December - 2008 issue > Cover Feature

By Poonam Bhattacharya

Maruti Shankar is busy building a game factory. His Hyderabad-based game development company, 7Seas Technologies Limited, churns out one game every fortnight. They vary in look, feel, technology, and difficulty level of designing and making. In fact, Shankar’s aim of building a factory that releases intelligent content bears a striking similarity to Ram Gopal Varma’s once cherished dream of setting up a factory that would churn out different and intelligent films.

On his part, Shankar, the Managing Director of 7Seas, says, “The game development business is akin to the movie business.” A hit could catapult an unknown actor to the heights of stardom, and pave the way for his forthcoming releases to be readily lapped by distributors as well as audiences.

Also, says Shankar, in the game development business, like in movies, a new director and a seasoned pro have equal chances of securing the ‘best release’.

For one, the talk of a gaming ‘factory’ appears well founded. “In another 2-3 years, 30-40 new gaming portals will come up in India alone, and they will need a constant supply of content (online games) to survive. Add to that the burgeoning social gaming space, and you have a scenario where the demand for online games will be huge,” says Shankar. He reckons that his gaming ‘factory’, 7Seas Technologies, will be able to cater to a significant part of that demand.

7Seas was started in November 2005, and after three years of its incorporation it is the first independent game development company in the country having an ISO: 9001-2000 certificate. It has over 270 IP-based online games, seven 3D mobile games, and one PC-based game in the market, with many more in the development and testing phases. As is evident from the numbers, the thrust area for 7Seas Technologies is online gaming. But interestingly, the company started operations with a PC-based casual game, the only one in the category that it has in the market thus far.

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