The summit would cover the following topics:

· Gaming on the road to 2011: An overview on how the India Gaming industry plans to gear up to reach the estimated target ofUs$200 mn.

· Driving the Gaming Eco System – Opportunities an Challenges: This session provides a unique opportunity to look at what drives Gaming in India.

· Infrastructure and Technology – Opportunities and Challenges: The backbone of gaming is based on technology – what do the tech guys have to say about this industry.

· Distribution and Access - Opportunities and Challenges: Distribution and access form the core of gaming. How is India taking gaming to the masses.

· Marketing and Advertising: Understanding of media structure, media potential, consumption habits, etc. Case studies on successful brand partnerships, insights & learning.

The Gaming Summit will have leading industry stalwarts coming from the varied fields namely, gaming, media, advertising fraternity, addressing important dynamics of the industry. There will be panel discussions addressing different topics which will involve industry players from diverse fraternities.

Some of the speakers are:

Mr. Rajesh Sawhney, President Reliance Entertainment Ltd.
Mr. Rohit Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd.
Mr. Prakash Bagri, Director Marketing, Intel (South Asia)
Mr. Quentin Poulet, Chief Executive Officer, Kreeda
Mr. Nishant Goyal, Manager-Sales, South East Asia, NVIDIA
Mr. Jaspreet Bindra, Regional Director - Entertainment and Devices, Microsoft India.
Mr. Madan Sanglikar, Partner, Inventions - Mindshare

Indiagames, India’s benchmark online and mobile games company and a leading global developer and publisher of mobile games and the E-Sports Council of India announced the formation of India’s first professional gaming team – Indian Inferno.

Team Indian Inferno comprises of Rueben Pereira, India’s No.1 FIFA player and the only Indian gamer to win a medal at the World Cyber Games Asia. Indian Inferno also comprises of India’s No.1 ‘Counter Strike’ game team led by Mikhail MehraAmar Ratnam, Ritesh Shah, Ben Varghese with and Pranay Bhatia. This team won the World Cyber Games-India event in 2007 in addition to winning other gaming tournaments across India.

Some Quotes…

Vishal Gondal, CEO Indiagames said “This is a major step in positioning E-sports as a viable career option amongst the Indian youth. This is the first time that an Indian team will be managed at every stage of their gaming career. Amar, Ben, Mikhail, Pranay, Ritesh and Rueben are extremely talented and we are sure that with the right professional guidance and exposure, they would be able to make a mark for India on the international competitive gaming scene”.

Says, Rueben Pereira, “I have been associated with Indiagames for a long time now and they have played a key role in supporting me and shaping my career as a competitive gamer”

Adds Mikhail Mehra, captain of the Counter Strike Team, “Being professionally managed is going to help us concentrate on improving our gaming skills, while the team atmosphere helps keep the competitive and motivational forces active”

As part of the agreement Indian Inferno will represent Indiagames in both national and international gaming tournaments as well as conduct nationwide gaming workshops for aspiring gamers. Indiagames will in turn manage their gaming careers in terms of endorsements, providing world class training facilities and a platform to showcase their talent. In addition to Indian Inferno, Indiagames also intends to support city specific gaming teams.

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ABOUT INDIAGAMES LTD .
Indiagames Ltd is India’s benchmark mobile and online games company and a leading global mobile game publisher. The Company is engaged in publishing and developing games across various platforms including Online and Mobile. Indiagames’ products are developed and published across all major technology platforms and are distributed through partnerships with mobile operators in over 75 countries.

In India, the Company also distributes games via its consumer focused website and operates a broadband Games on Demand service located at http://www.indiagames.com. Indiagames has over 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, London, Los Angeles & Beijing. Internationally the company publishes mobile titles via its IG FUN brand. Key investors include UTV – India’s foremost Media & Entertainment Company, Adobe Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc.

Indiagames, IG FUN and Beat This are trademarks of Indiagames Ltd.

ABOUT THE E-SPORTS COUNCIL OF INDIA (ESC-I)
The E-Sports Council of India” (ESC-I) is a centralized administrative and governing body for the competitive gaming industry in India. Its primary objective is to plan, regulate and organize e-sports events at various levels. ESC-I is a common platform for competitive gamers, event managers and potential sponsors. Under its aegis, ESC-I will introduce scholarship programs, training for both, gamers and game officials, seminars, counseling and also organize International tournaments like WCG, WCG Asia, the national gaming league – GoD League and the Indo-Pak Cup amongst others.

