Ep# 17 | WTF is Gaming in India? | Career, Investment, Entrepreneurship

Nikhil Kamath 0:00 so we just start rolling, okay?

Host 0:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 0:02 So how we typically start this-

Host 0:04 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 0:04 - is each one of us says something controversial about us [upbeat music] that nobody knows right now. [upbeat music] Ready, guys? So how we typically start this-

Host 0:37 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 0:38 ... is each one of us says

Nikhil Kamath 0:40 something controversial about us that nobody knows right now.

Host 0:44 Hmm.

Nitish Mittersain 0:45 Hmm. [laughing] I'm a listed company boss.

Nikhil Kamath 0:48 So what? [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 0:50 I'm part of a listed company too. [laughing]

Host 0:54 Maybe you can talk about something not related to the company, more like personal.

Nikhil Kamath 0:58 Yeah.

Host 0:58 I don't know. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 0:59 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:00 Okay. Shall I go?

Nikhil Kamath 1:01 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:02 Well, I'm very, uh, temperamental, which people think I'm not.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07 You are temperamental?

Nitish Mittersain 1:08 Can be.

Host 1:09 Ah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:09 Very explosive, one percent of the time. [chuckles]

Host 1:11 Wow! I haven't really seen you. [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 1:13 Or point one percent of the time. My image is-

Host 1:15 Uh

Nitish Mittersain 1:15 ... uh, in the industry to be the most, uh, calmest person around.

Host 1:19 Yeah, true.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20 And who are you usually temperamental with?

Nitish Mittersain 1:23 Just very mood... Sometimes very moody. [chuckles]

Host 1:26 Oh.

Nitish Mittersain 1:26 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:27 So if I were to meet your childhood classmate, your best friend-

Nitish Mittersain 1:30 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:31 ... and ask him if Nitish is capable of one extremely naughty thing in life-

Nitish Mittersain 1:39 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:39 ... at the age of forty, fifty, whatever-

Nitish Mittersain 1:41 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:41 ... what would he prophesize you'd be capable of doing?

Nitish Mittersain 1:44 He wouldn't believe it. Nothing. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:47 Come on.

Nitish Mittersain 1:48 I was the most simplest, most quietest, uh, kid in school.

Nikhil Kamath 1:52 Yeah?

Nitish Mittersain 1:53 Yeah. Absolutely, very introvert-ish.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:57 I've changed now.

Host 1:58 Hmm. [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 2:00 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:00 Do you consider yourself an introvert today?

Nitish Mittersain 2:02 Yes, but much better than what I was, uh, when I was much younger. And I think YPO changed me a lot-

Nikhil Kamath 2:08 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 2:08 ... in

Nitish Mittersain 2:09 the last, uh, decade or so.

Nikhil Kamath 2:11 Do you wanna tell everybody who does not know what is YPO? Give us a-

Nitish Mittersain 2:15 Sure

Nikhil Kamath 2:16 ... minute on YPO.

Nitish Mittersain 2:17 YPO is, uh, the Young Presidents' Organization. It's a originally a US organization, but, uh, has fourteen cha- uh, more than fourteen chapters, I think fifteen or sixteen chapters now in India. Uh, it come- brings together, uh, businessmen, uh, professionals, in a very close group. So in, uh, Mumbai, for example, I think a total of three hundred members might be there, and we organize a lot of learning events. Like I was just telling, right, we're, we're visiting Seoul next week, and we're doing a lot of learning activity. We're actually visiting Sean's large Krafton office, where we're meeting the CEO, et cetera. I think it's a great networking event, and you make, uh, get to know a lot of great people. You are in YPO, so you can add to that, what I didn't.

Host 3:02 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 3:02 But, yeah. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 3:05 I think of YPO very differently.

Nitish Mittersain 3:07 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 3:08 I have very first principles questioning about why people give so much money to an organization, and then work for the organization-

Nitish Mittersain 3:19 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 3:19 ... for free. Uh, when I was not in YPO, I say bad things about everybody, okay?

Nitish Mittersain 3:25 Sure.

Nikhil Kamath 3:25 This is a very open forum-

Nitish Mittersain 3:26 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 3:26 ... so feel free to join me, and I'm gonna pull all your legs, so feel free to pull them back.

Nitish Mittersain 3:31 That's fine.

Nikhil Kamath 3:31 Otherwise, I'll feel bad and guilty at the end of it. [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 3:36 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 3:36 YPO, before I joined, appeared like this organization where rich people hang out.

Nitish Mittersain 3:40 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 3:40 And I had a lot of curiosity about what rich people might be doing-

Nitish Mittersain 3:46 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 3:46 ... together when they hang out in a closed room, and they're not allowing cameras and outsiders to come in.

Nitish Mittersain 3:53 Correct.

Nikhil Kamath 3:55 But in the few years that I have been with them, I have kind of realized that, uh, it's like a social network.

Nitish Mittersain 4:04 Correct.

Nikhil Kamath 4:05 It's a social network for people to hang out, uh, eat, drink, chill-

Nitish Mittersain 4:13 Correct

Nikhil Kamath 4:14 ... uh, go on holidays-

Nitish Mittersain 4:17 Correct

Nikhil Kamath 4:18 ... and also learn on the side.

Nitish Mittersain 4:19 That's right.

Nikhil Kamath 4:20 So I don't know how to put YPO in a box, but it feels like if you move to a new city-

Nitish Mittersain 4:25 Correct

Nikhil Kamath 4:25 ... and you've been lucky in life-

Nitish Mittersain 4:27 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 4:27 ... or you were born lucky in life, it's a good way to make friends very quickly.

Nitish Mittersain 4:32 That's true, and there's also a brotherhood, right? So you go anywhere in the world, and you meet a fellow YPO, there's instant connect. Hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 4:38 Why is that?

Nitish Mittersain 4:39 I think there's a code of conduct, right? YPO largely-

Nikhil Kamath 4:42 Forget all of that.

