# We Rated Top Game Development Trends in 2024

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Varun Mayya
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBv4qKZayMs
- **Дата:** 22.08.2024
- **Длительность:** 50:06
- **Просмотры:** 29,511
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/12179

## Описание

This Video is Sponsored By Google Play.
Welcome to our Google Play's Startup Spotlights series! In this episode, we're bringing you an insider's perspective on mobile game development. We're chatting with Afsar Ahmad, co-founder of Gameberry Labs, about the evolving landscape of mobile gaming. Afsar's company has grown from 100 crores to 500 crores in revenue.
Afsar's story is pretty inspiring - he went from making small web projects to co-founding a major gaming studio. We'll dive into what game genres are hot right now, how monetization strategies differ across categories, and why some types of games are suddenly in high demand.
Afsar shares how insights from Google Play representatives were a game-changer for Gameberry Labs' growth. But it's not just about tech and business - this conversation is all about innovation, understanding player psychology, and how mobile games are reshaping entertainment.
As we explore different game genres and the challenges developers face, we'll rate c

## Транскрипт

### Highlights []

what was the first game that really blew it out the par luckily the first game that we built which was Ludo star and it went viral in Pakistan blocking more than 10 million in Revenue where you felt like oh we have made it as a gaming studio when we were I think 2017 or 18 and we saw a revenue of 100 crores and that was too big for us ultimately it's all psychology no this is all like monetization models really flow from the psychology and the behavior of people but how much would it cost if I was building like a simple RPG for pubg I think 100 million also that's about 800 crores,000 downloads in us can give you like $10,000 also a month even more than that I mean $20,000 maybe Subway Surfer has been there in the market for the last 13 years that company has been sold to minp recently for 100 million it should have been a much bigger game considering how much of the world's attention is captured gen impact is not an Indian game but apparently he doing millions of dollars on the Indian Play Store right and I was so surprised with gensin impact doing so well because I'm like wait

### Introduction [0:56]

what ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode of tier list today I have a very special guest offer from gameberry and you know I have a lot to say about gameberry but first I'll tell you what we're reviewing what we're rating today is the different type of gaming genres more as a game developer so if you're a game developer interested in making games you want to know okay if I build an arcade game in India how much money can I make if I build a game like Among Us in India how much money can I make what is the scope in it what is the competition you want to know all of that you're probably a developer and you're interested in some of this meaty information now I've played with a few games before I've made some games before usually short demos we made overpower the card game we made Mumbai make Hada but I've never made mobile games at scale so I thought if I want to do this video I need to get somebody who has made games at massive scale so today I

### Afsar's entrepreneur journey [1:52]

have somebody who's done that you run gameberry it's done this year I think over you'll do over 500 crores in Revenue you've been around since 2017 before we begin I want to know your story I think they definitely and then we'll get through uh each of these placards thanks vun thanks uh for having me here pleasure to be with you uh and sharing the same stage in a way um so my story I feel it begins with um in 2010 uh second year of my college uh when I feel at I felt more me back then and I came across these web technologies that was happening at that time Facebook came into picture or could had just gone back then uh and when I looked at Facebook I started feeling that this is something that I could do and it's very much possible to build something like this so I started learning those Technologies trying to build something that I felt could be very interesting for people and all the next three years of my college went trying to build multiple things I it was every time a six month cycle where I was trying to build something and by the end of six months I realized this not going to work out so I went back started something else and then went back and kept doing that for like six seven times and then the corporate life started I went moved to capillary as a software engineer but the same behavior the same Instinct of building something never went away uh so I me and my co-founder we kept having discussion all the time what do we want to build next and we kept trying multiple things uh from 200 14 uh when we in 2014 I decided I would leave my job and do this full-time where I would like to build something for people and that particular point of time uh it was difficult for me to think what do I do from here uh but then College seniors give you a lot of confidence that uh you can do something like this you can go out raise funds and get something started and it felt like a doable thing so I thought okay let let's do this so we moved out and two days is into it the idea that we were thinking we felt like this is not going to work out we were out there in the market it was vulnerable condition where you start to feel that whatever you thought is not going to work out uh so but then we put oursel back um and we started working on this idea where we were delivering an ingredient box of whatever you wanted to cook and we called it half teaspoon um and the orders came from a lot of places belandur rsr here and there and we felt that this is going to work out this is interesting so we started talking to a lot of VC's and VC got interested that this is something in different in India somebody was trying to do uh fast forward 6 months it was not working out we were getting order but we're not getting repeated orders and that year by the end we started realizing that we did not started uh we did not move out of our jobs because we wanted to do this because we started to becoming what the VCS wanted for us to become yeah I think that was a ship fundamental shift in the mindset back then uh and and we had plenty of time back then uh because you were not getting orders and U and there was nothing to do as such until that point so I started playing a lot of games we had new mobile tablet we started playing a lot of games and when I looked at the mobile or the games that we were playing uh it occurred to me that this is something that we can build and it's not so difficult so I started a game called Rocket Romeo in January 2015 buil it 2 months posted out put it out on Google Play uh and saw people playing that game um and then I realized this is something that I really wanted to do because art uh Design Technology was coming into one pck place uh you had an empty canvas you could do anything you wanted to do uh and with that canvas you could go out to the users and users would love it if you have created something unique about it I think that's the place where I got into gaming and I felt like this is a place where I would like to belong for years uh and I decided okay let me spend some time in a proper professional setup of a gaming company so I did that and then eventually decided I want to start a gaming studio so that was my story about