Date - 5th march 2008
Venue - KC College Auditorium, Churchgate, Mumbai
Time - 2.30 pm onwards ( Registration Desk opens at 1.30 pm)

For Registration - Click here

About Matt Costello

Costello wrote the critically acclaimed classic game The 7th Guest. Since then, he has scripted dozens of best-selling games such as Shellshock-Nam ‘67 (Guerrilla Games and Eidos), Bad Boys 2 (Empire) and 2005’s Doom 3 winner of an unprecedented five awards at E3 including the Game Critics Award: Best of E3.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, the Disney Interactive game Matt scripted, was released worldwide in 2007 in all the major console formats. The game has become the first Disney game to land in the US and UK at the #1 spot. Early reviews have cited the true-to-the film’s feel of the story and characters.

Currently, Matt is working on Rage, a new game for ID Software, as well as a new game for Eidos with Neil Richards and Swedish developer Avalanche.

Costello has also created many award-winning games for children, including the landmark Aladdin’s Mathquest with math expert Marilyn Burns for Disney, as well as A Cartoon History of the Universe (Putnam) and two math games based on the hit PBS show Cyberchase. He is designer of many role-playing and board games, including Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Batman, Lone Wolf & Cub, and many others.

About Ramesh, Kreeda Games

Ramesh Anumukonda, Chief Gaming Officer and Co-Founder, is a known pioneer in the Indian animation and game industry. In his roles as IBM’s Media & Entertainment Specialist and Pentamedia’s Project Lead, Ramesh has led many large development projects for clients like Electronic Arts, Atari (Infogrammes), Koei (Japan). Ramesh is also a member of SEI-CMM Certification Board to set process standards in Entertainment & Media Companies in India.

Kreeda Games India Pvt. Ltd. was founded in November 2006 by three mavericks in a small garage with very big dreams. Today, funded by IDG Ventures and SoftBank Bodhi Investment, two of the top venture capitalists in online gaming for emerging markets, Kreeda is proudly India’s first dedicated Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) operator.

Cutting across age groups and income segments, there has been a phenomenal increase in the consumption of gaming in the year 2007. In Mobile gaming, the surge came from smaller towns and at lower price points, while over 3 million gamers took to the Online gaming segment. Adding to that, the launch of gaming consoles like XBOX 360 and Sony PS3 piqued consumer interest as well.

In an official press release, Mr. Vishal Gondal, CEO, Indiagames said, “The facts and observations from this study are quite exciting for everyone in the gaming industry. The year 2007 has been great and we believe 2008 would be much more exciting. We will definitely see more people budgeting gaming into their spending on entertainment.”

“The study is of interest to marketers across industries as more people are playing during prime time. Also 60% of the gamers are aged above 22 years with working professionals and business people comprising of 34% of gamers. The preachers of In-Game advertising have some thing to munch here.”

Here are some key observations from the study

• Indiagames through its Games on Demand (GoD) subscription service has recorded about 10,000 paid subscribers. In 2007 the total game play on the service was recorded as 279,81,060 minutes over 1 year with an average time spent of about 233 minutes per user per month and a peak usage of 981 users.

• 60% of the gamers are aged above 22 which breaks a myth that gaming is of interest to only teens.

• 50% of the gamers are from North, 25% from West followed by 20% from South. The Eastern region comprises of only 5%.

• The gaming scenario is still dominated by males but share of women is constantly growing. 13% of the gamers are women and the rest males.

• The time at which people play also varies. The peak time of gaming is 7 PM with the maximum play is recorded between 7 PM and 12 AM. The lowest play time is recorded at 5 AM.

• 34% of the users are working professionals and business people. 7% of the users are housewives and 4% of users are retired people.

• The top game genre is Casual gaming with 47% share followed by Strategy & Action with 17% each.

• The most played game is Chess-master challenge followed by Diner Dash 2 and Flip Words – overall a healthy blend of casual, strategy, action & sports games.

Arun D’Souza, Territory Manager for Autodesk, India and SAARC, began the session by giving a brief overview of the agenda for the afternoon - an introduction to Autodesk, games overview, presentations by Chris Wells of Epic Games and David Glenn of Flagship Studios, demo reel of games by studios worldwide and lastly a question and answer session with the audience.

He then made a presentation on Autodesk products and shared statistics on the various verticals that these products are being used for, namely film, television, games and design visualization. Worldwide sales have seen a cumulative software sales growth of 18.4 percent. Maximum growth has been seen in the APAC region because of China and Korea. The most number of games created and sold are console games rather than PC, mobile or online games. The mobile currently has more of 2D games.

D’Souza also touched upon some of the problems faced by the gaming industry. Higher consumer expectations mean that the bar is being raised very quickly. There is a high demand for HD quality content. ‘Time to market’ has greatly reduced. Data volumes are increasing rapidly and multiple SKU support is needed. Another problem is that the next generation systems are far more complex than they used to be and even data complexity is increasing.