Nitish Mittersain 4:43 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 4:43 Deep down, why is that?

Nitish Mittersain 4:45 Trust, I think.

Nikhil Kamath 4:46 Why trust?

Nitish Mittersain 4:47 I think, one, because you are a YPO member.

Nikhil Kamath 4:50 Because you know he is from affluence, and he has paid a certain amount of fee to be in an organization? [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 4:57 [laughing] Sounds fair.

Nikhil Kamath 5:00 Yeah. [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 5:00 Sounds fair. [laughing] No, no, perhaps, uh, to a bit, but, uh, more importantly, I think, uh, it's also because as a YPOer, over the years, I've been a YPOer over ten years, right? Uh, I think you learn certain code of conducts which you tend to stick to. For example,

Nitish Mittersain 5:15 confidentiality.

Nikhil Kamath 5:16 Do you wanna introduce yourself professionally as well?

Nitish Mittersain 5:19 Yeah, sure.

Nikhil Kamath 5:20 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 5:20 So I'm the founder and CEO of Nazara Technologies. Nazara is, uh, India's only listed gaming company. I actually started coding games at the age of seven, so one of the lucky guys who discovered his passion at a very young age. And I've had the fortune of, at a young age, my parents encouraged me a lot. I was doing gaming, uh, now what? Thirty-seven, thirty-five years back, and I pursued that for my entire life now. We became the first, uh, listed gaming company in twenty twenty-one, so three years now. And, uh, the journey continues, the game continues, and I continue to play it.

Nikhil Kamath 5:59 Do you regret it, listing?

Nitish Mittersain 6:01 ... Not at all.

Nikhil Kamath 6:02 No? [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 6:02 Not at all. I wouldn't have met you- [chuckles] - and got you as an investor.

Nikhil Kamath 6:07 Okay, for all the disclosures that should be made, I am a investor in Nitish's company.

Nitish Mittersain 6:12 Okay.

Nikhil Kamath 6:13 And, uh, what is it, four, five percent?

Nitish Mittersain 6:15 Five percent.

Nikhil Kamath 6:16 Five percent investor in Nitish's company, and we meet often. And, uh, like I'm going to bug all of you today, I bug him a lot on questions and... Because I want to understand this domain a bit more.

Nitish Mittersain 6:29 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 6:29 Today is rooted from that same curiosity, because so many people are telling me that gaming is this next big thing. The young today are spending so much more time on gaming than traditional forms of entertainment, so I have a lot of curiosity around it. But most people who I, who I have asked in person, not on camera, if they regret listing and becoming a public company, say they do.

Nitish Mittersain 6:56 I don't.

Nikhil Kamath 6:56 Nine out of ten.

Nitish Mittersain 6:57 I absolutely don't.

Nikhil Kamath 6:59 But why do you

Nikhil Kamath 7:00 inherently think listing a company is good? Is access to capital cheaper?

Nitish Mittersain 7:05 See, from our case, I think I really thought two things. I, having done this business for a really long time, two decades, at a time when gaming didn't exist in India, I really felt at that point of time that, one, by going public as India's first gaming company, we could really plant a flag that India is opening up.

Nikhil Kamath 7:27 Is it good PR?

Nitish Mittersain 7:29 Very good PR. I mean, if things are going well. Uh, and for us, we were-

Nikhil Kamath 7:32 Are any of your shareholders also your clients? Is there a significant overlap?

Nitish Mittersain 7:37 No. Uh, in terms of, uh, end players, they would be, but we don't market or cross-market to them. I mean, we don't cross-market our equity to our players, so it's difficult to-

Nikhil Kamath 7:50 Mm

Nitish Mittersain 7:51 ... extrapolate that or figure out the exact data, but there would be.

Nikhil Kamath 7:54 So what, what is it? When you list a company-

Nitish Mittersain 7:55 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 7:56 ... is it because you're able to get money cheaply and faster-

Nitish Mittersain 8:00 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 8:00 ... and easily?

Nitish Mittersain 8:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 8:01 Is it that you're doing a marketing exercise?

Nitish Mittersain 8:04 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 8:05 I'm assuming when you go from pre-public to public, you spend as much as, best case, one and a half, two percent; worst case, four, five percent in the bankers you bring in, the consultants you bring in-

Nitish Mittersain 8:22 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 8:22 ... the accounting fees, all of that put together. So if somebody is spending that much money, what is the true incentive? If you're saying PR, your shareholders are not really your clients. If it's not capital, then what is it?

Nitish Mittersain 8:35 No, I think in the last three, four, five years, as Nazara went public, our brand visibility and company's credibility significantly increased.

Nikhil Kamath 8:46 Credibility to who? To your customers?

Nitish Mittersain 8:48 To a variety of stakeholders. I would say, when I say customers, our customers are end gamers. I think maybe not so much to them, but even partners like Sean and Krafton and global players like that-

Nikhil Kamath 9:00 Mm-hmm

Nitish Mittersain 9:00 ... when they're coming into India and wanting to partner-

Nikhil Kamath 9:03 Mm-hmm

Nitish Mittersain 9:03 ... I think today Nazara is clearly one company that they're very happy to talk to and partner. And maybe, Sean-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 9:09 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 9:09 ... you can agree or not agree with me.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 9:11 Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. Um, I mean, being listed give a lot of, uh, good publicity, good publicity, and then, like, feeling of trustworthy to especially the companies outside India, which we might not have, which might not have a very good visibility and, uh, understanding about the backgrounds of the company. Actually, I ha- I felt the same when Krafton got listed, uh, maybe around similar timing-

Nitish Mittersain 9:40 Yeah

Sean Hyunil Sohn 9:40 ... uh, in, in-

Nikhil Kamath 9:41 How big is Krafton?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 9:43 Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 9:43 I know Nazara is five thousand crores.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 9:45 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 9:45 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 9:45 We, we, our market cap is around nine billion, ten billion US dollar now.