### Afsar's first success [6:14]

what was your first hit what was the first game that really blew it out the park luckily the first game that we built which was Ludo star uh it went viral yes uh within 6 months we at the beginning we felt uh that people in uh in India were installing Ludo games they wanted to play Ludo game but they were not getting what they should be getting the social experience was not enriching uh so we thought that we could build a great Ludo game uh and that's where we started uh and six months down the line that resonated with the audience people started playing it people started calling other folks to play there with them uh and it went viral in Pakistan and then Saudi Arabia Kuwait Oman and we were all over the place we were 2 3 million da by the end of that da for the audiences daily active users we were already 2 to 3 million daily active users that year uh and we were clocking more than 10 million in Revenue that the first year of our uh Foundation you know one Insight I picked up from this which I pick up from a lot of Founders talking to them is especially till they get that first hit they've tried a lot of stuff you did food delivery you did you worked at a company you tried a game then went back to a company came back it seems like a very messy path lots of pivots till that one thing kicked off I've seen this so many times this is a thing that audience doesn't really get that actually to get to one place that's successful you need to try a lot of different things and it looks very messy and chaotic throughout uh so it's very interesting hearing that story again so if you are thinking oh you're working on something it's not working out today especially as an entrepreneur because I think in a job it's slightly different as an entrepreneur it's all you're fully dependent on the market in a job your boss but it's predictable you are given expectations on day one but with the market you have no idea what the market wants and sometimes you could build something thinking this will work and the market will be like no and sometimes you build a loo game and then 6 months later it's like it goes wildfire in a you know in Pakistan right so some of these things in life are kind of unpredictable so very interesting to hear this story uh we'll get into more of it as we go through these but I'll tell you what we have today I'll tell you our usual format so today I have a bunch of uh formats to make games genes right which we'll talk about Mobile gaming mostly but I'm sure the same genes exist in PC so hopefully you can give us insights you've built these as scale I know you've built many different games so you know which games uh have worked well which games have made money the insights in the game like an Among Us game what are the challenges you know all of it so hopefully you can demystify us for it we will rank these based on how much money is there and whether it's a good scope for a game developer today to build this game and to build this type of game right so this is what we're going to do and uh these are your opinions uh it is okay for you to feel a certain way it's okay if the audience disagree that's all it's completely comfortable on our

### Genre 1 [9:02]

channel so without much further Ado let's take up the first game we have arcade games right like Subway Surfers uh Mob control where do you think this goes do you have any insights on arcade games yes um I would rate arcade C okay uh you you'll have to take off the strip there sorry for all your arcade game Builders uh you have a pessimist in the house if you ask me uh I feel arcade games are natural to go because the first game that I was talking about myself was rocket Romeo it's an arcade game uh very simple to play very highly inspired by the arcade machines that were there uh in the early times um but on the other hand with mobile being a very different form factor yeah uh I feel as an instinct because of our childhood we go towards our kid but mobile has a different form factor and the way you can interact with mobile is way different than arcades so arcades are those machines right with the tap t uh and mobile form factor gives you a lot more in-depth engagement compared to that because you had few controls at hand uh so the form factor is not suitable for these kind of games which is why the monetization also not necessarily works really well but the Nostalgia kicks in this particular case which is why you'll get a lot of downloads in Subway Surfer there sub Subway Surfer has been there in the market for the last 13 years it still gets high amount of downloads more than 5 million I think in a month but even then they do not make a lot of money they have been that company has been sold to mini clip recently for 100 million mini clip still exists Min clip exits yeah so they got sold to mini clip at 100 million I think that's the number it should have been a much bigger game considering how much of the world's attention captured but think about it even then the cost of that game was 100 million itself just so the reason for that is it the Nostalgia brings in a lot of audience why did it cost 100 Milli to make Subway suffers no 100 million to buy surway surer okay rather than uh building and they bought it because they wanted that amount of downloads that are coming to uh to service suffer organically uh and all these downloads are organic for that game again arid brings organic downloads but not money very interesting so if I was a junior developer and I was building an arcade game what kind of expectation should I have should I just go in there saying I'll build the game and then hopefully I'll get downloads and then I'll run ads like let's say if I had a game and I got 100,000 downloads on arcade games and I started running ads that's the main way to monetize right how much do you think I would make regarding arcades uh I think the function of Revenue would come from geography that is it is hitting say India uh if it is hitting India and you were getting 10 million downloads a month let's say 100,000 downloads 100,000 download would give you nothing literally like not even $100 a day uh if from ads that's quite sad yes so you need to get to 10 million downloads as an arcade game to even make any money interesting especially because your geography is in India uh there is a sense of nostalgia that will kick in with arcade games uh but not a new Market game will have that Nostalgia but if I got the same let's say 100,000 downloads in the US then it will be drastically different 100,000 downloads in us can give you like $110,000 also a month okay so even more than that I mean $20,000 maybe wow Revenue so the geography really matters so if you're building an arcade game if there's somebody building an arcade game in the Indian setting it's say Gully some something Gully you're saying even though that sounds like a very Noble idea it might not make you so much money it's better to hit like a global concept very interesting let's go

