Game Lifecycle Management is Immature in India

A mobile gaming production team resembles a software factory giving an opportunity to apply the classic production management principles while dealing with hundreds of SKUs on a daily basis. Given the fragmentation of mobile handsets and limited computing resources (processor power, memory etc), it is a unique challenge to manage the lifecycle of a mobile game through its different key phases such as studio production, post-production (porting onto hundreds of phones), packaging and submission to all carriers worldwide with local language support. What starts like a blend of making an animation movie (with conceptualisation, creative direction, production etc) and writing a software (with over 50,000 lines of code) on a couple of reference handsets starts expanding horizontally to cover hundreds of phone, several languages in each technical platform such as Java, Brew, iPhone, Android, Windows etc.

Saltmarch Media caught up with Dayanidhi MG, Vice President - Customer Delivery at Digital Chocolate, to talk about managing the life cycle of developing a mobile game and the challenges of building a cross-platform or a multi-platform game. He also speaks about the swell in the mobile games development in India, the experiences he gained while meeting the challenges in building a team and the level of co-operation among Indian game development companies.

Q. Please introduce yourself to our viewers and talk in a bit about your role at Digital Chocolate.
 
My name is Dayanidhi and I work as President of Content Delivery at the Digital Chocolate’s Indian office in Bangalore. We work with our offices located in US, Finland, Spain and Mexico and do a lot of engineering work covering the different cycles of mobile game development.
 
Q. Your talk at India Game Developer Summit revolves around life cycle management for mobile games. How mature is this process in India’s game development industry.
 
There aren’t many players in the Indian market that cover game development lifecycle from start to finish. There are a few service providers who work with publishers and them with some parts of the game lifecycle in areas such as developing a game for limited reference handsets or porting games onto other platforms, but Indian companies haven’t ventured into working through the entire lifecycle in a bigger scale. I think it’s going to mature in the coming days and we may see some players participate in the development cycle, production cycle and the post production and some who actually cover the entire life cycle in mobile games.
 
Q. How much importance is placed on establishing a strong storyboard before pushing a mobile game into development.
 
A game’s idea is really strengthened when strong storyboarding is done and I would say that it is a very important step. There are lot of instances where the story boarding goes through different cycles, iterations and then gets refined by a large extent and by the time the refinement process is done the game would have changed into something totally different from where it began.
 
Q. What are the biggest challenges a developer faces while building a cross-platform or a multi-platform game? Do you see this process being eased in the near future and how?
 
When I was making my presentation at the India Game Developer Community, I did mention the scenario and the engineering processes that multiplatform games are subjected to. One such scenario is when a publisher develops it for all the available platforms. In this case the publisher needs to really plan carefully in order to optimize the process so that he can leverage common efforts and resources that are required ensuring a proper sequence flow where again the time and efforts get reduced. So basically when the developers intend to release a game on multiple platforms they have to do a lot of technical planning in terms of creative development during the production process. But in the coming days we might see the evolution of some software tools that help in developing a game for multiple platforms thereby reducing the efforts and demanding skills that are required to develop a game for multiple platforms.
 
Q. What are main skills that you look for when hiring a new game developer?
 
One has to be a good engineer. If a developer is going to be a part of the studio it really calls for good coding skills and this is one area where college students can apply the skills and knowledge they’ve acquired in the fields of physics and mathematics because game development really requires a deep understand of these two subjects. In the specific area of post production, which involves porting a game onto multiple handsets, the engineering skills that we look for are based on the platforms on which post production is done which could be Java or C++ or Object C.
 
Q. Do you have any words of wisdom for startup game development companies to help them also gain a sizable share of the global game development work?
 
Indian startup companies should remain focused on one platform to start with. This way they can gain strength in that platform before moving onto multiple platforms. They also need to concentrate on gaining strength in one particular domain such as game development which is basically production and then putting some best practices into use to ensure the game development cycle is reduced and then be able to pass on that benefit to their customers. If they are publishers themselves, then they save up a lot on time during the late development cycle and this could really help them. Basically I would say that it helps to remain concentrated on one platform to begin with.
 
Q. What is the state of game development in India? What is your opinion about the level of co-operation among Indian game development companies and what can be bettered?
 
The density of game development companies in India isn’t really that and we personally know most of the companies that are largely present. But these numbers are increasing in recent times and I think it really helps to form an ecosystem where everyone stands to gain based on mutual discoveries and technological advancements. It’s really important to develop an ecosystem of this nature.

Q. What are Digital Chocolate’s ambitions for the next decade?
 
We’ve been in the field of mobile games for quite some time. Our CEO Trip Hawkins (William M Hawkins III), who also founded EA games, is a veteran in mobile games. Digital Chocolate has developed games for all the platforms that have evolved over time. We are now getting into social games. So in all, we are poised to be one of the key cross-platform mobile publisher and we really look forward to being present across all platforms and specially have a strong presence in social gaming because we believe the mobile-social game convergence is going to happen very soon.