Nitish Mittersain 9:51 Yeah. So that's, that's one, one reason. I think, uh, there are many other related, uh, reasons as well. I also felt one of the reasons, uh, for a lot of, uh, private companies, like I was a VC-backed company for many, many years, and there are a lot of commitments, uh, SHA terms, preferences that you give to the investors. In my case, I was very lucky. I had Westbridge Capital, which you would know, in Bangalore. Sandeep Singhal, who invested in me from 2015 all the way to-

Nikhil Kamath 10:23 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 10:23 ... 2018, 2019.

Nikhil Kamath 10:25 You also had Rakesh Jhunjhunwala for it?

Nitish Mittersain 10:27 Yeah, of course, true, too. Rakesh Ji invested in 2018.

Nikhil Kamath 10:30 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 10:30 Uh, much later.

Nikhil Kamath 10:31 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 10:32 But, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 10:32 Are you saying VCs are the bigger demon in the room than public market retail clients?

Nitish Mittersain 10:37 No, I'm saying as an entrepreneur, you know that there are a lot of terms you have signed on-

Nikhil Kamath 10:43 Mm

Nitish Mittersain 10:45 ... uh, which you don't necessarily like. And like, again, I want to clarify with me, uh, my relation with Westbridge or Sandeep Singhal was fantastic.

Nikhil Kamath 10:52 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 10:52 They were always very patient and never, in 15 years, we never picked up the agreement and looked at it. But psychologically, once you go public, all these rights fall away, right? Because everybody has equal rights, and I'm as answerable to one shareholder, one single shareholder having one single share, as I am to you, right? It's, it's a kind of empowering feeling, uh, is what I feel. And, um, yeah, I think, um, honestly, I'm enjoying it. It is, has, has its own challenges. For example, quarterly pressures, every quarter results. I think the compliances take care of themselves after a point, right? Uh, the hygiene happens, that's not so much of an issue. But it's also how you approach it. Like, I have tried in the last three years as a listed company, and that's what I've been sharing with a lot of entrepreneurs who list. It's not easy to walk the talk, but you have to do the right thing, what you genuinely believe is right, versus trying to deliver the next quarter's result. Even at sometimes, if that is a short-term pain. Second is, you have to try and be as transparent and disclose as much as you want. So if a shareholder wants to call you and ask what you had for breakfast this morning-... you should be ready to say.

Nikhil Kamath 12:04 I'll say this about Nitish.

Nitish Mittersain 12:06 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 12:06 If I were to categorize him with a word cloud as a human being, I would say conservative. I'm not gonna praise him because he's sitting in front of me. [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 12:15 Sure. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 12:18 I would say conservative, last person I would assume will ever do anything reckless. Uh, I would also say very diligent, detail-oriented, and believes in long-term relationships. Uh, we live in a world where things go up and down so quite- so quickly. So the big, big thing about Nitish is, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now, he'll still be here. He might not be growing the fastest, but he will be doing the right thing slowly in the background, which, uh, strangely enough, is a really rare thing, not just here, but everywhere in the world today.

Nitish Mittersain 13:06 No, you, you learn from your lessons, right? I- when I started, I was, like, 17, 18, right in the start of the dot-com boom in '99, and the crash in 2000, right? So I learnt my lessons very quickly then. And, uh, I think the conservatism comes a bit from there, uh, which is a good thing and a bad thing, right? Because it has its own handicap also. But it allows you to live to fight another day-

Nikhil Kamath 13:32 Correct

Nitish Mittersain 13:33 ... and sustain.

Nikhil Kamath 13:34 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 13:34 Which is a good thing.

Nikhil Kamath 13:35 Even my industry is like that, stock markets.

Nitish Mittersain 13:37 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 13:38 It's all about living to fight another day. Sean, would you like to go next?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 13:42 Yeah, why not? [chuckles] Yeah, I'm, I'm from, from South Korea.

Nikhil Kamath 13:47 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 13:47 Um, I was born in

Sean Hyunil Sohn 13:50 Pohang, which is a, like, south, uh, eastern coast city. I was born from there, uh, from, you know, from, uh, parents, uh, who are working for with one of the largest state company, uh, in the world. Um, so I'm from the middle-class, uh, family. Yeah, that's my sort of [chuckles] -

Nikhil Kamath 14:10 I'm guessing South Korean middle class is much more rich than-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 14:14 Me too [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 14:14 ... Indian middle class. What is, uh, GDP per capita in South Korea, $50,000?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 14:18 33,000 now, I guess. 33.

Nikhil Kamath 14:21 Middle class would be, like, $70,000, $80,000 a year?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 14:24 Yeah, household income might be like that. Um, but then you have to understand that Korea grows- grew quite fast. So when I was, like, you know, 10, 15, it was... I would- I cannot say that it was similar to what, uh, India economy is now, uh, currently, uh, uh, you know, positioned. But South Korea GDP, uh, when there was World Olympic in 1988, uh, it was 2,500 or 2,600, 700, which is pretty similar to where India is. So, um, as a, as a South Korean, we, uh, started from, like, in '60, '70s, before I bo- was born, it was a, it was developing country in the lower side, uh, among, among global, uh, peers. And then it grew into, like, developed country in the, like-

Nikhil Kamath 15:14 What era are you talking about? Which year?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 15:16 From, from '70s till maybe 2000.

Nikhil Kamath 15:20 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 15:20 These 30, 30 years, Korea maybe started from maybe 300, 400, uh, GDP per capita and become now, like, you know, 15,000, maybe 15,000, uh, around, uh, like, early 2000. Yeah, so that was the journey, like, Korean economy grew quite fast.

Nikhil Kamath 15:37 Do you have any North Korean friends, or did you ever?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 15:41 Not really. Like, it has been separated, like, more than 70 years now. Um, and we are not allowed to visit North Korea, legally. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 15:51 Are there any North Koreans in South Korea?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 15:51 Or if you enter, then you cannot come back. [chuckles] Sorry?