### Genre 2 [12:58]

through the next one the next format is the puzzle game right so we have things like Royal match Candy Crush I love playing puzzle games especially when I'm stressed I'm just like you know I quickly open my phone and play some puzzle games especially when I was younger nowadays it's different nowadays when I play games I play a game called DOTA that gives me even more stress right so it has defeated the purpose of what it's supposed to do but I know my mom plays a lot of candy crush and you know other puzzle games to relieve stress is there a big market for this yeah puzzle games are like huge where would this I would put it as a uh not putting I would like to put it as s but the amount of competition because of the amount of money this category has okay uh it makes it extremely difficult to be a s because then the competition is very high any big Studio would uh would like to be in a puzzle category uh all these games Royal match Candy Crush they are like a billion dollar a year business uh Royal match has just surpassed Candy Crush they do around 2 billion a year wow uh which is massive uh so because of that reason I would not rate it as uh keep it a can you tell me why puzzle games make so much more money than arcades it's blowing my head like I would assume that an arcade game someone can play casually theoretically should make more money than a puzzle game this is actually news to me and it's probably news to the audience as well so how I think monetization in gaming how it works is uh I AP will always be heavier than ads what is I AP Ina in app purchases will always be heavier than ads uh because at the end ads are shown to the user because you want to move them to a game which has an IEP at it so you're saying you might have multiple games and your first game will have ads to the second game and the second game will have some inapp purchase where you buy some different kind of ball or this or that right what are the what are people spending on in Candy Crush in Royal match they are the whole business is around replaying a level the better you convince a player to replay a level without moving out of the game the better your monetization will be so the mechanics convinces them that this is achievable by them and if it is achievable it's their mistake that they're not able to CL across this level so they guil trip you into buying so you feel okay it is just this level where I'm paying but not the rest of the levels which technically happens I mean you tend to so you fail a level and it says start all over again unless you pay you get to play this level again so you're saying that's the asset being sold I would assume it's some jewelry or something like that no it is this it's a life it's a chance you want to cross that level you don't want to even lives for that matters do not monetize so well now because people don't want to say that you told me that you can play five chances that is why I have tried five times time times and if I want more chances you have to pay people don't like that people likes that okay I have failed at it let me do let me take this help so that I can cross it the mindset is slightly different it's a hint mind yes it's a hint mindset exactly so when that kind of mechanics comes into a picture where people are convinced that this is a good level where I want to cross with that hint they will monetize in arid does not does not happen there is a lot of skill at play in arid because you are you're relying on dexterity over there you can't play around with uh the game itself which is why the monetization goes up here competition also goes up here uh and most of the gaming companies I think they want a pie of this I didn't know this was worth billions of dollars a year in Revenue that's so much bigger than you know even the subway surface of the world this is like this is news to me this is something I learned while doing this conversation and that's why this format is so useful right because when you ask people to rank someone who's an expert in the industry who does it for living who's at scale and you ask them to rank then you learn the nuances you learn oh that okay that makes a lot of sense so I feel like this is very useful to everyone me and I'm sure everyone Watching Next let's go to the

### Genre 3 [17:06]

format that I think uh you know a lot of entrepreneurs in India have a problem with the casino format Monopoly go Bingo yeah is Monopoly go a casino format it is a social casino game it draws from the slot mechanics uh but it's lot more casual and social in nature uh I would rate Casino as B uh the reason being for me casino is more classic in nature okay the mechanics that we have seen slot machines Bingo Tula for India um tinpati for that matter all these mechanics or the would poker also fall under poker is casino this I assume would be much bigger no in terms of CAS it is big in terms of cash but because it is so classic your classic players early players in this category would be dominating all the time so poker by Zinga or poker by platica has been there for the last 12 years you can't put enough of a spin on poker you're saying to build a new game like in arcade if you have Subway Surfers you can make the same guy with a hat and call a temple run in a temple but you can't do that with Casino you can't say Teti but on a different table because it's not enough of a differentiator next let's go

