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In conversation with Somnath Meher, Associate General Manager at Zynga India

In conversation with Somnath Meher, Associate General Manager at Zynga India

Owing to digital transformation, the demand for social games in India as well as abroad is soaring. Social games provide the players with fairly simple user interface and are easily accessible on any device, which is another reason for the soaring demand of these games in the markets. To get some meaningful insights on how has the Indian social gaming space evolved over the years, what are the challenges that social gaming developers often face while developing these games, and the trends that can be expected in the social gaming space in next five years, we reached out to Somnath Meher, Associate General Manager at Zynga India. Zynga is the pioneer in the social gaming space with its footprints across the USA, the UK, India, Canada, Israel. The global game developing brand caters mainly to the social gaming space and boasts more than 90+ games.

The Gaming Reporter- Zynga is a pioneer in the social gaming space with an aim to make games more simple, accessible, and social. How has the social gaming space in the online gaming industry evolved over the years?

Somnath Meher- Social games have traditionally been developed for a wide group of users beyond the avid gamers. These games are easy to learn and the user base ranges from your everyday working professionals to students and homemakers who engage across mobile platforms, tablets, and laptops/PCs. These games create a platform for multiple players to connect and engage with each other.

Social gaming has evolved over time to adapt to an increasing online world with new systems and mechanics around in-game chat, clans and guilds allowing players to co-operate and compete with each other. Some of these games led to creation of subcultures in the gaming world, and the FarmVille franchise from Zynga is a classic example of this evolution. Being an agriculture simulation online game, it pioneered the social aspect of allowing players to interact within the virtual world through exchange of virtual goods and in-game transactions.

Over the past decade, the growth of social games has primarily been driven by smartphone adoption. The increase in processing power, coupled with enhanced memory on these devices and easily available free-to-play apps have propelled social gaming to another level. The ability for players to connect and compete with their friends, family, and colleagues from anywhere and at any time on the mobile screen has played a key role in the growth of social gaming.

The global Covid crisis, which has forced people to stay indoors, has further impacted growth of social gaming as players used gaming as a new way to virtually connect with other players. The global market for social gaming is estimated at US$17.6 billion in the year 2020, projected to reach a revised size of US$39 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 14% over the next 5 years.

The Gaming Reporter- Zynga has its footprints across the USA, the UK, India, Canada, Israel. Could you please shed some light on how the Indian gaming ecosystem is developing in comparison to the global gaming ecosystem?

Somnath Meher- India is a unique market with over 600m internet users and over 80% of them having access to smartphones. In addition, the access to cheap and fast 4G internet has aided adoption of multiple digital services and modes of entertainment, including online social gaming, RMGs and OFS. However, mobile takes a significant portion of the platform pie as India is home to over 430m mobile gamers and is expected to grow to 650m over the next 4 years. One out of every three apps downloaded by users in India is a mobile game. Additionally, India ranks in the top five globally in terms of mobile game users and gaming sessions.

Uniquely, gaming in India has directly leapfrogged to mobile gaming, given the penetration of hand-held devices – with even PC and console games customized for smartphones in the Indian market. The Covid pandemic has also accelerated the organic downloads of mobile games, especially in the casual genre; and the share of time spent on mobiles playing games has gone up from 11% to 15%.

However, India happens to be in early stages of maturity when compared to global markets in terms of game monetization. While casual games remain the most popular genre, most of the monetization in genre is primarily driven by advertisements. This may continue until the community of hardcore gamers grows to a significant enough size to contribute to overall revenue share from in-app purchases. The rise of live events and online streaming, though very nascent, has been helping grow the core gaming community in the Indian market.

Zynga has also been playing the role as a thought leader in the Indian gaming ecosystem by grooming and sharing some of the best gaming talent in India – some of whom have gone on to start the largest gaming studios based in India. In more recent times, Zynga has taken up multiple initiatives to even help induct women into gaming thereby helping establish more equality in the industry.

Lastly, the Indian gaming sector has seen a steep rise in institutional investments from top venture firms over the past 3-4 years. Approximately US$1 billion was invested in Indian gaming companies between the latter half of 2020 and early 2021 alone. This, in addition to large corporates/organizations setting up multi-game platforms is expected to further boost India’s gaming culture.

The Gaming Reporter- Being a global game developing company with a brand motto ‘connecting the world through games,’ what challenges does Zynga face while developing games and what measures does it take to overcome them?

Somnath Meher- As Zynga continues to aggressively grow globally, one of the key challenges the company faces is to find the balance between in-house development of new IPs and growth through acquired studios across different geographies. Sustaining the popularity and engagement across Zynga’s most-loved IPs through new features and versions is paramount to Zynga’s plans.