Nikhil Kamath 15:54 Are there any North Koreans in South Korea?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 15:56 Yeah, yeah, I mean, there are quite sizable, uh, defectors. Like, they are, uh, they are exit- they are defecting from North Korea-

Nikhil Kamath 16:07 Mm-hmm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:07 ... through, uh, through, uh, third-party countries like China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Thailand. So I believe, I don't really remember the ex- exact number but, uh, I think at the peak, there was 10,000 or 20,000 per year, the North Koreans defecting North Korea to enter, to enter Chi- enter South Korea.

Nikhil Kamath 16:27 What's Korean society like today? I have never been.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:30 You have never been.

Nikhil Kamath 16:30 I would love to go.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:30 Yeah, you should.

Nikhil Kamath 16:31 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:31 You should. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 16:32 So you've been in India a while now. You live in Bangalore-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:34 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 16:35 ... where I also live.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:35 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 16:37 If you had to draw parallels between society in Bangalore-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:41 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 16:42 ... and society in North- in South Korea, sorry. [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:46 [chuckles] That mistake happens often.

Nikhil Kamath 16:48 What, what is similar and what is dissimilar?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 16:52 Um, uh, like Korea, South Korea is very, uh, quite, um, uh, homogeneous society. It's getting more cosmopolitan. It's, uh, there are, uh, more immigrants, especially from Southeast Asia. Um, but I think overall, 97, 8% are all Korean in terms of population. So it's a very... And also, it's a, it's a small country. Uh, I think, uh, the land mass is around 100,000 square kilometers, which might be, I don't know, 20 times or 40 times smaller than India. Uh, so peop- all people speak only Korean. Uh, there are no Hindi-speaking people.

Nikhil Kamath 17:35 English-speaking?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 17:36 English, uh, I mean, because of education, uh, it has taken some time, but I think young Koreans speak fairly good English. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 17:44 But it's still very much like the second language, is it?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 17:46 Yeah, of course, of course. So in school, we, I mean, most of public school, uh, do not use English as a medium for teaching classes. So English has a separate sort of, uh, you know, classes, which, uh, maybe three hours a week or something like that. So English- but we spend a lot of money to learn English outside the class-

Nikhil Kamath 18:09 Mm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 18:09 ... outside the classroom. So-... um, I mean, I also studied a lot English outside [chuckles] the school-

Nikhil Kamath 18:17 Mm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 18:17 -uh, which, yeah, which is the still the case. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 18:20 Do you live in Bangalore by yourselves?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 18:22 Yeah, I mean, half voluntarily and half involuntarily.

Nikhil Kamath 18:26 Mm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 18:27 Um, um, it, it's, it's kind of long story, but, uh, make it short, um, when I was working in, uh, HQ, uh, in Seoul, um, we start to, uh, get a sense, you know, how India is developing as a, as a gaming, gaming country. Um, I think it, it was in twenty nineteen, I visited a Nazara office. Uh, also I visited some other, you know, companies and VC firms office back then. Uh, and we slowly think about we need to, uh, properly spend time in India and, and invest in Indian companies and, and work with Indian companies. But that was starting from twenty nineteen. Uh, but the chairman, chairman of Krafton, he traveled to India way earlier than me, maybe twenty seventeen or eighteen. Uh, and after he came back from there, from India, uh, he, he told us, like, the key, you know, executives in the company, that we, we should do something in India. Um, he didn't tell us how. He want us to, uh, you know, to find a way. So, so I... And then we start investment, uh, and the first investment was, was Nodwin, Nodwin Gaming, which is subsidiary of, uh, what?-

Nikhil Kamath 19:44 Akshat.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 19:44 Yeah, yeah, Akshat. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 19:46 What do you think of Akshat?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 19:48 Yeah, I mean, like, no one- no one-

Nikhil Kamath 19:50 Why is Animesh laughing? What do you think of Akshat?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 19:53 Maybe he doesn't like him. [chuckles]

Animesh Agarwal 19:53 He calls himself the professor, and I think he's actually the professor.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 19:56 Eh.

Animesh Agarwal 19:57 He's the professor of the industry. So I've been following Akshat for, like, good ten years, even before I got in- got into gaming professionally. You know, when Nodwin used to... When Akshat himself was a caster, he used to cast-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 20:07 Ah!

Animesh Agarwal 20:07 ... in their own events.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 20:07 I didn't know it.

Animesh Agarwal 20:08 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 20:08 It was in Gotham.

Animesh Agarwal 20:09 Both, both of them, they used to cast their own events. I believe that he has changed the ga- face of esports in India, specifically. To be that, uh, consistent with the efforts when gaming was nothing in India, way back in twenty fourteen, is I, I think when, uh, he established Nodwin. And then to take some massive steps like, you know, selling his majority to Nazara way back in the days, and then still having that same gist to build the company, and what Nodwin has been doing over the last one and a half years specifically, I think he's a person to look up to. And, you know, like, I was smiling because he's the only person, at some point in my career, I would want to, you know, stand shoulder to shoulder in the sense of the enterprise that I built.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 20:48 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 20:48 He's one of a kind of-

Nikhil Kamath 20:49 What

Nikhil Kamath 20:50 are esports, Animesh, if I may ask?

Animesh Agarwal 20:52 Uh, esports, it's gaming in a competitive format, wherein there are wins and losses. It's not about playing inside the game and winning and losing, but there are teams, just like how we have in cricket, and you have... There are fixed set of players, there's a roster, there's are teams, and they are playing with high stakes, with a big prize pool tournament.

Nikhil Kamath 21:09 And what kind of games, typically?

Animesh Agarwal 21:11 Uh, it could be anything. It could be FPS, which is like a CS that you were, that you used to play back in your days.

Nikhil Kamath 21:15 Just say full forms. FPS is what?

Animesh Agarwal 21:17 FPS is first-person shooter, wherein, you know, the view of the, view format of the game is you have a gun in your hand, and, you know, you can see a first-person view.

