WGamer Article: East Side Story
All aboard the Orient Impressed

Posted: Thursday, 18 March 2004 by Steve Palley


If you’re a true-blue mobile gamer, odds are that you’ve played games from every corner of Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea – but, until recently, you may have sub-continently (ha!) left Indian and Chinese developers off the short list. Maybe the section of your brain responsible for keeping tabs on Asian mobile games developers (what do you mean you don’t have one?) has been occupied by the achievements of Japanese and South Korean developers, whose countries' advanced national cellular networks and handset technology (hugs and kisses, DoCoMo!) gave the indigenous gamesmiths a huge boost. Or maybe you’re just too busy playing games to worry about where they came from. Whatever the cause, consider this article an ameliorative jab to the solar plexus. You may not realize it yet, but Indian and Chinese games developers are a fantastically talented, hungry bunch – and they are in the midst of creating and disseminating a new wave of killer content that will put a couple shiny new thumbtacks in every cell gamer’s map.

Don't feel too bad. This revelation germinated in my mind only recently, after I read a few reports that indicated China now possesses the world’s largest number of cellular users (well over 270 million and climbing by 5 million a month); India is adding almost 18 million cell customers a year, a rate which will propel it into the Top 8 for total users by the end of the year and put it on a par with the U.K. and France. This fact, concatenated with India’s well-known dominance in all forms of software development and China’s high level of technical and educational infrastructure, made the connection almost impossible to ignore, even for a somewhat distractible editor like myself. The only question left to ask was whether the mobile gaming phenomenon had hit these two countries with the force we’ve experienced first-hand in other regions. The answer came in a email-client-overwhelming torrent of correspondence from Mobile2Win’s Head of Content Operations Ravi Shankar Bose; Enorbus’ CEO Norbert Chang and Director of Game Development Gage Galinger; and IndiaGames’ chief Games Director Vishal Gondal.

Mobile2Win, based in both China and India, released its first Java game only 5 months ago – but has already made distribution agreements with European operators like T-Mobile, Vodafone and Sonera, in addition to gargantuan internet portals msn.com and aol.com. “Most of our games are designed for the Western markets,” writes Mr. Bose, but that doesn’t mean that Mobile2Win is ignoring the vast possibilities unfolding in and around the Asian continent; in fact, they’ve set up alliances with operators in China, India, and the Philippines. When I asked Mr. Gondal why India was such a great place for games development, he pointed to India’s favorable combination of technical and creative ability (think Hyderabad programming crossed with Bollywood story-telling) – as well as the prevalence of English as a second language.

IndiaGames' Vishal Gondal shows off his Globetrotter skillz.

In a similar vein, Enorbus set up shop in the Middle Kingdom to take advantage of the country’s sheer scale and high techie quotient, says Mr. Chang: “We purposefully chose China for many reasons, one being the huge market potential, but another is the wealth of talent from which we can draw for development purposes. China is full of geeky gamers just like us. It’s truly amazing how some things transcend cultures! Every other city block in most major urban centers of China have Internet cafes, which are full 24-hours a day with gamers playing online games.” Thanks to China’s huge usership, Enorbus also has a lot of resources with which to experiment: “When we have created some product that we feel is very new, or innovative in some way, China is natural first market in which to launch. It is relatively simple to go out and organize substantial market research efforts.” In addition, titles that are successfully aimed at the Chinese market can garner truly monumental profits due to its far-flung mass. Bose reports that Mobile2Win’s series of games based on the Chinese New Year were phenomenally popular – even among “the vast Chinese diaspora living outside of China in Europe and other South Asian countries.”

Enorbus' sound guy is taking a quick break.

This outcome is hardly surprising when one considers how globally prevalent Chinese and Indian cultures have become. Noting the enormous popularity of Japanese animation with young Westerners, Bose and his cohort have made games with interesting Chinese and Indian ethnic themes part of Mobile2Win’s overall strategy; I recently had occasion to play Mobile2Win’s “Balance Singh” – a freaky little game which is premised upon a traditional Indian village high-wire performance – and was fascinated by the game’s unusual visual style and exotic theme. Mr. Galinger, Enorbus’ Director of Game Development, says that Asia’s more communitarian ethos is conducive to developing multiplayer titles: “In Asia, people often think of themselves within the context of their relationships, whether it be family, work, etc. We are focusing on multi-player community products that capitalize on just such a sense of definition.” One Enorbus product that will represent this philosophy is Iron Fork Cooking Academy, a massively multiplayer ‘community’ where players will develop and customize their avatar by besting other would-be chefs in a number of puzzle, action and board games. If it’s anywhere as cool as it looks, cross-market appeal should be a sure thing.

A couple shots from Iron Fork Cooking Academy.

Another of my questions concerned the mobile-readiness of the Indian and Chinese markets: there’s plenty of developing talent, sure, but is the technological backbone really there? Indian and Chinese developers answered with a virtual smirk and Z Snap. Thanks to China Mobile’s advanced GSM infrastructure, Enorbus’ Chang recently took a trip through rural central China with no dropped coverage whatsoever: “I can’t even drive across Los Angeles without having several dropped calls, so in those terms, we are very pleased.” Mobile2Win’s Bose agrees: “The cellular infrastructure in China and India has come up quite late but the pace at which it has evolved is quite phenomenal. Thanks to marketing efforts by the operators, it has led to mobile users becoming more aware and willing to use data services like gaming.” With this in mind, Bose is looking forward to a number of soon-to-be released Mobile2Win products, including a soccer game oriented around the Euro Cup 2004 and a large contingent of Olympics titles. Considering how quickly mobile games development is progressing in India and China, all of us gamers have occasion to get excited too.

Ravi Shankar Bose of Mobile2Win, livin' large.