Does it suck to be an Indian gamer?

[echoplxx]

Hi guys,

We're looking for your thoughts on the gaming scene in India. Does India provide a favorable environment for gaming? Do you feel that gaming is too expensive a hobby? Do you struggle with your limited bandwidth to play online multi-player games? We need your input whether it sucks or rocks to be an Indian gamer. Just let your answers fly, the more opinionated your answers are the better.

[The Sorcerer]

Limited bandwidth, colourful politics some event managers do (Look at the trend in WCG over the years) during hosting, tournament giveaways. PC gaming was always expensive to begin with.

Back in the 90s, those who were in Kawabonka, Fragshack and Indian pro league always loved to participated for WCG, ESWC and those microsoft nationwide contests that were arranged back them. We all wanted to see atleast 1 Indian winning and going through, but I guess few people like ArunRullEeEz and older ATE members went through international eliminations, maybe once ArunRulezZz was in 10th place but I don't remember all that now.

We have many clans being sponsored unlike before. ATE, Roccat.ROG, DOD....list goes on. COD4 itself has a massive line of clans in India and DOTA has tonnes of lan gamers, so its not that bad as far as lan gamers go. The only good event manager I saw so far is Reinforcement. Even XtremeGaming has some records of not able to put up tournaments few days prior. Once can always blame the sponsors, but I doubt any good sponsors will back out unless they are not satisfied or if someone takes their word back.

[d3p]

First thing first, Digital Media Distribution is just another name of pathetic in INDIA.

Next, these ISP doesn't work upto the expectation even if you pay thousands every month.

Third, the interest on gaming in NCR's are more compared to other small cities, because of digital media distributions. That's the reason small cities are more notorious than NCR's with Piracy.

Fourth, there is a saying " WE, Indian's are obsessed about Mileage & also about saving money from every angle that's possible. We are also ready to sacrifice their area of interest, if we are about spend or get paid. "

Now its quite clear that we have several reasons for adopting Piracy. Its not only the case with Games or Some daily used Softwares, its with Movies & Audio Songs also.

O:T- Movies are costing 200 Bucks in Movie theatre, when released & then later Rs.35.00 in CD or DVD's, but we still buy road side DVD's with 4 movies labeled on it with bargained price of 40 bucks & enjoy.

Fifth, whether its PS2, PS3, X-Box or even PC, Original Games doesn't always comes cheap & we specially never spend that much on so called timepass.

Sixth, LAN Parties or BYOC are just in beginning stage only in India.

IMO may be these are the main above reasons, for which i can say

"It sucks to be a Indian Gamer"

[Sarath]

Well as far as I can see it is a favourable environment.

Good collection of games, fast releases, stable internet connections [4mbps line by airtel used for online Dota and PS3's PSN], quality gaming cafe's like Zapak, Gamedrome etc, Latest hardware releases. Our country is not effected by war, natural calamity or great economic depression. A huge young population which is relatively better than the other nations in comparison.

On the downside, gaming is a very expensive hobby both monetary and health wise. Hence the adoption is restricted to the well to do families. For industries gaming scene in India doesn't look as viable as other nations and hence we don't have huge gaming fests etc which needs hefty sponsoring.
Piracy is another factor that is commonplace but that has less to do with our exclusive interests esp when you look up dubious game files on a swedish server with peers from nations including portugal, uk, etc etc means we are not alone.

I don't see any technical difficulties in gaming; it is on par with other nations on this regard. It has more to do with our social and economic state as of now.

It certainly rocks to be an Indian gamer.

[justme101]

Well i have an unlimited bandwidth connection but that just has speed good enough for browsing the web because downloading big files around 700 MBs takes around 4-5 Hrs. and i don't believe that kind of speed is good for online gaming. Now the plans with higher speeds cost too much (and i have seen it on all ISPs). May be it's not much for many people but many students who constitute a majority of gamers in India do not tend to pay big amounts for high speeds. There should be better quality broadband connections at cheaper rates.

Nor there are many events throughout the country which encourage gamers to test their skills and are hence restricted to playing with friends.

As Sarath metioned above it is an expensive hobby and is mostly restricted by the economic state.

