FAIZAN RASOOL
19.06.2024

Unfortunately, there is nothing, literally nothing, in the Budget 2024-25 on promoting the indigenous videogame development industry. The Budget does contain important measures to boost Pakistan’s IT industry but this budding sector, which has everything else but the government support to grow, as a major entertainment industry, is left out.

As a representative of the indigenous videogame industry, I do not blame the Ministry of IT for this oversight. We the game development professionals perhaps did not do a good enough effort to convey to the Ministry the rationale to support us. In the paras below, we have explained what videogame are as a modern art form and industry, how the industry is shaping up and the travails of Pakistan’s indigenous videogame industry, which is a victim of poor understanding of the videogame development as an entertainment product by the policy makers.

Videogames: From a modern art form to an industry

VIDEO games are an entrenched, exciting and technologically cutting-edge form of entertainment. The workflow of video games- textures, animation, models etc. have also been seen everywhere, from movies to documentaries to historical recreations and future forecasts. Video games are the bastions of creativity in a way no other entertainment industry comes close. Interactivity of video games creates uniquely personal stories, immersing the player completely in the central role. It is also often player driven; customization here is to an extent unseen in the human world till now.

Every other person seems to be playing video games, as well as generate content portion for video games. This relates to journalistic coverage to discussion panels to analysis of both the story, characters, settings etc., as well as the technical side of games such as development workflows, technologies and software. Its graphics are used in movies, things like effects, sound design, animations and the overall. It has grown a lot in the last few years; The global gaming market size is estimated at USD 272.86 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 426.02 billion by 2029 (NAMIRA). The video game industry is projected to sit at 1427 million users worldwide by 2027. It is HUGE phenomenon. Games can only grow from there, and the staggering success continues to show itself everywhere.

Big money is made in video games in varied and complex ways. It includes, but is not limited to:

• Video game sales on platforms such as Steam/Epic
• Video game Downloadable content, ranging from small item addons to story expansions
• Books and comics
  • This is a HUGE market
  • Literally anything can be a book, as the content does not have to be even following on from the game itself.
  • Halo series has dozens of books chronicling everything from ancient times to mid-game events not seen on screen, as well as retellings.
• In-game microtransactions
  • In PC video games, this is done via an in-game store menu
  • In mobile games, this is done by the “Continue” mechanic in various forms. Everything that needs to be done can be monetized, usually through energy meters, exclusive helper packs, additional lives, and new powers
• Music Score sets
• Art of the video game, typically as a book
• In game ads- typically in Key user interface locations, and are usually timed
  • The full version is usually quite an expensive one-off option, and/or a subscription for limited periods of time
• Game assets and tools
• Games-on-demand for clients
• Exclusive events

The phenomenon on the consumer side is seen via the following channels:

• Video game pc and console players buy and play the games. There is a dominant form of ownership via digital libraries via clients such as Epic Games, GOG, and the largest, Steam. These include single and multiplayer games.
• YouTube lets plays- for many, watching internet personalities and just gamers playing games is a whole phenomenon
• Online multiplayer games are international arenas where up to hundreds of players compete for prizes such as gear, weapons, cool items and multiple other items. This extremely competitive arena is separate because its nature is cooperative/cooperative, setting itself apart from any other form of entertainment
• TV shows, movies, & books: a lot of sundry materials related to games have these spinoffs. Dragon Age video game series has several games, a few books, 2 movies and a show.
• This is usually done to not only expand the series’ lore but also cover other markets, reaching the same consumer in multiple ways.
• Online shows via platforms such as YouTube are particularly popular. Dungeons and Dragons (owned by Hasbro) has multiple games, books and shows, but most notably is very popular as a tabletop game.

All in all, video games have effectively expanded into multiple other industries, effectively catering to non-gamer consumers. This is a particularly effective tool for marketing; one of the examples is Cyberpunk 2077’s “Edge runners” spinoff showcased this perfectly. Cyberpunk 2077 had a bad launch in 2020 with performance issues, bugs, glitches and generally poor reviews almost across the board. After many patches, fixes and game content updates, the game turned itself around; notably, the story and the world itself were strong and people began to see the game less of a hunk of junk and more of a slightly dented racecar. Then, the show of “Cyberpunk: Edge runners” released in 2022 and it was a hit; so much so that because the show used the games world as its anchor, more and more people flocked to the game itself. Now, two years on, it sits on a very high rating on Steam and other platforms.

Recent expansion of the Videogame Industry: key drivers

The videogames meld history and culture with entertainment. In the stories of video games, we get to be heroes or villains, and keep a band of merry followers as we please; it is, in essence, an expression of self by molding the video game into our own perception of the world. Keeping this in mind, video game development has sprung up everywhere. India went from 15 Game development studios in 2009 to a whopping 275 by 2020, and growing. Everywhere we see that game development has also been taken up as a cultural activity. The STALKER series by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World and related series Metro both showcase the culture of the then Soviet Russia and later Ukrainian culture too. Metro showcases more of a Russian culture as it is set primarily in Moscow.