### Genre 4 [18:17]

through simulator so Roblox talking town I assume there are lots of different you know simulators can you give us some examples of simulators doing well and can you also rank I would rate simulators as s really yeah not because uh it makes a lot of money but because I feel personally that there is lot of opportunity in simulators especially if you look at India you'll see a lot of truck simulator Bus Simulator Indian Railway simulator being downloaded the audience is always looking for playing around with something which is more real in nature and they can experience you would like to be a uh pilot in a Indian Railway uh bogey you would like to drive that I want to tell you a very interesting anecdote I once had an employee this was many years ago who used to play this VR game called job simulator he used to skip work to play a VR simulator called VR game called job simulator and I was like what is wrong with you can simulate the job here if you want to but he's like no I like going back home and doing a job in the simulator and doing the tasks there it gives me a sense of calm here it's little a little bit more stressful understandable but I didn't know Simulator games were that big till every day I open Steam sometimes and I'll see goat simulators you know truck simulator farming simulator police station simulator like and I was like wait what is wrong with people like you can just have the job in real life and do it but people like no I want to do it from my couch sitting and playing it so very surprising to see uh you know this I think you're talking about it as an S because you can simulate everything and so the competition is low the demand is high the only factor which might be anti for this category would be the monetization is not very clear so you might have to innovate around it like can you give me an example uh take example of truck simulators they don't monetize so well they have very high engagement but how do you monetize that you would like to sell more trucks but that's not very like I will not spend money on buying different type of trucks as such unless it actually makes a lot of difference in the gamepl or the experience that I have interesting so that is why the monetization goes low over here so we need I think the developers need to innovate and think about it uh and I feel Innovation should always be a will always be a driver in success for you do you have any Simulator games no we don't have I'll give you an example for that when we started Ludo uh at that time none of the Ludo games monetized through I AP uh but our business is 0% I AP driven and anybody who is playing a Ludo game would feel monetization in Ludo is not possible so what we did differently from everybody else in the market was we incorporated this mechanics called roll uh so once you roll a dice we allow you to re reroll so if it's a bad roll and you don't like where you've gotten you spend some money and you reroll can you do that in multiplayer or only indiv in multiplayer as well because the opponent also has that ability of rrolling so everyone rrolling all the time yes everybody's rolling it's fair from that perspective and you can choose you have a little sense of control over life from that perspective which is missing generally I mean you that's what you want from a game actually you want that sense of control I think that is why that person that you talked about in job simulator I feel that person can control a lot of things and be excited about it uh the external factors are not making the job unsatisfactory ultimately it's all psychology no yes this is all like monetization models really flow from the psychology and the behavior of people it's not feature consi it's like how does a human brain think and does the human brain want a roll or does it want sense of control it's more that that's dictating how much money comes into these industries interesting and one question to ask you right considering that you've made some of these games and you got to scale and you were talking about your iip purchases what is there a point in all of this where you felt like oh we have made it as a gaming studio what Revenue was that and when we were I think 2017 or 18 we were doing more than 10 million 12 million we were feeling that that's 100 cres you yeah that was big enough I think we were earning what uh 20 lakhs a month sorry 20 lakhs a year as when you were in a job yeah and we saw a revenue of 100 crores and that was too big for us and we had never imagined because the circle that we had everybody had a VC funding we are not boot we are not VC funded we are bootstrapped and for a company to make 100 cres nobody had heard of it so we were making 100 CR and we felt we were big enough until unless people said you have a great opportunity at hand you can make this bigger and bigger why are we restricting ourselves with that 100 crores and being satisfied about it and that's the point I think that shifted fundamentally our mindset it started we started poking ourselves where are we going wrong what could we do better from here because there were examples of gaming company across the world doing even better than that and did Google Play say hey look at this other company they've scaled this much you should yeah they had plenty of options I mean they can draw parallels uh from let's say uh what is working out in us how Saudi Arabia might look at us differently compared to how we look at it but you tend to miss those points at times so I think that an external person like Google Play coming out from outside helped us a lot to miss those blind spots and since then that was how many years ago three four years ago that was three four years since then you've gone from 100 CR to 500 crores nice it's very strange to you know hear things like well you were already doing well but you had an a catalyst movie 5x bigger right that's it's a at any stage in life there could be a catalyst now where is the dream from here now that you have 500 crores what's the next Catalyst where do you think you'll go from here now I think the mindset for us has shifted drastically for us now uh the ambition is to be that 5,000 CR business uh and we feel we can achieve that because we have started learning in a very different way now earlier we were looking at it and saying this could be big this is this looks big enough but after hiring smart folks in our team we start they are starting to tell us that noar this is 5,000 crores not just 500 crores to what we are doing today and they'll give you multiple reasons of why it can happen and then you can okay say yeah I want to invest in this I want to spend more time in it make more teams around it and it helps a lot and I feel very confident about the fact that we'll be hitting 5,000 cror somewhere down the line for