Nikhil Kamath 21:24 Is that the most popular kind of game in India, shooting?

Animesh Agarwal 21:27 India, yeah, shooting is very popular, but third, third-person shooting, TPS, like, you know, the, the game like GTA-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 21:32 Yeah, the character

Animesh Agarwal 21:32 ... where you, you can see the character fully, and you're moving.

Nikhil Kamath 21:35 So Krafton-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 21:36 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 21:36 -we know now Krafton was a twenty billion dollar company. Now it's a ten billion dollar company-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 21:40 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 21:40 ... roundabout.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 21:41 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 21:42 Uh, how did you get into this industry? How are you Krafton CEO now? How did you come to India?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 21:49 Krafton India CEO. Um, I really like to play game. I like, uh, playing games maybe since I was, uh, not seven, maybe eight, nine, ten. Uh, so I maybe after grade, grade two or grade three. Uh, my father-

Nikhil Kamath 22:02 How old are you now, Sean?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 22:03 Uh, forty-five.

Nikhil Kamath 22:05 Mm-hmm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 22:05 Forty-five. Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 22:06 Nitish also?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 22:07 Yeah, forty- Yeah, I think we are in the same age.

Nikhil Kamath 22:09 Forty-five?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 22:09 Yeah. Born in '78, right? '79. '79. '79. My father, uh, could afford, uh, uh, you know, buying, back then it was Apple, uh, Apple-compatible, like, eight beat computer. So my father, uh, could afford it, and honestly, back then, you say I, I want to learn how to programming and, and things like that, but I didn't, uh, code too much. I just played game all the time. So that was beginning of my, uh, passion on gaming as a, as a hobby, mostly. And then, uh, it grew quite a bit, so I played a lot, even in high school and college. Um, and back then, um, like Taiwan, like Israel, Korean, South Korean man should go to army. But I, back then-

Nikhil Kamath 22:55 Conscription.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 22:55 Conscription, yeah. It's a compulsory. But, uh, we could choose to work for high-tech company, IT companies, uh, including gaming companies, uh, if you have certain engineering certificate, uh, uh, after, like, college degree. So I, I, I try, uh, uh, that direction, uh, so I could get in- get a job in game developer, which is still, which is still exist. Um, uh, I could get a job there as a game designer. Uh, so that was my beginning of career in gaming. Uh, but I found that I'm not that good at game designing or coding, so I switched my role to marketing and sales side. Um, and then, you know, um, and I, I... You know, that was the, you know, how I got into the gaming side. Um, but I actually didn't like working for a gaming company. I found that it's something different. Like, you like playing games, but you don't really like to work for a gaming company. It was, uh, little, to be little casual, like, it was shitty, shitty to work for a gaming company from young, young ambitious man perspectives. I want to work for big companies, so I switched to banking. Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 24:07 How old were you then?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 24:09 Around ten years, uh, after I had an MBA. So, [chuckles] so I got a, um, so I, I started my career in gaming in two thousand. I got an MBA in two thousand and eight.... uh, and I started my career in banking from two thousand and eight till two thousand and seventeen, which I joined Krafton, uh, as a, as a CFO of, of one of, uh, the subsidiary. Um, so that's how I got into, uh, Krafton. And then, uh,

Sean Hyunil Sohn 24:35 you know, we were very successful in, in a game, uh, called PUBG. Um, uh, and, um-

Nikhil Kamath 24:42 Did PUBG get banned in India? You, you wanna talk about PUBG?

Animesh Agarwal 24:45 Yeah, I mean, like, it was more of a-

Nikhil Kamath 24:47 It was huge in India, right? Everybody was playing it.

Animesh Agarwal 24:49 Yeah, it's still big, but now it's BGMI, uh, the new Indian version.

Nikhil Kamath 24:52 Is it the same thing with a different name?

Animesh Agarwal 24:54 Uh, no, it's a India-oriented game they made specifically for India, and it's a different publisher altogether. It has nothing to do with PUBG Mobile. That was a Tencent game. It was a Chinese company. The biggest gaming company, you can call it. Tencent owns everything, like majority of the stuff.

Nikhil Kamath 25:08 What is the relationship between Tencent and Krafton?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 25:12 Um, Tencent is the investor. Uh, Tencent is investor in Krafton, uh, before the IPO, uh, and they still, they still maintain some share.

Nikhil Kamath 25:24 So your-- BGMI is also you?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 25:26 Yeah. Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 25:27 So you stopped PUBG to build BGMI, and now that is popular, like that?

Animesh Agarwal 25:33 Uh, PUBG is actually, the original PUBG PC is a Krafton game. And then Tencent had the right to build the mobile version-

Nikhil Kamath 25:40 Okay

Animesh Agarwal 25:41 ... of it, and that was, that's globally available PUBG Mobile. When India banned PUBG Mobile, Krafton came with Indian version of their thing. They made their own thing, BGMI-

Nikhil Kamath 25:48 Right

Animesh Agarwal 25:48 ... which is Battlegrounds Mobile India.

Nikhil Kamath 25:50 And what are the differences between these games? One is more appealing than the other?

Animesh Agarwal 25:54 Uh, technically nothing, but then it's more about the origin and everything else that they had to address to, you know, launch the game in India.

Nikhil Kamath 26:02 But China does that to everybody, right? They don't even allow Facebook and Google in China.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 26:07 Yeah, and-

Animesh Agarwal 26:08 That's true

Sean Hyunil Sohn 26:08 ... for gaming apps or, like, even before the mobile era, they, uh, allow publishing of games on the approval basis-

Nikhil Kamath 26:19 Yeah

Sean Hyunil Sohn 26:19 ... uh, which is, uh, maybe China and Vietnam only-

Nikhil Kamath 26:22 Yeah

Sean Hyunil Sohn 26:22 ... in the world.

