Hasta La Motion!

The Indian gaming scene’s impressive upward mobility clubbed with the enormity of the market has kept the pot boiling for a while. Yet one ponders whether the western games like Oddbods Turbo Run may surpass the growth rate of indigenous ones.  Hypr Games, a game development and publishing company backed by U2opia Global Group has recently launched Oddbods Turbo Run game which is popular among kids between the age group of three to seven.  The game is inspired from the Emmy awards nominated animated comedy series of the same title featuring seven adorable characters who live in a world full of unusual adventures.

Hyper Games help western developers to publish games in India with their local presence, monetisation, marketing, and growth and Oddbods Turbo Run is one of them. The game has adorable characters which according to Hypr Games will receive a lot of affection from youngsters across India.  In conversation to AnimationXpress U2opia Mobile co-founder and managing director Sumesh Menon expressed that they are focused in developing and publishing high quality, lightweight, addictive social games for mobile and instant platforms for the global audience, as they have witnessed a paradigm shift in the users’ behaviour in consuming content and the new opportunity with distribution platforms.

Considering that they have discovered a two-fold strategy to develop in-house games for mobile and instant platforms and help other developers to provide supports to publish and distribute games in India. “We scout to double down our strength to build a unique value proposition in our business and produce super engaging gaming content for our audience. We are also developing hyper casual games and instant games for global markets and rolling out with well-known publishers,” added Menon.

The Indian gaming market has grown notably in the last two years thanks to the affordability of smartphone and cheap data rates. “In the country, we have approximate 500mn+ Smartphones and about 60 per cent of the users play games regularly on the phone. There is a large percentage of users who are exposed to gaming the first time through mobile phones. We see massive potential in the market with a low barrier to entry and largely English speaking young audience” expressed Menon.

Hypr Games is optimistic about the market and thus they are investing heavily to build publishing discipline for the onboard western developers to provide end to end support including payments, distribution, marketing, and growth.

The game has received a commendable amount of traction within three weeks as it clocked over 100,000 downloads. They are aiming to list Oddbods IP among the top three endless runner games in the country and to meet their targeted audiences as fast as possible.

Thus when asked about what are the success mantras behind it he replied “there are many factors behind the success of the game. We would categorise them into the two most crucial elements: Engagement and Marketability. The game should be engaging enough to entertain the audience for a certain period of time and bring them next hour or day and convert it into their regular habit and source of entertainment. In addition to that, the game content should be relatable to the targeted audience in order to get their attention to download it and recommend it to their friends to download, through word of mouth.”

The game was launched three weeks back and has clocked over 100,000 downloads already according to Hyper games the player feedback and organic discovery are reportedly positive.  “We are very much committed to making this IP as top three endless runner games in the country and reach out to our target audiences as fast as possible,” he expressed.

When asked on the strategy behind publishing western games in India this is what Menon replied “We are fairly transparent and focus on building values by publishing in India. Our aim is to provide continuous support to developers for understanding the market, help them to make the product right for the market and support with our growth engine that offers marketing investment, payment solutions, monetisation and player support. Our on-boarding process is fairly simple and easy. Our publishing SDK takes a few hours to get all essential in the game and to be market ready. We understand the main points of developers that they go through working with publishers as we are developer ourselves and so we try to design our process keeping developers first.”

When India is buzzing with gaming content with the introduction of new developers, players and studios the changes of launching game in India is real and Hypr Games is no exception. The primary challenge that they are facing “is always in monetising Indian audience which is being low ARPU (Average Revenue Per Use) market. We need to work with the right advertising and payment partners and provide attention to the detail in the product to ensure the game is monetised at best possible way without affecting engagement metrics.”

Denying that publishing of more and more western games in the India market will affect the Indie game development scene in India, Hypr games expressed that in next five years the country will witness a lot of western game developers designing their products keeping the Indian audience in mind and taking the market more seriously than ever before. “We do see a lot of innovation happening on the marketing, growth and payment side to make success in this market. We are bullishly investing in creating great quality gaming content for emerging platforms like instant messenger and mobile platforms. We are expanding our team to 25 people this year and looking to roll out 10 games in 2019.” said he.

Oddbods animated series connects a lot of kids and teenager audience, however since the game is an endless runner arcade, therefore, it is also targeting casual players irrespective of age.

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Enthusiast Gaming Holdings’ video game documentary titled, Shirley Curry: The Gaming Grandma has received over 300,000 views and 2.5 million minutes of watch time since its mid-April launch. Nick Calandra served as director and Omar Ahmed as producer for the documentary which was released under the gameumentary label owned by an enthusiast.

