Tinsel Town goes gaming & networking

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: Are you a producer and do you need to promote your new film? Sign up then with a gaming portal or a social-networking site. Apart from the traditional ways of marketing a new film, the Hindi film industry is slowly, but surely, trying out new media to get the message across.

So if Rock On was promoted on the social networking site Reliance BIG Adda, gaming portal Indiagames built games around films like Welcome to Sajjanpur, Jodhaa Akbar, Hat Trick and Goal, and is busy developing games for UTV’s forthcoming release, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion. Another top gaming portal Zapak created games around Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra’s Drona and is also building games for top television shows.

Gaming is the next big thing in the entertainment industry, say analysts. Gaming, they claim, not only keeps the characters alive but also puts the entertainment industry in touch with the target audience.

Here’s how: around 1,50,000 mobile games are downloaded on a daily basis in India. There are nearly 30-crore, mobile-phone users in the country, out of which 91.6 lakh mobile phone users were added during the month of August alone. Globally, mobile games enjoy a marketshare amounting to Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000 crore. Currently, the Indian mobile games market is pegged at about Rs 150 crore, but it is expected to grow eight to ten times within the next two-three years.

The arrival of 3-G (third generation) will add to the growth impetus by making it possible to develop and sell high-end games like those on the Nokia N-gage platform for which Indiagames is creating a lot of content. These games will match the quality of what was seen on first generation Playstation consoles.

The opportunity is not lost on the players. With a view to encash its popularity, the gaming industry has started putting ads in between content too.

TV is a huge platform

Besides films and cricket—the two biggest youth draws of the country—the gaming industry is also targeting television in a big way. “It’s not a surprise,” says one analyst, “because TV has shown an explosion of growth like none other”. So, Reliance ADA Group’s gaming portal, Zapak, has tied up with three leading TV shows including 10KaDum, Battle Station and Arsalaan to build games around it.