Apple is helping Indian developers make games for the world, but that’s not why they prefer iOS

“Apple has a team who are selecting games that are going to be in front of the app store. They always look for quality content when curating games. They helped us giving feedback… they understand the UI. And when our game launched, they featured it on the App store. It was a huge boost for the team,” Manwani tells indianexpress.com.

Unlike other developers, Manwani and Gosavi were 100 per cent sure they wanted to make niche indie games and iOS would be the platform of choice. Manwani said it took 15 months to develop The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands from scratch and for a two-person team, it was natural to go the premium route. The game was an iOS exclusive for a year, before it was made available on Android and Steam.

For Manwani, iOS will always be the platform for premium games. The exclusive factor is also there, which other platforms lack. “For premium games, it’s always better to launch a title on iOS. If we were focusing on a free-to-play title, maybe Android. But if you talk about the international market, I would still go with iOS.”

In 2015, Himanshu Manwani and Govardhan Gosavi started Xigma Games, an indie game studio. (Image credit: Xigma games)

Manwani agrees that India is not the market for premium mobile games, although there is a small section that is willing to pay Rs 299 for a game. The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands has 65,000 downloads on iOS and if we break that number, a mere 300 downloads are coming from India.

“Free to play games are very popular in India and the adoption of premium games are not very high. Also, people are not aware that games are being made in India. We always knew this and that’s why we always focused on international markets,” he explained. Manwani said the US, China and Europe are the key markets for the games they have developed so far.

It’s not that Manwani didn’t want his games to be available on other platforms like Google’s Android, the world’s most dominant mobile operating system. Just a month back, The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands made its debut on Android as a freemium game. The model is different though, tells Manwani.

“On Android, our main concern was on the premium side. So we experimented with something different. It’s free to download and it’s free to play for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, you have to make a one-time purchase, if you want to continue,” he said, adding that “the response has been better than what we experimented, but it’s less than iOS.”

The problem with Android, as Manwani likes to point out is that there are so many devices they have to focus on when developing games “We have to take care of a vast number of devices, different aspect ratios, etc. It’s challenging for a small team like us to design a game that works across on Android devices perfectly.”

But compared to Android, he said it’s easier to develop games for iOS because you have to focus on one device and the aspect ratios are automatically sorted. You just need a Mac, an iOS device and you are good to go.

Like Xigma Games, Jamban Inc is another studio in India that is developing unique games for iOS for the global audience. Chennai-based Jamban Inc, which is founded by Rajendran Dandapani, also agrees that Apple’s iOS has an added advantage over Android when developing games.

An augmented reality (AR) game like RushARound, which is targeted towards kids and has a fitness angle to it, takes advantage of the phone’s camera and processing power to deliver a fun experience. “We don’t have a specific genre of games, instead we want to focus on underused technologies like AR, cutting new releases and unusual game modes and that’s our forte,” Dandapani said.

RushARound has been downloaded 50,000 times on the App Store since it was released in 2017. This is a free-to-play game, but to really get statistics from the HealthKit and unlock achievements users need to pay. Dandapani is aware that RushARAround is not a “download” driven game because of its unusual game place, but he wants to retain that goal.

Dandapani is one of the game developers that truly understand the potential of augmented reality (AR). “AR is something new but the potential of AR has not been fully explored. I would say it’s better than virtual reality (VR) because VR is something that sucks into a spirit world and the physical world is completely lost track on. So I feel AR has potential there,” he explains. Apple’s ARKit augmented reality software platform allows developers to make AR games and apps for iOS devices.

Dandapani said platforms like WWDC and App Accelerator help as they get to talk to Apple developers directly and get valuable feedback instantly. “iOS’s backward compatibility is very useful for developers. And because the software and hardware are coming from the same company, if you have a problem, you report it and they fix it. And they are able to guarantee you that the fix will be across all devices. For example, one problem we had was the terrain was not mappable when it was feature-less. But today, we are able to do that simply because the next version they released of the ARkit was able to tackle it. And these are the benefits that we get when you build a game for iOS,” he said.

Pune-based June Gaming, founded by Roby Thomas John, is another indie game studio that sees value in developing games for the iOS platform. The studio’s latest game, MaskGun Mobile is a cross-platform 3D multiplayer first-person shooter, that has 23 million players worldwide.

“When you want to think about the Apple ecosystem from a developer’s point of view, I would say that Apple is a safer and trustworthy system. On Android, for instance, I get many clones of my game, but this never happens on the Apple App Store. So for me, I trust the apple ecosystem a lot more, which allows me to invest a whole lot of more time inside of it, knowing these basics will not happen,” he said.

One thing that John really likes about Apple is how they introduce new features to developers early on, spend time with developers, and try to understand what a game developer is trying to come up.

In a lot of ways, Apple is trying to make India an export hub for high-quality, niche indie titles for international markets. The Cupertino company wants to take control of game development for iOS in its own hands in India, the world’s second-largest market for smartphones.

“It’s a very positive message for the developer community. Considering the availability of technically sound and a growing game developer community in India, Apple would like to help them to develop games which it can take to the other international markets outside India, where Apple enjoys a relatively significant market share like US, Europe, Singapore, Japan, Australia, etc. This dovetails perfectly with Apple’s new direction of services (around all kinds of devices) will be much more important than hardware alone,” said Navkendar Singh, an analyst with IDC.

Apple’s App Store houses 300,000 free and paid games, making Apple the biggest gaming platform in the world.

Singh agrees that while the move might not help to really boost its market share in India, given the cost of iPhones, it will certainly help in appealing to the current niche gamers community, which has the potential to grow in double digits over the coming years.

Apple’s App Store houses 300,000 free and paid games, making Apple the biggest gaming platform in the world, even though the company doesn’t make games on its own. The company’s interest in video games will likely get a boost when it rolls out Apple Arcade, a new subscription video game service, later this year.

Beyond the popularity of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) in India, there lies a big question: Can we develop a game like PUBG in India? That’s one topic game developers like John discuss these days among their well-knit community.

“I think there are lots of developers working on high-quality games. A lot of people get swayed by who’s getting funded, what kinds of themes are getting money and so on. But I do believe that there are a lot of new companies coming up, which are trying to make a lot of high-quality content out of India,” John said.