### Genre 5 [24:44]

sure interesting let's go back let's take the next format next is RPG you know IID read somewhere about genion impact is not an Indian game but apparently is doing millions of dollars in the Indian Play Store right which and I so surprised with gensin impact doing so well because I'm like wait what yeah it's an RPG it's and it's not an Indian RPG so why is it doing so well and why is it making so like what are people spending on in India on this game so a I'd like you to rank it yeah I would rate RPG games as uh a because of the amount of opportunity it has but also because of the difficulty in making an RPG game successful uh it has people would like to play RPG games a lot uh um especially because of the narrative sense to it genion impact has that narrative sense you're getting into that open world you can do anything you want again the sense of control is in your hand uh you can play around with it uh so genine impact worked in India because of that particular fact in general the art was fabulous in general the game was cross prom cross mobile plus cross crossplatform yeah uh you could play on mobile PC India generally has more mobile audience rather than PC audience uh but R RPG in general monetized really well because somebody getting invested into an RPG can go deeper in pocket I AP games because it's a story yeah because of the story and the ability that you would like to gain so how RPG games monetized is you would go from level X to level 10x to 100x to 1,000x whatever you want to go you can potentially go there and the story of those games generally have the ability to make you go there which does not creates limitation for anybody to pay so a lot of monetization is actually the ability of the game for to ask the ability to ask the payer to go from0 to $1,000 in like a second if it can do it can monetize more uh and we internally say a lot of time that IP plays VIP play so people who can pay a lot if they can pay huge amounts M then your game is going to monetize and that is why RPG games work so well they monetize like crazy a person can spend $100,000 in just by the way RPG stands for role playing game and the minute there's a role playing game then there's a story so the one thing I've heard about RPGs though compared to all the other games is expensive to make right because you have to store you have to create character story what would it cost me in India today if I was building like a mobile RPG if you were building a genion impact I don't think we can build in India right now uh especially because of the technology uh and mostly that the learning of getting it right I think it will take time for any Indian Studio to build that I think that the complexity is very high on the other hand you can build a lot more simpler 2D version RPG games which will also work in but how much would it cost if I was building like a simple RPG it should cost anywhere around 10 million to 20 million if you want so about 100 to two 100 to 160 crores let's say roughly yes that's very expensive for an RPG genion impact would be 10x of that so th000 crores they SP to build it yes oh my God that is an expense so you can't do it without VC funding very hard to do bootstrap interesting next let's go to

### Genre 6 [28:05]

tabletop you technically have a tabletop game right Ludo is a tabletop game tic Taco Uno yeah where would you plant this I would put it at B okay but you have a game in this category why would you call it a b uh again very similar to casino uh tabletop generally will have very classic games which are present uh so if there is a user coming for Ludo a variant of Ludo very unlikely that the person would like to play so very similar Behavior as so that's the reason you didn't go viral in India you went viral in a new market because Indian market was crowded you yeah Indian market was already playing a Ludo game uh Pakistan on the other was not playing a Ludo game so they had options of choosing between multiple Ludo game they chose Ludo star uh which is also uh that choice also came because of Google Play being really good at uh publishing and allowing people to explore at in Play store which creates a lot of organic downloads so tell me what is your number one Insight from making tabletop games because you have a lot of them right I feel in tabletop JRE generally the engagement is very high there is lot of stickiness around the users so if somebody starts to spend in your game they will spend for next 10 years for sure which is a great LTV to have you just need to get them to spend once yes LTV stands for what is lifetime value of a user which means how much he totally he or she spends on you over the years and in this particular category tabletop generally most of the gaming companies don't have a monetization model which also means that there is could be an opportunity over here uh if you pick let's say uno is an IP of metal you can't build a Uno game but let's say you are building something similar to Uno and you are able to monetize it then the likelihood of that game sticking around with people is very high because they will keep playing Uno and they'll see this as an Uno game or a card game which is very similar to Uno but if you can monetize it they'll stick around with it and they'll start to maybe forget a Uno as

