Mobile gaming in India: A new form of entertainment in a timeless culture

NEW DELHI--In India, mobile gaming hasn't yet reached the level of penetration necessary to conclude it's a mass-market phenomenon, but it's close. At least, this is the perception of Indian mobile game developers, who readily acknowledge that wireless gaming is still in its nascent stages in the country. Many of these companies, including better-known ones like Indiagames, develop games primarily for international audiences, but there's no denying that this situation has the potential to change in a hurry. It seems that the giant--the Indian mobile consumer--is awakening from its sleep.

First of all, consider the sheer growth of mobile consumers in India. The total number of mobile subscribers at the end of February 2005 was 51.44 million, with 1.67 million subscribers added in February (approximately the population of Sacramento, California). This base grew from 43 million to 48 million during the last quarter of 2004.

"We hear that paid downloads figures for mobile games are around 600,000 a month, but I would peg it at around 50 to 60 percent of that number," says Jayadev Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer of Trivandrum-based mobile software development company Tinfo Mobile. As far as gaming goes, he thinks that handsets from Nokia (Series 40 and 60), Sony Ericsson, and Motorola are all quite popular in India.

Rajesh Rao, chief executive of Bangalore-based Dhruva Interactive, attributes the increase in mobile gaming to the proliferation of affordable color- and data-enabled handsets, coupled with a growing appetite for content--initially fueled by the desire to download ringtones/wallpapers--which leads to consumers trying out games. He adds, "Mobile is a very significant platform for gaming in India, if you consider that there are now more than 20 million gaming-capable handsets in the hands of Indians."

With plenty of brands and models of handsets to choose from, usage of mobile phones varies widely, especially in a metropolitan city like New Delhi.

For instance, meet G. Divesh. The 24-year-old software engineer with the IT company HCL Technologies is sort of a mobile freak. He primarily uses a Nokia 6610, but in addition to this GSM handset, he also has a Samsung CDMA phone from Reliance Infocomm.

"I play games on my mobile phones for two to three hours, mixing it up during my lunchtime at work and also at home," says Divesh. "I mainly play games like Bounce, Sachin Tendulkar Cricket, and Space War. When I started playing Bounce, it was a preloaded game on my mobile."

He adds, "When I got fed up with Bounce, I deleted it. But later, I used my friend's phone to put it on my computer, and then got it back on my mobile phone. I downloaded Sachin Tendulkar Cricket from (mobile operator) Airtel's Web site. I was also addicted to Snake on Nokia."

Sachin Tendulkar is a popular sports celebrity in India; he is currently a member of the Indian national cricket team. Tendulkar also endorses Airtel in ads and other promotions.

Divesh raves about the game's realism. "This game offers you a real-time cricket situation, where you bat along with Tendulkar. There is a target, which you and Tendulkar have to chase together. It's fun, as it's quite similar to playing cricket in real life."

For Divesh, the Nokia N-Gage QD is the best phone for gaming. The most bizarre mobile game he has ever played was Logic, a preloaded game on his Nokia 3310. "It didn't make any sense!" he reminiscences. Logic basically consisted of a series of items you needed to identify, without any goal or object. For instance, it offered a picture of a skeleton and then asked you to identify it. If you couldn't do that, it would show you a picture of a cross, and on and on.

Divesh is, perhaps, in the minority--he actually knows the rates for downloading games. "They usually cost between $1.00 to $2.75 or so."

Pretty close, as Rao says it varies between $0.06 to $3.00 per game.

But there are quite a few who aren't aware of prices or mobile games in general.

Hyderabad-based Rajiv Debbad, 35, (shown above) who works for Magnaquest Technologies, described his phone with relish but didn't have much to say about gaming. "I use a Nokia 6650, and my schedule doesn't allow me to play games, but I use it for value-added services like news," he explains. "I did download games related to war/shooting at one point, but I can't remember their names or what they cost, to be honest." Debbad also says that he uses his phone for taking and sharing pictures.

Shveta Malik, a housewife, recently bought a new Nokia 3230, which has just come onto the market. She was previously using Samsung True-I. Unsurprisingly, mobile games weren't a huge factor in her decision. "I was waiting for a handset equipped with a camera within range of rupee 17,000-20,000 [$450 or so]," she explains.

Dikshant Dave, chief executive and founder of the gaming content company Small Device, feels that consumers will naturally turn to mobile handsets for entertainment purposes, simply because everyone is now spending a significant portion of their time using their phones.

"We see that more and more people are playing games, not only when they are commuting but also at their homes, where they already have other modes of entertainment," he says. However, Dave is quick to add that although mobile gaming has stirred up a frenzy in venture and business circles, it still has a long way to go before it's like other media such as TV shows or movies.

Part of that has to do with the operators themselves, which are still in expansion mode and have yet to consolidate their gains to the point of promoting their data services effectively. Most mobile consumers in India have the option of prepaid cards and postpaid cards with free incoming calls. Usually, the prepaid cards can be charged with anywhere from $6.80 to $68.00 worth of credit; outgoing calls cost about $0.04 per minute. If you have monthly cell services, you must actually rent your handset from the carrier; rentals start at about $4 a month or so.

Still, mobile games are picking up steam on both prepaid and monthly services. Indian mobile games specialists like Dhruva Interactive's Rao agree that mobile gamers are looking for a casual gaming experience--a sentiment that is often echoed by their North American counterparts. "Current data suggests that people like simple, easy-to-play games, as can be expected in a market that is just being exposed to gaming," says Rao. "Many games, in fact, are drawing inspiration from the arcade and Atari/NES/Commodore 64 classics of yesteryear. These were the primary contributors to the development of gaming cultures in the West and Japan, and now the same thing is happening here."

He adds that the mass-market consumer is very drawn by brands and popular themes that they are familiar with, like cricket and Bollywood movies.

In India, Bollywood games--which are based on India's thriving domestic film industry--are definitely more popular than games built on Hollywood properties. This isn't a surprise, mostly because there's more awareness in India for Hindi movies. Secondly, global publishers of Hollywood movies have yet to come to India in full force because of the cost factor. For instance, if the price charged for a premium movie game is around $5 per game normally, Indians will shell out about $2 at most.

Indians possess a certain cultural duality--which is both a positive influence leading them toward mobile games but also a hinderance when it comes to their playing Western-themed games. Indians are comfortable with being extremely Western in some ways but will always remain distinctly Indian at the same time.

Rao agrees with this assessment. "Plenty of recent studies of Indian youth have suggested that [as] much as they like Western clothing, fashion, and Western ways of indulging and having fun, they are still strongly moored to Indian cultural, social, and family values," he told us. Perhaps the rising tide of globalization will sweep these unique games and products toward American shores. After all, there is already a proven market for Japanese games in North America, which has demonstrated its aptitude for adopting interesting aspects and pastimes of other cultures on many previous occasions.

Either way, one cannot help but feel that India, a nascent superpower, will have no small level of influence on the development of leisure trends in all spheres of life, including mobile games. India is a country without much traditional infrastructure in either telecommunications or gaming. So, in a way, Indians are starting in the middle of the mobile race, giving them a golden opportunity to jump ahead of countries like the US, where consumers are getting off to a relatively slow start.

Cricket, anyone?