[Soumik99]

What I have seen is little kids that beg for money on the railway stations, spend that money to play games at the nearby cafe. And you wouldn't believe how much skilled they are in CS... I once decided to have a round of MW deathmatch along with three other buddies of mine and one of these mentioned kids(they are probably 10-12, not more), and he ranked first! This really shows the impact of gaming in India in general.
Then again, the same copies of CS and COD-MW in the cafes are but pirated... so when it comes to playing the game, we rock, but in resources this country sucks. The politics, the system sucks, not us. Gaming is still considered as just a leisure activity to the point you shouldn't spend 999 bucks at all... it is much wiser to pirate it(personal experience as often being mocked by friends). A lot of things need to change and it is currently inhibited by the political as well as the narrow social mindset of the people(the majority of course).

[psiknight99]

Karl Marx gave the theory of dialectical materialism, which summed up in simple words says that a Base is required for the Superstructure to be built. The base in this context is affluence, once this requirement is met gaming will boom, as one of the members above rightly pointed out that we have a plethora of young people, so nothing should stop us. Gaming certainly isn't that great but we still have clans and the likes. A lot of guys in college game, I mean everybody in my college loves gaming but its a really hard decision to give up everything else and take up this profession.
I wouldn't say it sucks, but it ain't that great either.

[Piyush]

I think a poll will make the process faster

[tkin]

The bandwidth and server latency are pathetic in India, plus most games today don't come with dedicated servers, and companies don't bother setting up dedicated servers in india, maybe in singapore, so at the end of the day, our condition is epic pathetic.

[TheGibMaker]

Yes, it definately sucks to be a gamer in tier II and lower cities, since it takes a lot of labour and time to find a shop/s that sell games other than "Vamipre killer" and the likes. The atmosphere is cheap, and piratefags flourish, and even people who genuinely want to buy original ("overpriced," acc. to piratefags) games have to travel to Delhi and the metros. Ask me, i live in Meerut. It is a constant pain to go to nehru place each time a new playable title appears.

[Sarath]

^Yeah thats a big problem. We don't have dedicated servers since the game industry is so nacent here.

I have been playing OMRPGs on a massive scale for the past couple of years and I don't feel that we have bad ISPs. Its just that they are expensive. The best lines are actually provided by Reliance for their Zapak Gameplexes. Those are dedicated lines, or so I read, for low latency gaming.

so when it comes to playing the game, we rock, but in resources this country sucks.

Exactly. We have good gamers but not the dough to buy the systems.

[Anorion]

Oh yeah whole ton of prolems me playing an mmorpg and we have something known as ratios where the number of kills vs deaths are counted, I had chars with 1500 kills and 0 death and 5000+ kills and zero death. Normally I would have continued playing on wifi (dont use 3G as it takes ages to load anything), but those MSEB basterds started load shedding and because of that I died while in a game ruined my ratio because of load shedding, then all over again because I tried to play the game on 3G when the wifi was not working BIG MISTAKE. This is ignoring the occassional lag that crops up in the game, im using MTNL triband 1mbps, pauses for even a second or so is costly in the game as the action is so fast paced, and this is fortunately less frequent on my MTNL line but was very common when I was using cable LAN... apart from this I was prepared to schedule my day around the load shedding so that I wud be able to be in the game when the power was running.... but there is no notice given out to the housing societies about the timing of the load shedding, and even if you try to guess the timing, it is off by a as much as twenty minutes to half an hour every day, so there is no way to plan ahead and be safe, basically I find both the spectrum and any kind of internet I am able to get on my device unreliable for playing well on mmorpgs, at least for zerodeaths, and there is the load shedding issue on top of that if I could move to another country that gave me a rock steady internet connection I would right away... also apart from everything else there is the sheer distance... we are practically as far away from everywhere as possible... it sucks to have the worst pings in the game, go up to malasia or phillipines or go back up to greece or nl and those players have lower pings than you. You get to have the highest ping in the game just because of where in the world you are located.

[JojoTheDragon]

Its both good and bad at the same time.

The Good:
1)Games do come to India. And thankfully most publishers release their games at a affordable price. Ofcourse, some money-whore publishers like Activation don't do their part but it doesn't matter much.
2)I'm sure PC game servers are crap but console servers are always there and the latency is good.
3)You can now buy games from DD services like steam through bank features like VCC.
4)We have a good number of sites that deal in games and offer good discount.

The Bad:
1)Piracy is a big hit here and it hits game industry.
2)Dedicated servers for PC are pathetic if not non-existant.
3)DD services are too pricy.

[Sarath]

Dota has Indian servers I think and hence my PC experience has always been good. Friends playing CS (yes) also don't have any complains. Console has never lagged. Maybe that is why I am painting a pretty picture of everything.