### Genre 7 [30:10]

well next let's take on party so stumble guys Among Us you have an Among Us competitor what's it called we had uh traitor Labs was the name of the game we tried to build uh on the similar lines how you put this I would put this as uh a okay especially because this category is new uh this category is with Mobile coming into picture uh one of the and covid happening in 2020 people started socializing on young mobile a lot so you'll see stumble guys or among us being played by teenagers a lot which means your stream of audience which is going to come they are they have not been exposed to this category as such so this is all older people you're seeing puzzle Casino arcade they're older people they're like 30s 40s this is like 18 19 and I assume they have less money which is true which is why the monetization goes down in this category but they are crazy fans of it once they start to like it with their friends they just stick around with it and they come back to it again and again in traitor Labs as well I was seeing there was stream of teenagers have a group of 10 people they'll come back to the game they'll play if you do something wrong they'll email you that we are not able to do this that they'll be very enthusiastic about sharing their experiences also so this C they also stream a lot no they stream a lot uh even traiter Labs not being so big we were getting few YouTubers trying to stream that as well which was very interesting for us because we and then that guy was coming back and saying okay I want to uh I want to become big YouTuber from here based on traitor labs and we were super happy too why do you shut down the game uh the biggest Gap that I saw in that particular category was even if we go big we were not able to see uh how would we beat among us as such uh we tried few modes which were very different we had a zombie mode which was very interesting which started working with people as well where there's a zombie and the zombie is creating everybody's zombie so the one person who's get who is not becoming a zombie actually wins the game and makes the non- zombie category win so that was a very interesting mode which people were liking but it was not appearing as engaging as what Among Us was doing so saying Among Us captured the brand for this category and it's very hard once somebody has completely captured a brand for all impostor or team type games and the only way to win now is to do something like a stumble guys which is or Fall Guys which is different yeah but still a party game yeah and stumble guys for that matter I mean uh when you look at that game again it's not the depth of the game is not very huge it's the amount the yeah the people that you're playing with you're having fun with them it's like us talking right you don't know what serend you will come you will fall I'll be like haha that's the novelty of the game not the game features itself right it's me looking at your reaction to me playing the game in real time and vice versa so imagine something like I pretty sure you would have seen the Nickelodeon uh shows Takeshi's Castle exactly something tak's Castle or there was one uh Legends of the Hidden Temple I think you would remember that for sure yeah it is nostalgic I mean imagine we used to imagine at when we looking at TV that I'm playing yes so that is the kind of game that this game offers because as a child you would like to be in that space where you're competing with somebody but not very uh not so not serious not very serious that's a great way of putting it it's a party game so I think that particular emotion for teenagers I think this C genre captures his really well and people can build more of this I I think people are not building enough in

### Genre 8 [34:02]

this particular genre interesting next let's go to Sports FIFA cricket league I'm sure there are lots of cricket games do you have any sports games no we don't have we restrict ourselves to more tabletop and puzzle okay that's because that's your Forte yeah where would you put this though I would put sports games again over here not so much in monetization very classic in nature so the EA Sports Games will work much better than you making a cricket knockoff yes so and and the games that work out in the space generally give you that Sports Experience altogether uh very less number of sports games you'll see monetized really well uh some of the games that I can think of is FIFA monetizes well uh golf Clash monetizes really well these games monetize well but they have had hard time reaching that space because people like to play against sports game very casually you would like to knock six balls and then move on to some other game something like that so you're saying the retention time is lower yeah retention is also slightly lower but and they keep CH changing games they keep trying different variants uh where they feel that their skill has kind of saturated also what do you monetize in this like you can't charge people for a new colored ball or a bat or whatever right like in FIFA I think the monetization is the game itself you buy the game right it's a paid game uh but I feel like if it was a free game it would be very hard for me to figure out what exactly I'd monetize in the game like even with most sports games right I feel like at least as a consumer as somebody who plays the games it's like I have no incentive to pay for anything and that's why all these games like everything even for a WWE which is not really a sports game but a WWE FIFA NBA you pay for the game first and then you play you know as much as you want you can do whatever you want in the game and even the unlocks like a buying the rock inside WWE it is still with in-game currency which you don't really pay for unless you want to but I don't see anyone like paying for in-game currency just to unlock the rock they will rather grind the game out and then you know uh pay for it that's a bit of Indian mindset okay because in us uh you'll see a lot of people doing that just unlock just unlocking because they want to experience that particular player uh and in India what I've seen is microtransactions have kind of grown Over The Last 5 Years uh once you are convinced in one of the games and I'll give you my example itself U the first game that I can think of was I think homecapes which made me pay uh and the reason was I got inside that game so much that I felt now I need this to unlock the other stories or the content that I want to see it and I paid just 100 rupees for that but then something triggered in my mind and I was very now your wallet is opening yes so I became very comfortable playing in Clash of Clans and there are few cricket games that I've paid in uh I've paid like 20,000 rupees in one of the games uh Clash of Clans I would have spent 5,000 6,000 rupees uh so I think that opened up once I was triggered by one of the games uh so India generally is opening up to that uh you will see more and more games getting more and more I APS in India and people are starting to realize that as well uh you said IPS I APS in app purchase okay awesome next let's

