Game for Bipasha?

The company earlier forayed into the DTH gaming space with a game featuring cricketer Yuvraj Singh. In the Indian landscape,there is a breed of people who are celebrity obsessed. Even within games,they prefer if there is a celebrity involved. We are targeting these consumers. There is an impact of over 50 per cent if a game carries a celebrity tag, Malik said.

The game with Bipasha is called Bipasha Fitness Gym and is accessible on the Actve Games platform. The actress will be seen in a sporty look within a well furnished fitness centre. With various equipments like Treadmill,Crosstrainer,Cycling,Swissball,ropes and dumbbells,the centre includes four rooms named Yoga,Diet,Steam and changing room. Gamers have to place their players on respective equipments according to the given sequence and complete their regime successfully and move on to different levels. Bipasha plays the role of a fitness guru in the game,in keeping with her image as one of the fittest actors in the industry and provides tips throughout the game. The game is open to all subscribers of Tata Sky. We try and seek the most common connect of the celebrity with the target audience. We took up the game with Bipasha first because we already manage her digital account and this is a way to reach a new audience. Since she is known for her fitness,we decided to exploit that factor, Malik informed.

Speaking about Actve Games,Malik said that the association with Tata Sky began two years ago. Hungama created a product called Actve Mall wherein content for mobile could be downloaded by using a television. It laid the foundation for the burgeoning games that were soon to come. Tata Sky had the first mover advantage and introduced a lot of content under different sections like cookery,devotional and education. They wanted something linear and interactive for their users in the VAS value added service segment. Tata Sky has six million subscribers and we get high ARPU average revenue per user and customer loyalty for subscriptions. If we get 35 thousand users in a month paying Rs 40 per game,then its quite satisfactory, Malik said.

Vikram Mehra,Chief Marketing Officer,Tata Sky Ltd. said,Since last year,the concept of playing these new breed of high tech games across multiple genres on the DTH platform has received an overwhelming response among subscribers. With Hungama Game Studio,we have been able to offer fun,exciting,visually appealing,easy-to-learn games to more customers over the past year and we believe that the latest edition with Bipasha8217;s Fitness Gym will be as successful.

Malik also said that the average lifespan of a game in the DTH platform is about three to four weeks. The high number of housewives on the platform also means that creating content is always a challenge. You need depth in terms of content. Most of the target audience is not exposed to gaming. We try to come out with as many different games as possible. Our pipeline is ready and robust. The only priority is on how soon we can launch games. We are targeting around six games every month, Malik said.

Siddhartha Roy,COO,Hungama Digital Media said,With the growing popularity of celebrity games we hope to introduce many more in the coming few months. Hrithik Roshan,Mallika Sherawat,Shilpa Shetty,chef Sanjeev Kapoor,Minissha Lamba,Esha Koppikar,Sonu Sood and Zeenat Aman are some celebrities whose games may soon be launched. Malik also said that Hungama Digital Entertainment has tied up with production houses like Eros International and Yash Raj Films to create and distribute games on the DTH and mobile platforms.