Usually November is the time when Indian game developers start prepping themselves to attend the annual gaming event in Pune, India – The NASSCOM Game Developers Conference.
NASSCOM GDC has carved a niche for itself for being the premier gaming event in India. Since its inception in 2009, it has become almost ritualistic for game developers to attend the event every year. Some attend it to network, some to learn the new trends of the industry and some to show their games and get feedback.
The game development community is no longer naive. There are stories of acquisitions, funding, publishing deals, startups and new indie studios. And making these stories are the talented bunch of game designers, artists, programmers, producers, analysts and students with a curiosity of what beholds them. It is always great to meet and hear the personal triumphs and challenges of the game developers. Most of them don’t shy from talking about their games and are always open for feedback. This is how the community thrives.
According to The NASSCOM Developer Survey, nearly 65% of developers are employed with Indie Studios. 40% of developers have no prior gaming experience while the number of women in the industry is 15%. These numbers are good considering how fragile it is to survive in the industry. Those who are there, are because of their passion for games and motivation to build something beautiful.
This year the event started with a day full of workshops followed by 2 days of the conference. There were 5 tracks running simultaneously –Indie Development, Game Design, Game Art, Technology, Marketing and PR, with a mix of Indian and international speakers.
Apart from the workshops and sessions there was an Investor Meetup, Games Pitch and Women in Game Dev Lunch meetup.
The tracks had informative content that was catered for the casual mobile gaming industry.This was one particular session conducted on serious gaming where the speakers shared ideas on Gamifying Maths and Geography for school students. It was interesting to see how they converted the concepts of Fraction into visuals for learning. The same visual learning could be applied to any subject be, it School Maths or other domains.
The postmortem on the game UNWYND, took us through the journey of a game where the developer explained how they uplifted a failed game on Android to Editor’s Choice on iOS. The developer emphasized on showing games to as many people as possible and implementing feedback early. Attending conferences and using social media to know people and maintaining friendships is definitely a catalyst to getting visibility.
The track on Game Design about making your players love your game in the first session explained how using minimum steps to reach the core game loop was critical. Only 20% of games make it past the first session therefore it was recommended to never dump the player with too many layers at start of the game, stimulate the player’s senses with animations and use notifications wisely to get your players back to the game.
The panel discussion on Indian Publishing deals had contradicting views. While some on the panel felt that Publishers help get a new game gain visibility, others felt that the presence of publishers could invalidate the original vision of the game. All agreed that it is possible for both the developers and publishers to have a win.
India may start seeing more gaming events in the future. At least that’s what the developers hope for. PocketGamer Connect already happened last year in Bangalore. But NASSCOM GDC will continue to drive developers. Looking forward to the event next year!