### Genre 9 [37:12]

talk about Shooters so pubg and Call of Duty and all that of course pubg has the secondary element of being a battle royale I don't know let me just check if we have battle royals here it is the same yeah okay so I think we have uh Shooters like we'll call Battle Royale a subset of shooters very popular I see this these people streaming all the time but I don't know how it would be from a money perspective where would you put this again from money perspectives it is right there monetizing huge especially because of the vanity factor in it uh people like to show off when the other folks are watching you play because people are streaming or showing Clips they want to do that nice head shot they want to show a nice gun status so you buy a golden gun because there's status but isn't it very competitive it is very competitive uh but on the other hand because this is newer mobile mobiles have become more and more heavy in terms of ram which means the ability to do a lot of things have gone up uh for a small developer I think this is difficult to get into but for somebody uh who can invest a little more I think there are a lot of demand of different ways of playing Shooters pal world uh is a kind of Battle Royal but with Pokemon type animals creatur so there are lot of games that are coming out in a different setting and there will be games coming out in very different settings in the next five years four years where I think they will be F first person shooter yet uh yet being slightly different spin-off on with Pokemon or this or that so so there's unlimited like simulators there's unlimited scope for variance but do you feel like people play shooters for a while and then stop playing and then move on or the stickiness there is very high stickiness with Shooters as well like people play heavily especially with again social component in it I think pubg free fire they have very strong social component so wherever you can go around with your friends I think it is lot more engaging it has some overlap with party games in a way r RPG games in a way and it has some overlap with you know even Sports and arade to some extent right it feels like a sport you five team versus some other five team feel like War um is it expensive to make it is certainly very expensive as good as like RPG that I was talking about so it cost you 100 crores in India to make like more than that for pubg I think it will might cost 100 million also that's about 800 crores yeah but for uh let's say a smaller version of it probably you can do that and there will be lot of downloads people even download sniper 3D where there's a sniper with you and then you are shooting around yeah very single player is but giving you that sniper experience so it's a very you can break it down to very small sub Jer of just being good at sniper which is why I've placed it up for uh small developer I think picking one of the niche is very important they can start with Niche big developers can obviously go big interesting so we have two more

### Genre 10 [40:06]

left next is strategy Clash of Clans Clash Royale I'm sure Age of Empires on the PC would also fit here where would you put this I would put them again on a uh should I put it sure okay a we'll put it here yeah okay so lot of money in strategy once you've got the game right I think there is chance of a lot of innovation as well uh how much do the big games make again A Clash of Clans is certainly 1 billion a year and that they have been making it since last 10 years so if your strategy component is right in the game there is more replayability in the game when I say replayability it means can the player experience the same thing in a different strategy again and again if that is present then your strategy is Right strategy mechanics is Right which will make the game stick around with audience longer and they are always looking for something new so from an audience Lookout perspective it is hot always uh that if say something new they would like to jump onto it the pocket is deep they can spend a lot of money because they would like their army to be stronger and stronger uh and which is why I've kind of uh rated at a nice if you had to choose between strategy and puzzle for a new developer in India to make which would they choose I would choose puzzle uh especially because I feel strategies games uh technology is a lot more complicated than puzzle can you give me an example imagine Clash of Clans so if it if you're sending out your army uh you want to be sure that the Army has destroyed the base because the other the base of the base Bas is for the other players the players other base they'll complain if it's wrong yeah if it is mismatch it is slightly off if you can if the player can hack the mobile then it's again going wrong so you want to be very sure that the placement of elements were right which means the real time communication between server and the mobile should be absolutely spot on the multiplayer replic the multiplayer aspect of it makes it a lot more complicated whereas in puzzle uh that complexity is not present puzzle games are really one single player solo so the complexity goes Downs there is lot more ease in building it shipping features so I have a question here for your games what do you use we are multiplayer but our multiplayer is again lot less complex because no I mean like do you use Unity or unreal or we for some games we use Unity coco 2dx uh which is a C++ uh engine which is not so popular but very hardcore engine which were which we have we used in 2017 itself now we have moved on to Unity for some of the games is it getting easier over time with all the abstractions if you want today an asset pack you can buy it this that in unity certainly game development is lot more easier uh Coco studx is a lot more tough it is open source um it's lot more raw in nature but I feel at your scale now you don't care whether something is raw or not right you would care more about ease of like you would use Unity because it's just easy to get the next game up and running and then if it really works you rebuild it again from scratch in a new way of doing things very interesting and how many employees do you have today we have 300 people how many of those are unity Engineers around 60 people mostly not Unity Engineers as such uh some would be Unity 10 12 uh but we generally categorize them as game developers and software Engineers uh not specifically Unity because we feel anybody who is good with uh coding or programming can figure it out yeah it's it's this weird Trope on the internet where if you're good at coding then you're only good at react or you have a certain GitHub commit history or whatever people have not gotten used to it yet especially people who are straight out College they've not got used to it yet that software is very wide gaming definitely comes game development comes under software unreal Unity are sure you still write C or C+ plus but it's still very different from traditional engineering but if you are a good engineer in one place you can easily transfer over right you're an engineer so you've probably done you built apps you worked at Cap Gemini then you did games so there's very wide variance in what you can do as an individual well I have one last you know