We have currently launched FarmVille 3 globally to serve the loyal player fanbase that the FarmVille franchise has seen over years. While the core gameplay will still be planting and harvesting of crops, the game has additional depth added with raising cute animals now being a part of farm building activities. This brings a new richness to the game.

The Gaming Reporter- With such a diverse portfolio of 90+ games, where does Zynga set its sight on after five years?

Somnath Meher- Execution of our multi-year growth strategy has us on track to deliver Zynga’s best-ever annual topline performance and the largest mobile audience in the company’s history. We have multiple growth catalysts in place to drive our continued expansion in 2022 and beyond. With Golf Rival, we have added another fast-growing franchise to our market-leading live services portfolio. Our new game pipeline has never been stronger – FarmVille 3 launched in November and is off to a great start, and Star Wars: Hunters, our first cross-platform play franchise, has entered soft launch. Hyper-casual has driven material year-over-year audience and advertising growth and remains one of Zynga’s fastest-growing categories. With our Chartboost acquisition, we are actively building a next-generation mobile advertising platform, which expands our total addressable market and strengthens our competitive position in the digital advertising sector. Overall, we are entering 2022 with strong momentum.

Live Services. We expect live services to build momentum as we head into 2022. User acquisition yields have improved, and we are continuing to execute on our innovative bold beat strategy – delivering new content and game play modes designed to enhance engagement with current players and attract new audiences across our franchises. We are particularly excited for the upcoming introduction of ‘Alliance Quest’ in Empires & Puzzles, ‘Fantastic Feasts’ in Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, ‘Dragon Missions’ in Merge Dragons! and ‘Piggy Bank’ in Toon Blast. We also recently acquired Golf Rival – the second largest mobile golf game in the world. By leveraging Zynga’s publishing platform, we see a tremendous opportunity to grow Golf Rival faster together.

New Games. Our new game pipeline has never been stronger and is poised to be a significant growth catalyst in 2022 and beyond. Last week, we launched FarmVille 3 worldwide, a reimagination of one of Zynga’s most iconic franchises for the mobile platform. The game is off to a great start and has already reached the #1 and #2 top free downloaded games position in the U.S. iPad and iPhone App Stores, respectively. Next week, we will release our first cross-platform play franchise, Star Wars: Hunters, into technical soft launch in select mobile markets, giving players a sneak peek of several game play modes that will be available at launch in 2022. We also have two new titles that are showing positive signs early in soft launch. Pirate Evolution! is a new title by Gram Games where players explore mysterious islands and engage in player-versus-player sea battles. Star Blast is the next blockbuster match-3 game from the talented puzzle makers at Peak.

Hyper-Casual. We continue to drive strong growth in Rollic’s portfolio. Hyper-casual is one of the largest and fastest-growing game genres on mobile and Rollic has helped propel Zynga to be a top 3 downloaded games publisher in the U.S. Rollic’s unique development methodology, which leverages data insights and rigorous testing to repeatedly design and publish hit titles, has generated 16 games that have reached the #1 or #2 top free downloaded game positions in the U.S. App Store. In addition to delivering more new launches and bold beats, we are also investing to further enhance our publisher capabilities by expanding Rollic’s first and thirdparty developer network and building out new tools and technologies.

Advertising Platform. Our integration with Chartboost is well underway and we are making significant progress in building a next-generation mobile advertising platform. By integrating Zynga’s first-party content and data with an at-scale advertising platform, we will meaningfully enhance our ability to more efficiently acquire high value players and improve the yields on our large portfolio of owned and operated advertising inventory. This competitive advantage is increasingly valuable as distribution and monetization in the mobile app ecosystem continues to evolve. We expect this will also generate more value for Chartboost’s advertising partners, which unlocks a new and exciting total addressable market for Zynga within the fast-growing digital advertising sector

The Gaming Reporter- Cloud services have made gaming more accessible to prospective gamers all over the globe. In the near future, how will mobile gaming affect the growth of gaming on PCs, laptops and gaming consoles?

Somnath Meher- Mobile, though the newest among the gaming platforms, is by far the fastest growing because of the low barrier to entry compared to the other two platforms. The price for an entry-level gaming-capable smartphone can start from as low as INR 3000 while combining portability with advanced in processing capabilities. Over the last few years, mobile gaming has further advanced to have the capability to feature in-depth stories, character development, massive online 3D worlds and immersion through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), which put mobile at the forefront of the platform war.

