HedoGames: The gaming mother in the making…
By: Rachit Vasudeva
Tags: Startup, Game Design, Game Programming, Game Art, Game Development

· Introduction

Gaming industry is a booming industry in India. With one of the world’s largest youth population, India is poised to become one of the world’s leading markets in Gaming sector. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 43%, from INR 1026 billion in 2014 to INR 2005 billion in 2020, which is almost double that of the global media and entertainment industry. The growth is driven by rising younger population, higher disposable incomes, introduction of new gaming genres, and the increasing number of smartphone, PC and console users. With experience outsourcing, QA testing and developing products combined with availability of creative talent, advanced technology and low-cost, Indian markets provide the best opportunity for collaboration and development work.

In order to keep this industry blooming and growing, there is an alarming need for quality video game developers in India. Keeping all the above factors in mind, I would like to introduce my startup — HedoGames, a company that aims to produce high quality AAA games, primarily focusing on glorifying the history and mythology of India.

· What actually market is looking for?

Video gaming in India is an emerging market. As investments continue to rise, the community is expected to grow rapidly in India. Our country is one of the top five mobile gaming markets in the world in terms of number of users. Local Indian video game studios are yet to make a significant impact in the world market mostly relegated to mobile games that have development cycles of not more than 3–6 months. Video game studios are slowly sprouting up around India, most notably in Bangalore, which is often called the “Silicon Valley of India”. Moreover, the arrival of COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the lives of people, restricting them to sit at home. In this scenario, in order to kill boredom, more people tend to play video games. These are some of the reasons which act as a driving source of motivation for me to make this start-up a huge success.

· Relevant products in the market

The competition is going to be really tough when there are masterpieces like GTA, RDR, Assassin’s Creed, already ruling the marketplace. These games are being played by each and every possible gamer out there, because of the quality of the game and every detail in it being given special attention. As far as our company is concerned, we seek targeting all types of genres, including:-

1. Role Playing Games (RPG)

2. Story-based Games

3. Sports

4. Horror games

5. Multiplayer-online games.

Story-based and multiplayer-online would be the two genres that we would be primarily focusing on because of two reasons:

1. Story-based games would provide the current-gen gamers an insight of the rich and glorious history and mythology of India, in the same way as Ghost of Tsushima from Japan did.

2. Ever since Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) mobile arrived in India, E-sports has taken a toll over the entire gaming industry. It gave birth to many gaming legends, the prominent ones being Naman Mathur (Soul Mortal) and Adii Sawant (Hydra Dynamo). Many E-sports competitions are also being held in different parts of the country, which invited many foreign companies to sponsor and partner with companies of India.

· The Audience that we target

India is a young country with over 75% of its population under the age of 45, making it one of the largest potential markets for online gaming in terms of volume. The Indian population is also undergoing an increase in urbanization, which has furthered even more the growth of gaming within India. Most gamers are under the age of 24 years, probably due to having more free time at hand & being more tech savy, although it is important to note that gaming is also being adopted amongst the older generation.

· The Knowledge required and the Expertise needed

Game development in itself is a very vast industry. As the name suggests, they ‘develop’ games. But there is more to do in that. They design, program and test games, too. As far as my firm is concerned, it will consist of a whole bunch of artists, designers, programmers, testers, and marketers. Talking about the expertise in all of these:

1. Programming: Game programming, a subset of game development, is the software development of video games. Game programming requires substantial skill in software engineering and computer programming in a given language, as well as specialization in one or more of the following areas: simulation, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, audio programming, and input. As the job itself says, a programmer is a person who codes all the stuff. We need a team of passionate coders who:-

Ø Have expertise in high-level languages like C++. For tackling big games in the larger gaming companies, knowing C++ is critical. It is fast, the compilers and optimizers are solid, and you get a lot of control over memory management. It has extensive libraries, which come in handy for designing and powering complex graphics. As a statically typed language, C++ generally performs better than dynamically typed languages because the code is type-checked before it is executed. A majority of the AAA titles are made using C++, that’s the reason why C++ is so important in game programming and therefore, the need for such people is high.

Ø Know Java and JavaScript really well. Java is widely used by indie game development companies and for creating mobile games. And it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given how versatile the language is and given its rich collection of open-source material. Many of the world’s top mobile games have been developed in Java. So, without a shred of doubt, we require good Java programmers as well.