Also I gamed on BSNL without any problems. I think the contention ratio must be really bad for your line to get screwed so often. I can call up airtel anytime if it goes below 4mbps or so I was told and I get 4.5mbps actually which is healthy for gaming. My friends are literally abusing their 2mbps airtel line by using 5 PCs for online gaming on it. No wonder they lag but 4 players play smooth which by itself is impressive considering theirs was the last slot in the apartment.
I think the problem lies mostly on the server side(game).

However gaming penetration is really low. Also most people think gaming is for kids. I cannot explain to them why I had to play "Heavy Rain" and "GoW3" when no one was around. Most are still stuck at Mario. But then even that is a game

Ok, I'll stop spamming this thread

[xtremevicky]

Okay here is what my experience was when I was hooked to CS.

Playing from home was sad because my airtel connection use to give me 100+ping on Vstreet servers . Only people in metros got good pings and I use to hate it.

BSNL gave better pings but it always laggy. I mean it use to run fine after 2 am but then again it was poor.

Zapak was too expensive on daily basics plus buying gaming gear was hard back then , We did not had Letsbuy , Flipkart then . It was sad that time and exposure was not there .

I think Gaming cafes will be fail in small cities due to lack of spending . ISP's need to improve.

[sygeek]

Let me tell you what sucks, the ISPs, the bandwidth speeds, the countless hours of downloading .mdl files, realizing that the modem just decided to go to sleep for a while leaving you in the middle of an epic clan match, crazy routing methods adopted by the ISPs and at last getting pings that are slower than my grandmother.

[gameranand]

Internet bandwidth - low for online play
Game prices - high for a common Indian
Contests - low
Indian servers - too low
The worst part is that there is no encouragement. Parents think that its just a child's play and can't be a profession. You require high end pc to play games which again is unacceptable to everyone.

Yes it sucks to be an Indian gamer

[tejaslok]

It still in initial stage, has to develop a lot and stop the piracy and the DD serv sucks in India and not much pref is given to gaming here, i have been to 2 or 3 Tournaments and sometimes they play "politics" because no one cares

[masterkd]

ISPs sucks in all fields(plans, service, quality). Other nations have much better bandwidth. MY friends in US hardly find anyone having below 2 mbps.

piracy is the main culprit in gaming industry. I even know people earning over a lakh a month saying "why spend rs. 300 while i can get the game in rs. 40." I found many people laugh at me when i say them i buy original games.

[thetechfreak]

We need atleast 2 mbps connectons. I have a unlimited connection but downloading games via Steam is as painfull as a Game Developer sees his games being pirated.

Downloading a 15 Gb game takes a week!!!(256 kbps) and I cannot afford Internet more expensive than that.

Game prices - high for a common Indian

Absolutely. Although GTA 4 costed Rs.500 but come on if one buys a Digital copy it should cost way less than DVD price.


My ping is like 150s even for a server in Mumbai! BSNL needs drastic improvement and must lead by example

[ico]

Pings/routing. End of.

Every ISP sucks.

If reliable high speed Internet was cheap, you'd see more servers popping up.

[Anorion]

uh lol we dont need good bandwidth actually, games work on as low bandwidth as possible, the best engines still use far far below 512k what we need is a reliable up time more than bandwidth, which is where we totally fail, something or the other goes wrong with the connection at least 2-3 times a day no matter which one I have used, annnd so the power guys put the schedule in the papers... about a week after the load shedding started, and they dont stick to that schedule

[ico]

^ to host you need.

People could start hosting from home if reliable speedy Internet was cheaper.

But with ADSL, uploads will always be crap.

[JojoTheDragon]

The main problem is teh PING! Fix that and we will all be happy playing in non-Indian servers.

[Kola2842]

we have low resources .
A lot of problems are there like

slow internet , we cant play online games.

Electricity is also a problem , spoiling rigs with surges.
Companies are making online DRM.

there is no shop in my area which provides legit games. I have to go for online shops

when buying pc , shops don't have rigs we want.

Finally i say
It sucks but we won't give up , we are improving and someday will rocks.

[Arsenal_Gunners]

Compared to the first world?Yes.
Putting in perspective all the other problems India has-no.It's pretty decent.

[vamsi_krishna]

I'm not that much into online gaming. So, I'll share my views on how hard it is to be a gamer in india.

First off, the basic idea about video games in the society is "waste of time". A meaningless act which will require huge investment on a computer, and the monthly doses of electricity bill. Sadly, its not just parents that are with this attitude. But even the people of my age. Most of them still consider gaming as a childish and meaningless act. So, the problem starts with the perspective of the society about gaming and the weird look they will give you when we say.. 'I love games'.