In terms of cloud gaming, while there has been significant momentum on consoles and PCs, the rapid growth in edge computing and 5G networks and the resulting improvement in latency (response time) has created a huge opportunity for cloud-based gaming on mobile as well. It also opens the potential for creating multi-game apps that aggregate games, something that’s on the rise.

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Overall, the gaming industry is expanding with overlap rather than cannibalisation across platforms as players tend to adopt and evolve across varied gaming experiences. On one hand, more people are experiencing the immersion of console/PC games; on the other hand, a much larger audience is discovering mobile gaming’s convenience for everyday entertainment. The latter is a whole new base of players who don’t necessarily identify as gamers playing on an expensive console but may instead spend hours on a mobile game that isn’t expensive to buy. At Zynga, we expect the console and mobile experience to also merge at some level, leading to a cross-platform world. As we look to expand into new areas, we see ourselves growing as a leading video game company overall.

The Gaming Reporter- Today, gaming brands which reflect cultural aspects on their platform witness maximum traction. How does Zynga, which boasts employees from a multitude of cultures, ensure that its games are reflecting cultural aspects?

Somnath Meher- At Zynga we believe that our strength is in our diversity and that we are called to celebrate our differences. This is reflected both within the teams at Zynga and through our multitude of games reaching a global audience. Through the year, our games host varied events and activities that are thematically representative of a broad set of cultural festivities and topics of socio-cultural relevance. For example, Farmville Country Escape, a game managed by Zynga India, has had a host of in-game calendar events ranging from Halloween, Egyptian Sand Festival, Irish Celebration and Chinese New Year to the likes of Earth Day, Wildlife Day, Yoga Week and Women’s Day. While these in-game events drive significant engagement for players across the globe, they also help bring focus to important ideas and encourage conversations.

Very recently, Zynga also partnered with Kenneth Cole, an US-based fashion designer, to debut the Kenneth Cole PRIDE 2021 collection in High Heels! a hit hyper-casual game in Zynga’s portfolio. For the first two weeks of June, gamers were able to play with pride as they outfitted their in-game character and strutted the virtual runway in products from the Kenneth Cole PRIDE 2021 collection, including the brand’s iconic shirts that proudly stated, “Being Different is What We Have in Common.”

The Gaming Reporter- Blockchain gaming made its way to the online gaming ecosystem in 2017, however, it is yet to make a major impact. How do you look at the future of Blockchain gaming and what opportunities will it present to gamers?

Somnath Meher- Games of varied kinds inherently have an economy and transactions built into their core systems. Their game currencies, mostly earnt through varied activities or in-app purchases, allow players to access varied collectibles. These could range from simple costumes and accessories to more complex items like characters and weapons. These assets, however, are virtual in a walled-off data network owned by the game platform. Blockchain-based gaming and NFTs are expected to change that by introducing real asset ownership and a new play-to-earn structure.

From the industry perspective, the impact on the process of building and scaling a game is yet to be seen. Public blockchains being open protocols could potentially democratize game development as much of the operating and capital costs could be outsourced to the base layer blockchain, meaning that it would be much easier to start a game for entrepreneurs. Low barriers to entry increase competition which benefits the end-users.

While some games have been experimenting with blockchain technologies / NFTs and the use-cases around it, these are still very nascent stages. Game developers will still need to balance the kinds of items that are available for purchase, how they may enhance the in-game experience for players and how they interact with other games and markets. But at this point, the major barrier would still be that many existing blockchains simply are not ready for the transaction volume that a scaled-up gaming system would require. Gamers cannot wait for transfers to complete over several minutes as the transfers need to be resolved on-chain in seconds.

At Zynga, we have been watching developments closely and working on an internal strategy to best utilize the technology to enhance the experience of our players. The onboarding of Matt Wolf as the VP of Blockchain gaming is a step towards that.  The idea is to focus on the opportunity to integrate ​​non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain technology into Zynga’s existing portfolio and owned IP, as well as to develop games from inception that are built with NFTs as part of the core gameplay loop.

The Gaming Reporter- The covid-19 pandemic has definitely ignited a way to success for online gaming. What trends will the global social gaming space witness in the next five years?

Somnath Meher- While social gaming was already on the rise pre-pandemic, owing to mobile phone penetration, the pandemic compounded the growth given mobility restrictions for people globally. Young people have been and will continue spending time in games that allow them to socialise as they play or watch/engage with any content. The rise of voice chat and interactive social games across varied game genres ranging from something as simple as Ludo to as engaging as a FPS game, is reflective of that trend.

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