GAME ON!

Indian video games, with their fluid storytelling and incredible graphics, are finding their feet in a landscape dominated by international players.

- BARRY RODGERS

For almost half a decade now, there’s been a concerted effort to support homegrown talent— from fashion to beauty, and even video games. The clarion call to produce local has never been more pronounced. In fact, I stumbled upon an article from 2020 that chronicled how the creators of Raji: An Ancient Epic, one of India’s most renowned video games, faced immense challenges in securing funding for their project. They experienced so many rejections from prospective investors that they nearly advised their team to seek other employment opportunities. Ultimately, they were awarded an Unreal Dev Grant by Epic Games. The grant programme, established in February 2015, is a $5 million (`40 crore approximately) fund for studios and promising developers.

Raji stood out for the significant attention it garnered as a game developed in India and appreciated in Western markets. Last year was significant for Indian developers as well as how Indian culture was portrayed in video games. In March 2023, Xbox unveiled a programme aimed at assisting “underrepresented creators”, selecting The Palace on the Hill by Indian developer Niku Games as one of the beneficiaries. In May, Sony introduced a similar initiative to support up-and-coming game developers, especially in India. And then in July, Toronto-based Visai Games released Venba, which has been praised for its portrayal of Indian immigrants in Canada and the experiences of the Indian diaspora.

FOR THE CULTURE

Closer home, in Chala (Gujarat), Studio Oleomingus, is best known for building short single-player narrative games and video game-based installations, where they explore the intersections of postcolonial writing and interactive fiction. Some of the famous works by this independent game and art practice studio run by Dhruv Jani and Sushant Chakraborty include