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Cricket on Asha

Having hit the 200m download mark in the Nokia Store recently, you would think that the staff at Indiagames would’ve had good reason to celebrate with a big party.

However, nothing extravagant took place. Instead, this games developer, which is now part of the Disney family, immediately set its sights on even greater success and how they can take gaming to a higher level.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, Conversations sat down with Alwyn D’Almeida of Indiagames to chat about his company’s relationship with Nokia, the momentum provided by the Nokia Asha devices and what makes them different from other games companies.

Alwyn D’Almeida

How would you describe your relationship with Nokia?

We’ve had a long-term relationship with Nokia, I think, for 10 plus years now. We have been supporting them in all the initiatives.

In return the India team, and the global Nokia teams, feature our content, which drives more downloads.

It’s not possible for us to just put content there and be successful – it’s because Nokia is there with us, partnering with us and supporting us. Overall, it’s an enriching experience for both parties.

What qualities do you think that Indiagames offers to Nokia?

For us it’s about quality and the turnaround time. We are so committed that even if we have other titles in the pipeline, we might adjust those deadlines and move our workforce so that we can deliver and meet our commitments to Nokia.

For example, Nokia needed a cricket title for the India region so we delivered it and we put it out for the Asha Series when they were being released.

Other times we go to them and say we have these new games coming up, maybe they will be good for your new handsets?

What impact has the Nokia Asha series had for you? 

The Nokia Asha family are unique devices. India has 900m mobile subscribers where everyone will want a touchscreen phone and Asha falls into the price bracket where they can afford it. 

If more phones are sold then more content is consumed and that helps us of course. 

What have been some of the big titles driving your downloads recently?

Terror Terminator

The entire Disney back catalogue has helped us to go the distance for 200m downloads. Games like Aladdin The New Adventure, Racing Rustle, and Terror Terminator. Plus there’s a lot of local content and the Bollywood titles that we make. That has all helped to push the overall downloads. 

Has being part of Disney made any difference?

It definitely has. There are new rules and processes but overall it has been a good experience for all us.

A lot of doors and channels have opened up for us because you only have to say that you come from Disney. 

We have our own ways of how we work and of course, there have been some changes but otherwise we’re still functioning the way we were.

Did you see anything exciting at Mobile World Congress?

I have gone and interacted with other people, looked at different app platforms and technologies to see what we can use for gaming.

There were these guys from Sweden and they’ve got this technology where you can play a game using gesture controls, where it’s a similar thing to Kinect on Xbox but for mobile. You don’t even need to hold the device in your hand. I’m really excited about that because we have games like cricket and tennis and I think it would take gaming to the next level.