Opinion Betting the Farm(ville)
For the past few months,Sharmila Abdulpurkar,a Bangalore-based mother of two,is hooked on to the online social game Farmville.
For the past few months,Sharmila Abdulpurkar,a Bangalore-based mother of two,is hooked on to the online social game Farmville. Abdulpurkar is a level 41 farmer,indicating that she is a serious addict. She watches the trees on her virtual farm bear fruit,exchanges the milk from her cows for currency,and has friends and family as neighbours around her. I am a complete addict, confesses Abdulpurkar,adding,It is the next best thing to managing a real farm.
Not far from where Abdulpurkar actually lives,amidst the chaos of the citys upcoming metro rail network in downtown Bangalore,is the Indian unit of Zynga,Farmvilles creator. Zynga is the worlds biggest social gaming firm. Try this for size 1.8 million people play Zyngas popular Farmville,Mafia Wars and other games before they eat their breakfast each morning. More tractors sell on Farmville in a day than in the United States and Canada in an entire year.
So what is Zynga doing in Bangalore? Currently,235 million people worldwide play Zyngas social games at least once every month. The online gaming firm wants to make that 1.4 billion,a number close to Indias population. To make that a realistic goal,Zynga chose Bangalore to set up its first development centre outside the United States.
Social gaming companies are growing on a massive scale and require top technical talent. Bangalore and India were natural choices says Zynga Game Network Country Manager Shan Kadavil who launched the office a couple of months ago. Outside the San Francisco area,where else but here could you hire a 100 computer scientists within a year? he asks.
The India unit currently has 30 employees,high-end computer professional hired off techie congregations such as Code Jams,BarCamps and Hackathons. The other element of hiring,studio talent to develop the beautifully-crafted animation for the games,is proving much more difficult in India. Zynga is now going after Bollywood talent,and hopes to have a full-fledged formal studio running in the next quarter.
Talent is not the only reason Zynga is in India. India is a potentially huge market for social gaming firms. Though it has only 36 million Internet users,by 2013 between 60 and 80 million Indians are expected to be online. But what makes the market mouth-watering is the fast-paced growth in its mobile subscriber base.
India is predicted to be the third largest online market in the next three years,says Kadavil. Zyngas Farmville game already has Indian elements auto rickshaws,gulmohar trees,chaat stands and elephants. In its Café World game where users compete to set up restaurants,Lavish Lamb Curry and Grand Chicken Kebabs are key elements.
Social gaming is only a couple of years old,so a relatively new phenomenon on the Internet. Yet Zynga alone accounts for a daily data transfer of a petabyte,that is one followed by 15 zeros. Indian users adapt to social gaming very quickly because the entry barrier is non-existent. Kadavil,a level 34 farmer,says the concept of a group game,of helping each other,of getting together with friends to complete a task,has big appeal in India.
The janitor at Zyngas Bangalore unit,who is neither English nor computer literate,is a level 45 farmer on Farmville. But Kadavil was surprised when the paanwalla around the corner from his office responded to a Farmville T-shirt by declaring that he is a fanatic of the online game. Unlike traditional gaming companies where freaky teenagers with twitchy fingers formed the bulk of users,social gaming has universal appeal, he says. Whats not to like about helping a friend clear the pests from her fields or asking another to give you a hand with your new chicken coop?
saritha.rai@expressindia.com
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