2. Game Art: A game artist is someone who creates 2D and 3D art for the visual elements of a video game, such as characters, vehicles, props, scenery, background, objects, colours, textures, and clothing. They imagine what items will look like, sketch out preliminary designs, develop sketches into forms that go with the game’s desired feel, and turn the chosen sketches into 2 or 3D computer graphics. For game art, we require people with a creative mind-set as well as expertise in game engines like Unity, Unreal engine, 3D modelling softwares like Maya, Blender etc.

3. Game designing: There has been a lot of confusion among people that game designing and game art are the same thing, but that’s definitely not the case. A designer’s role helps bring a sense of unity to the team, linking the difference between Game Design and Game Art. Being able to align with the Art and Programming teams organically, but the designer may not have the specialization in either art or programming. A designer has an understanding of both, so that the designer is able to apply their design principles as effectively as possible.

4. Game Testing: Game testing has been one of the most underrated job in terms of public perception. But only the people who are working in this industry knows how important role game testers play in the successful launch and functioning of the game. A game tester is a person who somehow works magic in a game industry, by using specialized tools. Despite that his product is hardly possible to touch, it truly exists and plays an important role for the project because the question is quality. Game testers focus on a compatibility, functionality, standards testing on all available consoles. We, for our company, are looking for people who could break the game into small codes. They need to make sure that any code doesn’t work. In order to do this, they have to be a little unconventional in their playing and testing.

· Estimated Budget

One of the most important tasks the new business owner must tackle is to create a budget for the new company, so one can see expected income and expenses and cash needs. I, as the owner of the company would also need to keep a check on the same. After many consultations and meetings with some professional accountants and business tycoons, we have decided to initiate our firm with a rough budget of INR 3.5 crores. This would include:-

Ø Fixed assets, for furniture, equipment, and vehicles needed to set up your location and initiate the business. Fixed assets also include computers and machinery, furniture, and anything for your office, store, or warehouse that is needed to set up your business. This all would sum up to approximately ₹ 2 crores.

Ø Materials and supplies, like office supplies, advertising and promotion materials, game development assets such as motion capture tools, high end PCs and laptops, sound and audio machinery etc. These would cost us around ₹ 1 crore.

Ø Other costs, like the initial fees to an accountant to help us set up your accounting system, local licenses and permits, insurance deposits, and legal fees to register our firm with government entities and prepare operating documents. That would cost us nearly ₹ 50 lakhs.

· Product pricing

Once the initial investments are made and the games are developed, the next important thing that comes our way is keeping a price of what we have produced in the market. That would depend upon several factors:-

Ø Budget and effort: if we aim to produce a high quality AAA game, (now those who don’t know what AAA stands for, it actually means ‘A lot of money, A lot of time, A lot of effort’), then following the current industry standards, a AAA game would cost around INR 4000 for the audience. On the other hand, sports and indie games (made by individual developers) would cost something around in the range of INR 1500-INR 2000.

Ø Variable pricing: Some games, when launched, do not get an instant hit but after some time their sales accelerate. Take the case of AMONG US, developed by Innersloth Studios. The number of downloads skyrocketed after the ban of PUBG in India. So, after observing this dynamic nature of games over the period of time, we would also be changing the prices of our games as well as the in-game purchases as and when required in order to keep our audience engaged.

· Where do things can go wrong?

After diving deep into this topic, we found some of the things which might not be so good for our company:-

Ø Piracy: Nowadays, there are many websites that pirate the games and sell them illegally on their websites for free, causing huge losses to the companies.

Ø Development hell: Sometimes, studios announce that their game would be launched after a certain period of time, but in reality a lot more time gets taken, ultimately deteriorating the overall quality of the game and also hampering the excitement among the people.

Ø Lack of communication: In a game development company, the head game designer has to sync with the programmers and artists, and convey their ideas properly. But sometimes, that does not happen, the work force may come up with new ideas and perspectives and this may lead to conflicts and spoiling of the project.

· Milestones and achievements

The most important part of achieving any milestone (launching a full-fledged game in our case) is planning. For this, we need a span of 2–3 months, for deciding the plot, theme, characters, gameplay and stuff. After planning comes execution, which too will require a lot of effort as well as a time period of a minimum of 10–12 months (may take as long as 2 years for a AAA title). The journey doesn’t end here. After the developers complete their job, it’s time for the testers and marketing team to get in charge. To sum up, the journey of making a full-fledged AAA title and successfully launching it in the market might take an approximate period of 1.5 years.