Nikhil Kamath 26:23 Do you feel like

Nikhil Kamath 26:25 the world is becoming a more fragmented place, taking inspiration from China, uh, a country which does not allow foreign apps and replicates it with their own versions? Will all IP that touches the citizens of a certain country, in the future, be built in the country, or at least be owned or hosted in that country?

Joseph Kim 26:50 It, it's a really interesting question because I, I think that that was the direction we were going, and we may go back to that again. It, it was being called Splinternet, basically, like, the idea that because China has its own internal policies where, you know, you need a license, you also need a local partner. They were banning a lot of apps from the US. There was... The, the current situation now, and there was a time when, when Trump was president of the US, and he was gonna ban TikTok. It seemed like we were gonna be moving more in that direction. We might again, but I do think that that's a danger. And actually, though, when it came to me starting a company here in India, um, that was a consideration because we felt that if the world does move towards a Splinternet, and if China and Russia are on one side, I wanna be on the other side. And if, if India is, uh, split from China, uh, currently, one, one thing that's not well understood is that almost all of the top mobile shooter games are all developed by Chinese companies, effectively, right? And so, like, um, and so-

Nikhil Kamath 27:58 Why is that?

Joseph Kim 28:00 It's because they have a developed, deep expertise in shooters, and they also... There, there's been, like, a phenomenon in which, like, the Tencent teams and the Ch- Chinese teams have-- they're just... The, the work ethic, the culture, they're just kind of crazy compared to the West, right? Like, the West right now, if I'm just being honest, we're, we're, we're gonna be honest here, right?

Nikhil Kamath 28:28 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 28:28 Is, is in kind of in decline, where you don't have the same work ethic, the same kind of drive. And I think when you look at budgets today, um, in the US, budgets are, like, to make a game now is, like, a hundred, three hundred million dollars for, like, a, for an HD, a PC, or a console game. But in China, they're working nine, nine, six. They've identified specific strategic areas that are important to them, and then they just go all in in those areas. And, uh, mobile, for shooters, has been one of those areas. And so when you look at every game that they work on, y- you know, Call of Duty Mobile is actually developed by Tencent, although they're using, they're using the IP of, of Activision, for example, right? And most of the... I, I would say, the, the skill, the technical expertise currently exists in China. Um, one of the objectives of the company that I started was to hopefully do that here in India as well, but it's been tough. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 29:27 Why is that?

Joseph Kim 29:28 [chuckles] I think that, um... So the Indian game development ecosystem is still early. And if you look at the historical context of the Indian game development ecosystem,

Joseph Kim 29:41 it's been one that's more, that has been more of a services orientation, right? And so the model in India, in terms of the historical context, has been taking games from the West, at, at least for mobile, um, that are in decline, and then getting a team in India to live operate it for, um, greater margins, right? For lower cost. And so because of that historical context, there hasn't been, like, um, a, a culture, a knowledge, a skill set of new game development in India yet. I'm sure it's burgeoning, and there's certainly a lot of, you know, successful local game companies, but I-

Nikhil Kamath 30:22 Has there been a single game in India, built in India, that has-... reached scale in a true sense?

Joseph Kim 30:30 Uh, so I believe, like, the game at the highest scale from a downloads perspective is GameXiang's Ludo King, but really it's Orange-

Nikhil Kamath 30:41 GameXiang?

Nitish Mittersain 30:42 GameXiang.

Joseph Kim 30:42 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 30:42 GameXiang. That's an Indian company?

Joseph Kim 30:43 Yes.

Nitish Mittersain 30:44 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 30:44 Yes. Um, when I look at the charts, that's the only game that I see come, you know, on, on the top charts, uh, globally. But still, it's largely an Indian audience, because there's so many Indians that love Ludo. It, it does-

Nikhil Kamath 30:58 And what scale are we talking, in terms of revenue coming out of the game?

Joseph Kim 31:02 I, I think that it has almost very little revenue, [chuckles] right? But, uh, and from a downloads perspective, it's very high.

Nitish Mittersain 31:08 So I know that they recently crossed a billion downloads, I think- Animesh Agarwal: ... Yeah -in India.

Joseph Kim 31:13 Yeah, but I-

Nitish Mittersain 31:13 Yeah, monetization is a, uh, is a challenge.

Joseph Kim 31:16 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 31:17 Relatively.

Joseph Kim 31:17 And I think that's the opportunity for India, though, right?

Nitish Mittersain 31:20 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 31:20 Which is, like, if India can develop a similar kind of work ethic, skill set, and, um, knowledge of monetization and how to monetize more strongly, then I think India has a great opportunity.

Nitish Mittersain 31:34 Yeah. You know, just to add to that, Nikhil, uh, we've been around for so long, right? So we've really seen the whole evolution of the Indian gaming industry right from late '90s to where we are today in '24. I think one more reason is that unlike China, et cetera, which had a large PC gaming culture, uh, gaming cafes, et cetera, for a very long period of time, India's really been a mobile gaming-first nation. So most people playing games, their first experience has been the mobile phone, very casual gaming. So just that culture takes time to develop, even when you're thinking as a game designer, as a game developer, as an evolution. Up to 2010, you would not see that at all. Then you had Zingas of the world and Electronic Arts of the world set up shop, back offices in Bangalore and, uh, Hyderabad, et cetera. And you've started seeing some of those come out, set up some companies which are now becoming successful. So I think we're going up that curve. Hopefully, we'll accelerate up that curve. I, I-

Nikhil Kamath 32:36 But, uh-

Nitish Mittersain 32:36 Yes, sorry.

Nikhil Kamath 32:37 But I think he, he was making a good point.

Nitish Mittersain 32:38 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 32:39 Joseph is saying there is... The ecosystem in India is not capable of producing a game which can really compete on the world stage. What do you think India has to change to change that?