The commonality here is that they are both games that culturally showcase the stories, characters, culture and places of importance in Ukrainian culture. From dialog to mannerisms, to the animations capturing the interactivity of the folks surrounding the protagonist, it drips with cultural significance. The language and dialog, especially with the emphasis on the original Ukrainian, driving home the point that this is a cultural product.

Many such games exist, such as Call of Duty (A war games entertainment sim with a focus on military culture and entertaining shooting galleries), Tchia (based in New Caledonia, a small Island), Pentiment (based on European life in the Middle Ages), Night in the Wood’s American rustbelt city living, and Kingdom Come Deliverance showing the life in Kingdom of Bohemia (a precursor of the modern Czech Republic), and so many more.

One of the other major influences on the game world is anime (Japanese Animation for firms and series) and manga (Japanese comic books and graphic novels) from Japan. For centuries, Japanese animation and manga have been cornerstones of culture.

Manga evolved from simple woodblock prints and illustrated narratives from the Edo period in Japan (1603-1868) onwards. Anime evolved from simple black and white works to vibrant and complex stunning pieces of art we see today. Both have also incorporated 3D into not only their workflow but their output, as much of the aesthetic and style has carried over well into the 3D gaming and shows space. Anime and Manga really began to spread globally after World War 2. However, the 1990s marked the true beginning of an era with multibillion dollar franchises such as “Dragon Ball,” “Sailor Moon,” and “Pokémon”. These series have gone onto make multitudes of shows, movies, card games, video games and even novels, making culture as a major driver of the expansion of videogame development and experience.

All of this makes games a unique cultural product unlike any other; because the player is by default a part of the game and not just an observer, it is an immersion that changes the very method in which the player engages with the world and reproduces the cultural capital by himself. This creates an opportunity to showcase otherwise impossible things, like war games, magic and situations, the layman would never even dream of being in: the classic want of playing as a spy, or the thrill of an airman during World War 2, or the somber mood of a decaying kingdom, is realized in video games.

As a cultural product, it is the linchpin by which cultural influence and soft power grows and is realized in the world today.

Videogame Industry of Pakistan in need of state support
The video game industry in Pakistan is very small and mostly works by making small time contributions to the global supply chain of video games. This type of integration is backend work, much like a software support team. It has none of the ownership or control over what is made; it is being a technical role of fixes, improvements and provision of assets in the form 3D/2D assets, technical support for game engines, coding, texture work, animations, etc.

Though we are working on different segments of the videogame industry, the problem here is that this type of work does not lend itself to creation of new intellectual property. It is, rather crudely, akin to servicing a Maserati of some rich person on your workshop. It may be decent money, but in the wider lens of creating one’s own products (in this case, cars), it does nothing to advance the cause. This is a general challenge, which is invariably always overcome with the state support. A videogame Industry, given its cultural significance, needs to be considered a ‘national industry’.

In the Guardian article dated 12-October-2021, President Macron’s plan for the future of France is stated as follows:

“Emmanuel Macron has given a taste of his likely re-election bid by announcing a €30bn (£25.4bn) plan to “reindustrialize” France and make it a global leader on green hydrogen, create new, smaller nuclear reactors and invest in French television series and video games to challenge foreign offerings on platforms like Netflix.”

Macron said that “if our children continue watching Netflix, we will lose our stories”.

What about Pakistani stories? The emphasis here on connection to one’s culture is the most important. Today the world is in a war of attention and capture, of culture and the civilization. Gone are the days of video and pamphlet propaganda, of early days version of inflammatory social media and faux activism online that only serves to highlight not solve problems. Video games are the new frontier for the war of attention, civilization and legacy. The industry could not do it on its own. It is not that the government is totally oblivious to its leveraging role. Their approach perhaps needs a fresh perspective.

The recent IGNITE initiative to establish a Center of Excellence in Gaming and Animation (CEGA) is a step in the right direction as the Ministry of IT and Telkom [MOIT&] seeks to establish incubation centers and development studios in order to nurture and collect/train talent, to the tune of thousands every year. However, this is not enough. The real question to ask is where will this talent even go? Whatever little being produced by the universities and skill development organizations, is already going to the global supply chains via freelance agents and personal gigs, as well as companies that work as outsource studios for foreign firms.

Going beyond Freelancing and Mobile games

While the international contractors pay our developers very little but due to the disparity in the US $ and the Pakistani Rupee, it looks attractive and, in the process, we bleed Pakistani talent. The payments in $ deprives Pakistani game development industry pay in $$$ when they produce culturally standard local content or quality entertainment products for the regional markets which cannot be priced very high. Freelance work results in significant talent working on many projects, none of which is our own. The long run effect of not owning your work is that there is no building professionally, and indeed also no reason to grow the current skill level is what gets the work.

Therefore, freelance work often dampens the growth need or even ability. Ideas-wise, the freelance work crowds out space for new ideas to flourish because new ideas are not present in the market, there is almost always an oversaturation of talent. The oversaturation of talent is where there are too many people willing to work out of a unified ecosystem but the work itself is too few in terms of quantity, and not enough companies have gigs to work on. In essence, talent becomes useless due to too much of it, and not enough work. It has already started happening, in the freelance space, for example with Wedding cards. There are simply too many people offering to make them, the gigs have nothing really unique about the majority of them, and there are more than enough talents to fulfill the demand.

