Asia Dev Spotlight: CShark Games & Solutions

In our regular Asia Dev Spotlight feature, GameSpot Asia has so far only scratched the surface for Singapore and Malaysia in terms of game developers. But what about the scene in India? For this month, GameSpot Asia will be taking a short look at CShark Games & Solutions.

Led by CEO Eldhose P. Mathew and creative head Juwal Bose M., the company has been working for about seven years making PC platform games in India. The company has 20 employees with varying skills in the IT field working in the head office located at Kothamangalam, Kerala.

GameSpot Asia managed to ask Eldhose a few questions about the company and the scene all the way West.

GameSpot Asia: Tell us more about your background in gaming and programming.

Eldhose P. Mathew: We are a game development company with more than six years of game development expertise with a variety of platforms for the PC and mobile gaming market. We currently support more than a dozen live clients worldwide simultaneously with game portal and social game developments like Games2girls.com and BearBucketsClub.com. We have recently started getting into iPhone games development.

You could say that we're experts in all areas of online game development in Flash, and managing the design, art development, and other essentials of game design. Our main strength is years of experience in developing a variety of online game engines and even start from any stage of game development to finalize it. This helps us attend to client requirement in cost-effective ways.

GSA: How did CShark Games & Solutions start?

Eldhose: We started the company out of passion for making games in 2004. Initially, we were developing Windows downloadable games in DirectX 7 and DirectX 9, but we moved on to developing games using PopCap Games' framework, GameStudio, and Torque. Later on, we switched to online Flash games and as a result became familiar with making online browser games and anything related to online interactive services.

We consider ourselves pioneers when it comes to releasing international casual game titles from India in the early stages of the game industry in India. A few casual games we developed in that period were published by leading publishers like Big Fish Games. Our strength is our experience and talent pool. All our developers and designers are extremely talented people with a passion for playing and developing games. Working for international clients has made us up to date with the recent developments and technologies.

Balancing Mathai, one of CShark Games' pride and joy.

GSA: What's your most recent title on the iPhone?

Eldhose: Our latest iPhone game is Balancing Mathai. We felt that the original PC game was well received by gamers in India; that's why we decided to port this game to iPhone. In addition to using the iPhone's accelerometer feature, the game uses OpenFeint for global high score system and social integration. Our previous iPhone releases are action games Gabriel's Revenge and Planet Journey.

GSA: What's the state of the Indian gaming development scene?

Eldhose: In India, the game industry has grown tremendously within the last few years. It turns out that retail and triple-A PC games are not so profitable in India. However, online browser and social games have been widely accepted ever since there were higher entries of broadband services in the country for the last few years. The industry explosion is happening with mobile phone games, and because of that the number of mobile phone users have grown.

As India has a lot of young people who use their smartphones a lot, we expect a big rise in the number of mobile gamers in the coming years. That's the big reason why we decided to start iPhone game development in India, with Android game development coming soon from our side.

GSA: What about the presence of consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in terms of development and consumer use?

Eldhose: For the time being we are looking into developing games for the PS3 and Xbox 360. From my personal understanding, the costs of console devices are the main reason Indian gamers keep away from it. I felt that the majority of Indians are not very serious game players; they would much rather play simple online games and mobile games that are short. I gauge that there is not much of a chance for a triple-A title to be very successful in India.

Planet Journey.

GSA: Do you think the gaming industry needs to improve in India? If so, how?

Eldhose: My personal observation is that the Indian game development industry is growing very fast. It has enough potential to compete with other international development studios, and I believe that it's also capable to produce quality outputs for comparatively less cost.

However, the Indian game consumer community needs to grow up further. And even then it is growing slowly due to the entrance of broadband connections in India within the last two years, which led to a lot of people getting into the aforementioned online browser and social games. People here are not as hardcore about when compared to other countries. If the console market needs to succeed, purchasing costs need to go down to attract willing participants.