Gaming Uncovered

Everybody calls me a kid whenever or wherever I talk about video-games. May be its true or may be not. I got my first videogame when I was in third grade, it was definitely a toy then, just a toy.

“It started with few pixels and now it’s bigger than the cinema” as it’s said by discovery I, Videogame”.

Gaming has matured into a $45 billion industry with high end games and state of art consoles. With big players in the business like Sony ( Playstation), Nintendo and Microsoft (Xbox), action on the gaming front is just hotting up. The gaming consoles being developed now are packed with high performance hardware and are equipped with greater processing power than ever. In fact, Play station3 has the processing power equal to that of Cray Supercomputer.

"The gaming business is not a kid’s play any more, as the average age of a gaming enthusiast hovering around 38 years” states Times of India.
It takes about four years to come up with a new product in the gaming market and the development cycle for a new game by itself takes about 18-24 months. It cost US $20 million for a US publisher to produce a game, and it comes with a high risk of success or failure. Budgeting will have to be done in advance and the world might change in the meantime, and the gaming companies are trying to shorten the development cycles.

But the question is, how big the “Gaming Industry” in India is?

The higher cost of production and the longer duration taken to complete the product has led to a phase where the producers abroad are looking at outsourcing to countries like India. This has opened up huge job opportunities for all the game enthusiasts.

“There are hardly any Indian companies in this space and opportunities are immense” says Prakash Ahuja, CEO of Hyderabad-based Gameshastra, India’s biggest gaming services outsourcing company. The content market is worth $ 14 billion, and this is where the Indian companies are taking a bite.

The International gaming companies have realized that India can provide expertise in developing gaming options, as it did in IT and BPO sector. The people are ready and are at ease to work with the cutting edge technology.

“Mauj” is one of the mobile gaming companies in India. It has changed and developed during years with changing times and needs of the users. News was out that Sameera Reddy is playing the lead role in a mobile game, which is yet to release this year.

I’m 21 now and I still play games. But now videogame is more than a toy to me. My interest towards gaming increased and I recognize how much work goes in making and marketing a game. I realized that the Gaming Industry grew with me.

As Discovery puts, “In my world the game is never over”.