If we do find people who are playing games, there is second problem. The number of gamers who know what they are playing. I will run into many people quite often who are still playing GTA: Vice City, Most Wanted.. not because they are good.. but because they don't know anything better than that. Yes.. these people do come under the category of 'Gamers'

Next.. the number of gamers who play the games without any sort of commitment to it. Even if they are playing games... they play those without even poking half of the stuff that is there in the game. And, if the game is giving a tough time.. use cheat codes or trainers. Their only game advisor is the 'cd vendor' who has a willy nilly knowledge about most of the stuff that is going on out there in gaming world.

Which brings to where I am. I, being labeled myself as 'hardcore gamer', and labeled by others as 'gaming maniac', 'kid who still plays video games', etc... is in a place where I gain no income per month.. except the occasional allowance from my mother. Which are not at all sufficient to buy a game for a month. For a game to be affordable to me.. I have to wait for an year, whilst the game is a day of downloading away from other sources. I am certainly not proud of what I'm doing, but I know it is the only way. That doesn't mean that I don't support devs. I buy the games which really made me feel better. This year.. I bought 5 games. Yes, distributors are indeed reducing the prices and are making the games affordable to many.. if not all. And that is a good sign.

Which brings to my thought, the availability of those games. I live in a 2nd grade city. Which is of 25 sq.kms area. The only shop that use to sell games here was plantM. But, they winded up the shop here a year ago, because of poor sales.most of the folks here will not bother to buy a game paying 1000 bucks. while the same is available for as low as 50rs. The gamers who are still buying the stuff from 'cd vendors' have a very meager idea about what the genuine games are. I actually heard from many of my friends that...

' Original games.. will run on any computer no need to worry about graphics card' , 'Original games have superior sound and video quality', 'Original games have more length(playtime)', etc.

If we show these people that they can buy Original Assassins Creed 2 for just 300 bucks. They will jump and buy. But... they lack any kind of knowledge on that side.

Why I am bragging about this is.. the only reason India is being neglected and often times been struck out from the equation is lack of sales.

But, digital distribution can over the risk of investment and gamble on sales figures. Which brings us to the next problem. Pathetic Internet speeds. I don't know what are the plans ISPs are providing out there in cities.. but in my town, the max I can get from any company is 1mpbs(with abysmal pings, connection consistency) even this is only provided by a single ISP. And the best part is I have to shell out ~1.5k for that.

After all these rants.. Let me point out what I want...

1. A gamestop like store in every city... with reasonable prices.

2. Decent Internet speeds. So that I can get my digital content quickly. Also.. to not get kicked out from a server for pathetic pings.

3. More guys in real life.. to talk and brag about games. Share their views etc.

4. And a day where people don't consider me as a toddler and an irresponsible person because I play video games.

All and all, it indeed sucks major time. But it has been worse once. Things are turning up a bit. Just a bit.

But gaming isn't the only thing that sucks in India, anyways.

[Sarath]

1. A gamestop like store in every city... with reasonable prices.
I don't think even the so called developed nations have a store in every small city. We have a huge population and many cities. The economy doesn't sustain it. Plus with the online boom I don't think any place is out of reach

2. Decent Internet speeds. So that I can get my digital content quickly. Also.. to not get kicked out from a server for pathetic pings.
A 512kbps with 50-100pings is fine for gaming. The problem is on the server end not ours. I host about 50 games a week without problems.

3. More guys in real life.. to talk and brag about games. Share their views etc.
Luckily got friends for that. You just have to dig deeper. Have realised that most guys like to play but are not able to due to parental pressure, lack of monet etc and hide behind the veiled statements "you are still a kid" etc

4. And a day where people don't consider me as a toddler and an irresponsible person because I play video games.
It is irresponsible and toddler like to play video games So are animes. Just do what you love and stop caring about others. I guess this applies to a lot of things in life

BTW @vamsi : we had gamedrome in vizag. Since you know how big that city / megavillage is it soon ran out of business. But that was more because despite customers the ppl who ran it would not recharge and keep the money for themselves and let us play. No wonder sify backed out. There are many small cafe's even in small cities.

Is BSNL really that bad? I was contemplating shifting to it from my airtel conn. The only reason I didn't was because gaming is flawless on my present conn. and lets me overlook the FUP, overcharges etc.

[JojoTheDragon]

BSNL PING = pathetic.

[ico]

BSNL depends on place to place. In Gurgaon, it is much better than Airtel.