Joseph Kim 32:54 I think there has to be a few things that change. I would say probably the most important thing is talent. So look, I live in Silicon Valley, okay? The smartest guys in Silicon Valley are all Indian, [chuckles] right? And so they certainly have... Like, Indians can be the smartest anywhere. Uh, they're all the, you know, the, all the tech CEOs are all, all Indian in Silicon Valley. But-

Nikhil Kamath 33:21 Do you think that's the problem, the smart ones are going out of the country?

Joseph Kim 33:24 That's one of the problems, but I, I think that gaming in India has a double problem. So first, sh- yes, uh, there are a lot of people in India, when they get the, an opportunity to, like, 7x, 10x their salary by going abroad, and they have that opportunity because they've developed a skill set here, then they- then they'll, they'll jump. I think the other thing is more of a cultural issue that, um, I have discovered over the past few years that I've been here in India, which is that gaming, at least- and you guys, please disagree with me.

Nitish Mittersain 33:58 Yeah, yeah.

Joseph Kim 33:58 But in my experience, it seems like gaming is not looked upon favorably by a lot of Indian parents.

Nitish Mittersain 34:05 Mm.

Joseph Kim 34:05 And so when somebody wants to go into gaming-

Nitish Mittersain 34:08 [chuckles]

Joseph Kim 34:08 ... they really have to want to go into gaming. But otherwise, I think a lot of the parents, they typically would want to go to join, like, some high-tech firm, an Amazon, a Google, a Facebook, a company like that, rather than join a gaming company. And so the image of a gaming company, unlike in the West, right? Like, in the West, joining a game company is looked upon very favorably for a number of reasons, right? It's, um, generally, uh, like, leads in terms of innovation. A lot of the people that go, that are in gaming actually are highly coveted by Facebook, Google, and the high-tech companies. But that kind of feeling and that kind of, that, that kind of, um, orientation towards gaming in the US versus India is so different. So then you not only lose talent overseas, but you also lose talent to other local Indian industries.

Nitish Mittersain 35:05 Yeah. Right.

Nikhil Kamath 35:06 And what do you think should change in India to culturally make gaming, a career in gaming, look cool?

Joseph Kim 35:17 I think it's more of an education, right? So I can, I can name, uh, so many of my friends that went from gaming to join Facebook or Amazon or Netflix, and I think if some of the Indian employees here, or people who are considering going into gaming, understood, "Wow, I didn't know that those companies really sought people from gaming," because gaming is so innovative, and it is so cross-disciplinary, and you have to learn a lot of complex skills when you're in gaming. Uh, so that is not well understood here, and I think that, um... The other thing also that hasn't happened is that because, a- again, the, the historical context of a lot of the Indian gaming companies has been more on, on the live ops and services orientation, that there hasn't been the level of poaching or of the high-tech companies trying to hire people out of Indian gaming companies yet. And I think when that happens, and I think that happens from people who have learned from a company building new games that are very successful, right? Then they'll be poached fairly regularly or, or-... sought out, sought after, I think that's when it becomes more popular.

Nikhil Kamath 36:35 Can you tell me a way? Uh, assume I'm a young, 20-year-old Indian boy, girl, and I want to get a job at Lila Games, your company.

Joseph Kim 36:45 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 36:45 What should I learn?

Joseph Kim 36:47 Well, I, I think it would, it would depend on the specific role that you're looking for. So if it's product management, I would be looking for one thing; if it's engineering, it'd be completely different. But I would say, like, a general bit of advice for anyone that's new looking to join a gaming company, is to essentially think outside of the resume and to build... I, I, I call it a digital footprint. But basically, like, show me what you know. Show me what you can do that's just not, like, lines on your resume. So whether it's projects or whether it's, like, blog posts ab- where I can s- see how you think. Because I will say, you know, having been recruiting here for the last three and a half years, and having interviewed and, you know, looked at thousands and thousands of resumes, I would say that most people generally don't stand out because they don't actually show me anything that they've done that, that really tells me that they care about gaming, that they've thought about gaming. So anyone that has a blog post, a project that they've put onto a website, any kind of additional kind of digital footprint outside of their resume, really shows me that this is somebody that I need to pay attention to. So I'll absolutely look at a resume with, like, links to projects, blog posts, v- YouTube videos, anything of that nature, more than just a, another resume, right?

Nikhil Kamath 38:12 Interesting. Would you

Nikhil Kamath 38:14 like to tell us more about yourself, Joseph, like, generally life?

Joseph Kim 38:17 I'm a guy that's trying to do something meaningful before I die. So, uh, you know, I, I think, um... So in terms of my career, I, I, I kind of, kind of, um, worked in software development-

Nikhil Kamath 38:32 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 38:32 ... initially. Uh, then I moved into management consulting, then, um, around 2010, 2011, started a gaming company unsuccessfully. Um, then went into, like, kind of consulting with big Asian publishers, um, trying to, uh, you know, publish games, mobile games for the Western market.

Nikhil Kamath 38:52 Why do they call them publishers?

Joseph Kim 38:54 Uh, publishers generally, um, finance and distribute games.

Nikhil Kamath 38:59 Okay.

Joseph Kim 38:59 And, and so their model is to, like, not do the development. They work with another company that actually develops the games, but then they would help get those games launched into market and distributed. And so there's a financing component, but there's also a distribution and marketing component as well.

Nikhil Kamath 39:14 Can you give me the example of a publisher and a game developer, the distinction?

Joseph Kim 39:20 Sure. So, uh, for example, I mean, I think Krafton recent- like, just, just to, again, kind of, um, give you a very live example, Krafton worked with a company called ZeptoLab, that has a game for, uh, the global market, and they worked with them to make an Indian-specific version of the game. So I don't know what the exact deal terms were, but I assume that they would pay for part or full development cost.

Nikhil Kamath 39:44 Revenue share. Yeah.

Joseph Kim 39:45 They would have a revenue share with them-

Nikhil Kamath 39:46 Mm

Joseph Kim 39:46 ... may potentially give them a, a guarantee of some kind, some initial, you know, payment.

Nikhil Kamath 39:51 Mm.

