-35 MB of size. This in turn affects our development; as we have to limit our art and overall assets to reduce the size of the game.” This challenge will eventually be overcome as people are more willing to switch to 3G, and with the eventual implementation of 4G networks in the country.
Roopak goes on to mention some interesting stats. “The India market is maturing fast as more and more smartphones replace feature phones. Stats show that an average Indian spends about 33 minutes per day on his smartphone playing games.”
