NEW DELHI: Lakshya Digital, an India-based game art outsourcing company said that one of the top challenges for companies is to secure data in a remote working scenario amid lockdown. In an interaction with PageOne, Manvendra Shukul, co-founder and chief executive of Lakshya speaks on video-gaming process outsourcing, India market, skill development and impact of Covid-19 pandemic. Edited excerpts.

What is gaming process outsourcing?

Gaming Process Outsourcing (GPO), as the name suggests, is the outsourcing of different “processes” that are required for the development of a game, to third party companies which are specialised in those processes. Some of the processes involved in game development that are outsourced to third party companies specializing in that process are audio creation, art creation, programming, testing etc.

Video games combine key elements like art, design, code, and audio to create complex but exciting interactive entertainment products. The development cycle includes many different activities and is typically divided into three stages viz. pre-production, production and post-production. Pre-production involves activities like game design, concept art creation, and prototyping. The major development work takes place in the production phase which includes the creation of art assets, level creation, programming, audio creation, and testing. The post-production phase mainly consists of activities like bug fixing, localization, and maintenance. Game development is a complex process and budgets for video games often run into tens of millions of dollars and require large teams of highly skilled people. Outsourcing helps to overcome many of the challenges associated with cost and talent.

What is the state of the gaming market in India today?

From being a small industry that focused mostly on teenagers and young men, gaming is today rapidly establishing itself as a mainstream form of entertainment across different demographics – women and men, young and old. Video games in their early stages of popularity focused on a group of individuals who were not considered mainstream.  This 'nerd' demographic was the main focal point of game developers worldwide.  As the years went by, gaming evolved and has now become a pop culture phenomenon, with acceptance worldwide. Indian gaming scene was miles behind the western scene in the ’90s. Gaming was a costly venture in India considering skyrocketing PC prices (the only gaming medium in early years). The Japanese and American companies did not consider India as a viable market as gaming was restricted to an elite few. However now, with soaring per capita incomes, affordable prices, increased connectivity, and smartphones becoming ubiquitous, gaming is big and here to stay. With the highest population of individuals in the age group of 18-35 years, gaming is a gold mine waiting to be tapped.

Online gaming, as a segment, is estimated to be $1.1 billion opportunity by 2021, according to Google-KPMG. China and India have been leading the Game art creation industry for over a decade now. However, India is poised to become one of the world’s leading markets in the gaming sector. A KPMG report points out that the number of game development companies in India increased from 25 in 2010 to 275 in 2019. The global gaming industry is forecast to grow to $180 billion by 2022-23.

In-game art development, what is the biggest challenge?

I think talent is the biggest challenge. Opportunities are there but we don’t always have the right people. We have been constrained by the lack of adequately trained people. But, we are getting there. We are collaborating with the government on the National Skill Development Council (NSDC). There are also private players who are coming in looking to develop this area and then there are players like us who have their own academies. So there is a lot of focus on skilling and developing the ecosystem and in a couple of years, we’ll see the results.

In order to provide a fillip to the field of game art in India, Lakshya runs a highly subsidized training academy - InGame Academy, out of its Gurgaon and Pune studios wherein specialized training is provided to budding game artists on how to create world-class art and graphics for games. Under this program, candidates pay a small fraction of what they would pay for a commercial program but receive training from Lakshya’s own experienced artists. Every year, the Academy helps 40 to 50 artists upgrade themselves and become world-class.  

How this Covid-19 outbreak impacted the gaming industry?

The outbreak of COVID-19 has jeopardized most sectors and businesses across the world. However, the video game industry is proving to be incredibly resilient. People have turned to video games during this crisis and the demand for content has been increasing like never. India was already on its way to becoming a major hub for Game Art Outsourcing and COVID 19 has proven to be a catalyst as many major International Game Developers and Publishers are looking at working with Indian companies more and more.

How did you manage to allow employees to work from home during this lockdown?

One big worry for any game creation company is around the security of their data. Is their next big character, story secure? These fears stop companies from letting employees work from home. We have a strong IT setup and that is why it took us just about three days to set up a system to work from home, encrypt the computers, create secure VPN channels. One can log in only using the VPN.

What also helped greatly in streamlining WFH for Lakshya is our adoption of tools like Microsoft Teams. Face-to-face meetings have been easily replaced by virtual meetings and review of work (art created by the artists) is done using Teams' desktop sharing facility.

This year so far, we have seen a 20-25 percent increase in the number of new project inquiries coming our way.