‘India has tremendous potential for game developers’

“For us it is about getting a wider audience reach and also improvising on the basis of the feedback that we receive about the games. If being repetitive was an issue,then our subsequent games that came out after Farmville would not have been received so well. The very fact that these games allow players to connect across geography and even time boundaries have shown the power of gaming on the social networking platform.”

Zynga,which is currently in the process of going public,will be coming up with more games all generated for the social

platform.

On the issue of whether these games would be available on console-based game platform,Skaggs said,“In fact with social games we keep on adding new content every week. That makes the game more interesting and more interactive. On an average it takes about six months to develop a game like Farmville while a console-based game will take anywhere between two and five years. Once the console game is out,you have to hope for it to become a hit but there is a lot more scope to keep improving with a social networking game.”

On a country specific game being developed for India,he said,“We could make a game like that but why limit an audience just to a particular region. Instead it would be more fun to develop a game with a central theme unique to the country and a global appeal. That is what gaming is going to be about in the future.”