The freelance model also, by its very nature, suffers this phenomenon regularly; every new ‘thing’:

• Gets first some early movers, who make a lot of money due to high demand, few suppliers
• A massive surge in popularity as more and more talent comes up
• The demand and supply evens out, leading to a plateau
• As talent saturation occurs, work dries causing…
• People leave the gigs, and
• Eventually the demand and supply remain steady, leading to no more outpaced-style of money making.

In short, the freelance model is not sustainable due to changing market conditions. The supply chain integration is only one small step. Making our own games would gain us an international presence. The current state of Pakistan is complex; while there are many companies, which are a part of the international supply chains of Game Development, they have otherwise not been able to make an impact. The rampant piracy, dishonest business practices, low quality work, bad communication are among a host of issues plaguing the industry.

Furthermore, since the funding is very low, most video games are mobile games.

Mobile games are developed on a far smaller scale; they typically consist of small levels with one or two mechanics, and progression system. Owing to the low specifications of a mobile cellphone, the graphics for 3D are usually low poly and have a stylized artistic bend. To circumvent this in 3D, most mobile games are made in 2D art style, which takes up much less space and is overall easier to design, code, and artistically render.

The reason mobile games do not have a story per se is that they are activity generators. The famous Candy Crush is a game that is all about spending a few minutes to play.

However, therein lies to snag; when such activities exhaust, say, their activity/energy metre is depleted, the paid bonuses are available. There are many such meters, so many such offers are there. In Candy crush there are level continues, new objects, saves, and new mods that are on sale. In The Elder Scrolls: Blades, everything is monetized, from gear to energy to materials for building to homes to time skippers.

The alternative, of course, is to wait it out; but that can and does reach anywhere from a few minutes to multiple days.

All of these are a huge problem because the game itself is designed so that one HAS to buy these microtransactions in order to skip the ridiculous waiting times.

The Developer, therefore, has NO incentive to make an entertaining video game; rather, they are making essentially a fancy Gambling machine. This operates by the loop of activity, depletion, wait or purchase and then repeat the cycle, ad infinitum.

Furthermore, the mechanic is often based on chance. This creates an unhealthy gambling style of ‘loot box’ mentality. Since there is simply no way to have guaranteed items, the players are encouraged to keep spending, ad Infinitum.

Larger PC video game projects do exist but are few and far between; the bigger problem is funding. Local funding often means very slow progress due to regular fund cutoffs. The alternative is dependence of donor funds, which then depends on their conditions and is usually with strict agendas. In essence, Pakistani creativity is throttled at its very inception. PC video games, therefore, very rare, and are usually very small in size.

Distinguishing gamification from videogame development

This is very crucial that initiatives like CEGA not only succeed, but also grow from there. However, in order for them to have a cascading effect where more and more game development studios open, they need to conceptually grasp the difference between gamification and video game development.

Gamification does not create video games, it creates simulators for forecasting, prediction and problem solving.

As can be seen, the problem here is that gamification is all about simulating the real world in order to solve problems. It is not entertaining or fun, but rather, it is a serios and often tedious work, as there is a lot of data.

However, Video Game Development on the other hand is all about the mechanical creation of an entertainment product, the video game. Video games are not beholden to real world views, rules, people and history; it can be anything the developer wants it to be. Video games also are built to be enjoyed, to tell a story, and to do things that are otherwise in the realm of fantasy, magic and impossibility. They are also spanning all the multitudes of the human experience, from slice of life videos games all the way to epic set pieces about history, or even just pure fiction. The secret of video games is that they are made to entertain, and so do not have any rules stopping them being serious the way simulators are required to be. Therefore, gamification is actually a subset of video game development. It takes some of the aspects of the game development, such as creating virtual worlds, people and events, and uses these to simulate and/or emulate the real world for various studious purposes. The focus on gamification will only ever touch a portion of the full game development cycle, and will only ever create an industry that is good at simulating real life, not entertainment.

Our main focus must be on product development. CEGA should reserve its 50 % space for the videogame development start-ups and sponsor Accelerator services for them. Products are what gets the ball rolling. Products are not only intellectual property; they are also a cultural manifestation; a focus on products is a focus on culture and therefore on Pakistan itself. The government needs to add in the Budget 2024-25, an initial funding of Rs.1 (One) billion for the game development studios to subsize the production costs of the games short-listed on merit.

There is no gainsaying the fact that, culturally, video games have not only been used for soft power but also for image building, showcasing to the world what that culture is and the depth thereof. Such knowledge dissemination is precisely how Japanese Anime has become so popular. And for that, we need to first establish that there needs to be a Budget for Indigenous Video game development. This will allow Pakistanis to safely and properly embrace the potential of video games and create the cultural products, as well as entertainment products.

The Author, Faizan Rasool, is Head of Microvision Game Development Incubator based at Riphah University in Islamabad. He also teaches “Game Product Development & Management” at Riphah university. He is the founder of video game development accelerator, Indigo Video Games.