He also announced the latest products from Autodesk- 3DS Max 2008, Maya 2008 and Motion Builder 7.5 Ext. 2 (Intel Mac version is also available). Autodesk has also recently aquired Mudbox which complements 3DSMax and Maya.

Next up was Chris Wells, Senior Character Artist, Epic Games Inc. who presented “From concept to creation - Making content for Nex Gen Games.”

“Start from the concept. Use it as a springboard to create the characters.” He then took the audience through the process of creation and showed some of the time saving techniques that they use at Epic Games. The audience also got to see trailers of Gears of War and the latest Unreal Tournament, coming out in Nov 2007.

Epic Games, established in 1991 by Tim Sweeney, uses Autodesk tools in their pipeline to create content for their games. Their early projects were - Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, followed by the Unreal and Unreal Tournament series. The latest game, Gears of War sold 3 million copies within 10 weeks of launch.

Chris showed demos of the creations of two characters from Gears of War - Loque and Akasha. The lead artist and concept artist work together on iterations, beginning with a low poly model and building on it. Sometimes things may work in theory but not in practical so changes have to be made. After finishing the concept drawing, comes the modeling using 3DS Max and Maya, followed by Z Brush and Mudbox.

The characters are blocked out into 3 parts - Intricate common components, Organics and Hard Surfaces. A rough model is created for proportion check. It is easier to make changes at this stage on low poly rather than high poly. Make 2 or 3 different materials - light medium and dark. If it can be interesting in grey scale it will surely work in colour. Use silhouettes and negative spaces to make sure you can identify different characters especially in darkly lit scenes. Depending on the sketch you can play with negative space. Creating intricate negative spaces creates an illusion of higher resolution. A high poly model typically takes 15 days to model. They model a hero character from scratch. Using base models, a male and a female base mesh is made. Chris then described two ways of approaching detail-
1. Modelling intersecting shapes (multiple small parts)
2. Modelling by carving and double chamfering (1 major shape, less parts. But double vertex count so slower model and rendering)

“Use details to tell a story.” For example, use dents and scratches to show war worn armour. Chris also described the unwrap and processing pipeline and animation pipelines. He created a rough proportions model and quick animation to show how it works. Chris gave a parting tip, “Make one or two really good base models, as it helps maintain proportions and use paint over whenever possible.”

David Glenn, Art Director, Flagship Studios, has a degree in Architecture and worked as architectural renderer before he switched to games in 1996 as a contractor working with Maxis on Simcity 3000. After that he worked at Blizzard on Diablo II and Diablo II expansion. His presentation was on how Flagship uses Autodesk tools, especially 3DS Max, and customizes them.

Flagship Studios was set up in 2003 by 9 leads and founders of Blizzard North and has a long history of using 3DSMax. They began with AutoCAD R10 and transitioned to 3DSMax when it debuted. They have used 3DSMax to create 2D tile based environments for Diablo II. 3DSMax helped with quick prototyping for ‘Hellgate London’, which is their 1st title as Flagship Studios. They began in July 2003 in a basement and the game finally shipped on Oct 31st 2007. Hellgate London was conceived as a first person shooter meets Diablo. It has MMORPG elements with instanced gameplay and is set in future London, after a demonic invasion. Thematically, it’s a mix of fantasy and science fiction.

The audience then got to see a trailer of Hellgate London and also a video capture of the game being played.

David also spoke about the production challenges faced by them. They wanted to keep team small and outsourced some of the asset creation.They also wanted lots of levels and variations. The game engine was entirely new. Hellgate London had an iterative style of game develepment therefore assets had to be adjusted and re-exported. Although the desire was for a FPS feel but constrained by MMO style client server game engine

The solution is to keep it simple. Create as final of an asset as possible within 3DS Max and leave minimum work for post production.Explaining why he likes 3DSMax, David said that it is flexible, powerful, cost-effective, customizable, has a lot of 3rd party tools and game pedigree, that is a strong history of listening to needs of game developers.

David then showed how he customized 3DS Max - hot keys and scene navigation, scene organization; groups visibility, use of material editor, 2 screens with photoshop and multi sub object materials. He showed the custom UI. Building the blocks for Hellgate London, the process included creation of 8 modular stations in 2 months, render to texture: lightmaps and pre-rendered light maps for indoor scenes.

David also spoke about the DRLG System: Dynamic Random Level Generation - the theory of which was based on our experience with work on Diablo series 2D tile based systems. 3DS Max was used to create rulesets for creating multiple levels. Tanks and cars were outsourced as they are time-consuming and complicated. A useful tip he gave was that using combinations of data sets help create variety. He concluded by saying, “Simplicity of process allows for highly iterative design process.”

Finally a game show reel showcasing work from the top gaming studios was screened.