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Adobe leading the online gaming revolution in India
By Ojas Sharma
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Thursday, 11 March 2010, 18:08 IST |
2 Comments
Bangalore: Indian game developers have always struggled to make big games as they either don't have the necessary funds to invest in the game or they are more cautious in spending so much in a single game. Whatever the reason maybe, apart from few small successes Indian game developers are known more for creating small games or outsourcing to the West. This is not necessarily a bad thing as online games have taken the world by storm, thanks to the platforms like Facebook.
Don't believe online game companies can earn that much money to compete with the PC and console game developing companies? Take the example of Zynga which has scaled to a massive company with 700 employees and has expansion plans in Bangalore. According to the data by Internet and Mobile Association of India, India is projected to become the third largest online market behind China and U.S. with 81 million internet users by 2013. Out of the total users that used internet in India, 41 percent used internet for gaming. Also, developers don't have to spend a lot of money and time on developing online games.
So now that you have fairly understood that online games can bring in revenue, the next question that arises is on how to go about it. This is where the expertise of Adobe kicks in. By providing free or cheap tools, Adobe is enabling developers to make flash based game in a very short amount of time. The Adobe Flash Platform makes it easy to build, distribute, monetize, and play some of the best games on the web. Different genres of games may be better suited to using different combinations of the client runtimes, developer tools, frameworks, services, and technologies that make up the Flash Platform.
The Adobe Flash Platform comprises two runtimes: Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
Adobe Flash Player: Flash Player is a browser plug-in that provides a multiplatform client runtime. Developers can build the game once and it will look the same whether their audience is using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or virtually any other browser, and whether they're on a Mac, PC, or Linux box. Flash Player is licensed free of charge and the download size is relatively small (less than 2MB for Windows, less than 6MB for Mac for version 10.0.42.34).
Adobe AIR: While Flash Player enables developers to view SWF content embedded in a browser, Adobe AIR lets them run that content outside of the browser, even if users are offline, right from your desktop. The Flash Player plug-in is needed to view SWF content in the browser, same way users need to have the AIR runtime installed to run AIR files outside the browser. Like Flash Player, the AIR runtime is also licensed free of charge to end users.
The two principal development tools for creating SWF-based games are Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and Adobe Flash Builder 4.
Adobe Flash CS4 Professional: This is a visual authoring environment for creating content that is played back in Flash Player. Developers can use an extensive set of drawing and shape tools as well as filters and effects to create stunning vector graphics.
Adobe Flash Builder 4: It is a developer-centric Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Where Flash CS4 Professional is a more visual tool appealing to artists and graphic designers, Flash Builder 4 (formerly Flex Builder) is for coders. The IDE is built on Eclipse, so Java developers and even those who have worked with Microsoft Visual Studio can easily use it.
Adobe Director 11.5 and Adobe Shockwave Player
Adobe Director 11.5 and Adobe Shockwave Player software help developers create and publish compelling interactive games, demos, prototypes, simulations, and eLearning courses for the web, Mac and Windows desktops, DVDs, and CDs.
Majority of the discussion sessions in the Game Developer's Conference were around the increasing online game revenues. Tridib Roy Chowdhury, Director of Products, Adobe Systems explained the path the developers should take after creating a new game. He advised developers to take help of aggregators to reach out to a wider audience. "Aggregators do promotion and spread your game. They also help in seeing that your game works on all platforms (browsers)," he said. Portals and publishers alike are trying different models of monetizing their content primarily through on-site advertisement and/or in-game micro-transactions.
Chowdhury strongly advises game developers who are creating online games to use in game advertisement as this will give them a healthy revenue. He say that the climate for coming up with games is perfect. The Indian gaming industry is predicted to witness growth at a CAGR of 35 percent. On top of that the biggest advantage the Indian gaming industry has is that, as compared to other gaming market, in India all four sections of gaming: PC, Console, Mobile and Internet, are growing together.
Social media sites are redefining how many game developers create, distribute, and market their games on the web. With the Flash Platform Distribution service, developers get free and paid methods for distributing their game to more than 70 different social networks and services, including Facebook, MySpace, and iGoogle. Developers can create paid promotion campaigns, generate revenue through hosted ads, and track game's distribution.