The documentary explores the popularity rise of Shirley Curry, the 83-year-old grandmother, celebrity gamer, and streaming sensation who has earned the nickname Skyrim Grandma for her videos about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The Gaming Grandma started playing video games in 2014, and has built a loyal fanbase of over 558,000 subscribers on YouTube.

The Gaming Grandma reflects the new reality of the gaming community as the demographics within the industry have broadened significantly in recent years. Gaming is becoming a hobby for everyone and age is becoming less relevant. A recent study highlighted that 20 per cent of all gamers in the US are now between the ages of 36 to 49 and 23 per cent of all gamers in the US are over 50 years old. Enthusiast’s platform and significant network provides communities for gaming enthusiasts of all ages and located all over the world.

Gameumentary founder and director of content Nick Calandra, commented, “Since being acquired by Enthusiast in June 2018, gameumentary has seen significant growth. We have launched 18 gaming documentaries worldwide since 2017, and most recently, The Gaming Grandma which already has over 300,000 views. Our documentaries and short films are meant to tell the stories behind the games and its fans, and the support and partnership with enthusiast enable us to continue producing content.”

Enthusiast acquired gameumentary in June 2018, as a property focused on telling the stories behind video games and the communities that play them, through long-form and short documentaries. Gameumentary has already produced 18 documentaries and with the support and management of Enthusiast, has travelled around the world from Los Angeles to Seattle, Austin to Prague, Ghent to Amsterdam to find exciting content.

Since the acquisition, the company has seen substantial growth with an increase in views compared to the same period, Q1 2018. Gameumentary will continue its momentum with three more studio documentaries planned for 2019. The next major documentary will cover the Insurgency series by New World Interactive, expected to premiere this summer.

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“Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures”—Harvey Pecker

 And they were just treated like that for a long time. The medium of comics can be traced back to the mid of 19th century. In America and Europe, they started as just strips in newspapers as fun elements. It reached the peak of their fame in 1930s with characters like Tintin in Europe, till superheroes came along and changed the game for a long time. The heroes and a few female heroes fought the bad guys and saved their country time and time again. In 1950s, superhero comics were placed under surveillance by Comics Code Authority, who claimed that they were poisoning the young minds by validating violence. 

In 1960s and 1970s, the superheroes became more than just friendly and morally good. There was diversity in the superheroes with the inclusion of heroes from different countries, genders and sexuality. The heroes also dealt with actual losses and issues and their morality were tested. Beside the superheroes, there were many underground movements which were published alternatively comics that addressed issues like sexuality, politics and social norms in a direct manner. 

 All the changes in the comic books didn’t happen suddenly, but because the readers demanded the changes. The 60s and 70s witnessed many political revolutions and changes, which affected the readership too. The comics and graphic novels became grittier, and the entire myth that they were meant only for children went out of the window. The artwork became darker, symbolic and experimental. Publishers were not afraid to bring out books which were thought-provoking, serious and disturbing. 

 In India, comics had either been for children or a tool for political satire in newspapers. There were books which were meant to be educational and fun for children. And then there were the comics with superheroes who fought the villains from space or supernatural creatures. They catered to the already existing market, without creating controversies or upheavals. 

 But the readership changed when the independent writers and readers, who were the consumers of the international products, started demanding home-grown products of similar nature. They ventured into the less-trodden themes of character-driven stories and satire. But they were still not able to foray into the commercial market, and stayed in the collector’s items, with unique art styles and storytelling formats. 

 With the advent of comic related forums and workshops being held all over the country, and the various internet platforms, comics and graphic novels got a new lease of life. Now, authors and artists are collaborating to come up with more strips, books, and hard copies of books which explore a varied range of topics like social norms, political outrage, sexuality, economic disparity and so on.

 As the books don’t have the restrictions to be published on paper and can be put online, the genre has become more inclusive and experimental. The ‘woke’ readers and the changing times, reflect on the kind of content which is being published throughout the world. This change is not only restricted to a country, but it’s global. As Scott McCloud said, “Today, comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard.” According to him, there is so much of content available online that it can take “a lifetime to read all the webcomics published in a year.”

 The comic writers now seem more hopeful about getting their work published and read, and reaching an audience. But it also increases the competition and challenges of the visibility of the creators. Despite the pros and cons, the comics are undergoing a lot of changes. They have come a long way, and still, have a long way to go. 

This article has been contributed by Campfire Graphic Novels director Girija Jhunjhunwala, and AnimationXpress.com doesn’t necessarily subscribe to these views

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