### Genre 11 [44:30]

game category and that is racing I would it's very interesting actually because people love to race but the monetization again is very difficult over here why because again you just cannot give uh there's very less number of games that have been able to monetize it CSR 2 is one of the games I think they do's called CSR 2 uh they monetize around 70 million a year but that's the max I have heard about racing games that's not very good yes uh that is especially because uh again you cannot play around with the mechanics of it you are going to race you cannot make it so unfair that I you are getting a Mercedes and I'm getting a sta Sumo you can't make that happen so to give all your players equal access very similar so probably the moneti will start to come in similar to Shooter where probably the skin of the car would matter or the whole game could be a very story based game again it then it becomes like more like RPG meets racing in that particular case because then you're solo then in Solo you can like spend more money get better car and then you can defeat the villain that's a very different thing where would you plant this I would rate it B uh but I feel that there's a lot of interest in racing games in general people like to try doctor driving also to competitive racing uh like Horizon and then Forza and I spent a lot on racing games right like more to buy the game and after that you know I'd like to grind and unlock it even though I can you're right it's an Indian mentality like I would not like to pay for a car I would like to grind and get it but yeah like solo games but I can understand like apart from the foras of the world and maybe two three top racing games I wouldn't try a new one cuz I need the best graphics you know features I there's no point trying a tier 2 or a tier three racing game because I'm like you know the best one will anyway have all of this it's all the same cars anyway right and Licensing the cars actually matters you know in EA Sports like Cricket you had all those fake names of those things in racing also I've seen some of that so very interesting to see this being ranked a b uh and very interesting to also hear that the best racing games only make like 70 mil right that's the top game you're saying on mobile making 7 mil I have one last question for you we're done with you know the tier list why do you choose to do mobile games over PC games I feel uh for me uh

### Mobile VS PC Games [46:57]

particularly when I was getting into gaming I felt I would like to do something where the results are a lot more faster I feel PC games uh the results are slower in nature you would like to build something for a it takes time to build those games uh people like very well polished games in Mobile the audience is a lot more casual in nature so you can get the result faster it's a Lean Startup mentality where you get things out fast and get and also like the play store has distribution like with a PC game you're going to probably Steam and then you still have to promote it and this and that here on mobile store you know if you get to some scale or if you're able to push it through like you know you will get promoted in a way is that mentality that is 100% true uh in fact that could that is one of the reasons why there are so many gaming companies out there because Play Store in general distributes and gives you visibility which otherwise you would not get so I think that certainly adds up to the whole thing interesting yeah this was probably one of the most enlightening conversations I've had in a very long time because I learned the entire lay of the layout like now I understand if I were to ever bet on a gaming this thing or you know build a full game or whatever uh I'm not really a big fan of mobile games personally so it doesn't align my interest that's why I've never built a full mobile game I prefer to build PC demos or like we built this card game called overpowered the card game but we wanted it to be played on PC it's a it's just one of those things where I really do it because I want to make money I just want to have fun and I feel like I now have a full lay of the land of mobile games I know if I to spend money where I would do it I know some which are too expensive for me to do I know everything and I know which are bad ideas as well so thank you so much for this I owe you one this is a master class I'm sure the audience who stuck with us so far has also learned quite a bit um yeah I mean do you have anything last just say to the audience before you leave I can actually add one more thing in this particular category I think it will be useful for a lot of Developers one of the reasons why I've have uh also put simulators over here is because of Roblox uh and Roblox in itself gives you a little bit of window to develop a lot of things I mean you can make games you can make worlds inside Roblox so I think that is particularly very useful for young developers who are trying to get into gaming because uh Roblox is one of the places you can go and probably build some small things and get some initial success there as well very interesting so allowing players to build inside of your game is an unlock in itself right and then they're more invested it has elements of role playing so you're playing the role therefore you spend more on the game eventually very fascinating thank you for being here with us thank you for enlightening us this is a master class this is like an MBA session or something like that right for but for gaming and this is the value of the series where I can just get experts who are like somebody had like 100 cres 500,000 crores in Revenue get them here and be like listen you know split apart your industry for me I'm a lay man I've got these this stack of things please break the industry away from me and I think this was very useful like for me personally and I'm sure for the audience as well thanks for coming thank you I had a lot of fun yeah