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The game zone’s getting bigger

A new breed of games is climbing popularity charts, and the industry is embracing portable and interactive entertainment alternatives, notes Anurag Khurana

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The giants of the gaming industry have always been the traditional PC and Console games. Their imagery in the gamer’s minds is clear — massive, revolutionary and larger-than-life. But a new breed of games is slowly climbing the popularity charts, and the gaming industry is embracing portable and easily-accessible interactive entertainment alternatives, where the keywords are ‘on-the-go’ and ‘multiplayer’. Make way, therefore, for the latest generation of gaming — mobile and online games.

Online games have revolutionised gaming, especially multiplayer gaming. Massively Multiplayer Online Games, or MMOGs, enable thousands of players to simultaneously play via the Internet. The most popular type of MMOG is the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).

The debuts of Ultima Online and EverQuest in the late-90s popularised the MMORPG genre. Ever since, gaming has always been dominated by MMORPGs such as Lineage, EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Over the years, Ultima Online has sold over 1.5 million copies and has one lakh online players simultaneously.

The online gaming community comprises more than 70 million people — that’s around half of America’s online population — with 40 million female gamers making up the gamer population.  In terms of market and revenues, research firm DFC Intelligence forecasts 376 million global players and a worldwide market of $9.8 billion by 2009. The popular pay-per-play business model is now growing at 40 percent annually.

But the poster child of interactive entertainment is mobile gaming, with breakthroughs in technology and content. High-tech third generation mobile handsets are becoming increasingly affordable and many consumers now also look forward to their mobiles for an enhanced entertainment experience besides the standard call and messaging features.

The past few years have shown a dramatic rise in wireless game downloads by cell phone users.

The global mobile gaming market is expected to be worth $7 billion by 2008, according to a Strategy Analytics’ 2003 report. The fastest growing market for mobile gaming, however, is the Asia-Pacific region, and is expected to generate nearly $2 billion in revenue by 2008.

Stimulating the development of innovative business models, online and mobile gaming sectors are attracting a healthy percentage of professionals from diverse fields with their lucrative business opportunities. Also, due to their casual nature and widespread accessibility, online and mobile games have an ageless, cross-gender appeal with the potential to pioneer numerous advancements in interactive entertainment.

Anurag Khurana is CEO, Paradox Studios, a game developing company

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