Joseph Kim 39:51 And then, uh, and then it would be up to Krafton to actually market and distribute the game. The developer, after they've finished developing the game, would, would either, like, in... For a premium game, they'd be done. For a live-operated free-to-play game, they, they would continue to operate the game and then share in the, share in the success of the game through a revenue share.

Nikhil Kamath 40:10 Interesting. And when I read that you were at Sega Games, by Sega, do you mean that console which we used to have back in the day?

Joseph Kim 40:18 Yeah, so [laughing] ...

Nikhil Kamath 40:20 [laughing] I remember playing that.

Joseph Kim 40:21 So after, after I, I kind of did consulting, I joined a company called FunPlus, and I actually had a pretty big success. And the model that I learned at FunPlus is the model that I'm actually trying to bring to India. And so at FunPlus, we had something that I call a leads-based model. But essentially, we took, at that time, a fairly inexperienced team in Beijing, and this was during a period like 2000, I don't know, 14, 15 or so, when China was not as-

Nikhil Kamath 40:52 Yeah

Joseph Kim 40:53 ... dominant as it is today. And, uh, we had a team in Beijing. We brought experts from around the world in various areas that the team was not strong in. We brought them to China, had them teach the team, and then we developed, uh, games out of, out of China. Uh, the game that I developed was called King of Avalon, but, uh, that turned out to be a pretty big success. And then after, uh, after FunPlus, I joined Sega, um, basically in, in their mobile games division. So, uh, basically-

Nikhil Kamath 41:23 Was Sega the machine on which we used to play-

Joseph Kim 41:25 It was

Nikhil Kamath 41:25 ... Contra and Mario and all that?

Joseph Kim 41:26 That's right.

Animesh Agarwal 41:27 Sega.

Joseph Kim 41:27 That's right.

Nikhil Kamath 41:27 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 41:28 Yeah, Sega-

Nikhil Kamath 41:28 I've played a lot of that. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 41:30 [laughing]

Joseph Kim 41:30 Sega-

Nikhil Kamath 41:30 Contra, Mario Brothers. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 41:32 Sega.

Joseph Kim 41:32 Yeah, Sega exited-

Animesh Agarwal 41:34 Contra

Joseph Kim 41:34 ... um, hardware, uh, the console business, a number of years ago, but still develop- develops, um, games through a number of different, uh, game studios, and is actually div- diversified in, like, hotels, pachinko, and things like that, like, a lot of other things as well.

Nikhil Kamath 41:50 You know, funnily enough, when you said, when you mentioned earlier, gaming centres, when I was a kid growing up, I'm thinking age six or seven-

Animesh Agarwal 42:00 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 42:01 ... there used to be gaming centres where there would be Sega machines, and you would pay per hour and play Contra for an hour.

Animesh Agarwal 42:08 The more like arcade machines-

Nikhil Kamath 42:09 Yeah

Animesh Agarwal 42:09 ... arcade centres, yeah.

Joseph Kim 42:11 Yeah. Yeah. Um, oh, just to finish the loop, uh, I- after Sega, I joined NBCUniversal-

Nikhil Kamath 42:16 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 42:17 ... which is a big media company, and then started this company about three and a half years ago. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 42:24 Okay.

Nikhil Kamath 42:25 Moving to the youngest one here, Animesh-

Animesh Agarwal 42:27 Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I've had the shortest professional run in the gaming industry- [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 42:31 Yeah

Animesh Agarwal 42:32 ... until now.

Nikhil Kamath 42:33 Your online name is 8Bit Thug.

Animesh Agarwal 42:36 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 42:37 ... where was that inspired from? Do you feel like you're a thug in real life?

Animesh Agarwal 42:42 Uh, not really. People do think that I'm a little bit of, like, have a bullish nature in the gaming industry-

Nikhil Kamath 42:48 Ah. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 42:48 -but that's not true. [laughing] Uh, I think that's just because, uh, you know, things that I've been, luckily been able to do, which I'm very proud of, across the last six years. The name story is very simple. 8Bit was my clan name in a game called Clash Royale-

Nikhil Kamath 43:00 Ah.

Animesh Agarwal 43:00 -which I was heavily invested into as a casual gamer.

Nikhil Kamath 43:02 Mm-hmm.

Animesh Agarwal 43:03 Not professionally.

Nikhil Kamath 43:03 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 43:03 I was pursuing my CA inters, and I had something to do in, uh, to get- because I didn't want to step out, spend a lot of time studying. So that was a game I was heavily invested into.

Nikhil Kamath 43:12 Mm-hmm.

Animesh Agarwal 43:13 I made a clan, 8Bit. That's how the prefix of my name came in.

Nikhil Kamath 43:16 Mm-hmm.

Animesh Agarwal 43:17 And Thug is actually a short form of Thug Life, which is also, uh, from a song from a movie called Dictator. College days, nothing to do. I said, "It's a good nine, good name," you know, getting fascinated by movies. So, and then, uh, actually, when I used to play PUBG Mobile, it did not take 8Bit Thug Life as my full name, so I left out Life, and it's 8Bit Thug, and the rest is history.

Nikhil Kamath 43:39 Why 8Bit?

Animesh Agarwal 43:40 8Bit, my team name.

Nikhil Kamath 43:41 Ah.

Animesh Agarwal 43:41 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 43:42 Then why did you pick 8Bit for your team name? [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 43:44 Okay, so interesting question.

Nikhil Kamath 43:46 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 43:46 When I was playing Clash Royale-

Nikhil Kamath 43:47 Uh

Animesh Agarwal 43:47 ... there were eight people from across the world met, who met in the game-

Nikhil Kamath 43:51 Ah, ah

Animesh Agarwal 43:52 ... who founded 8Bit.

Nikhil Kamath 43:53 Ah.

Animesh Agarwal 43:53 So there was one guy from Austria, couple from, uh, US, one from Austria, so we used to call ourselves 8Bits of the entire clan system.

Nikhil Kamath 44:01 Ah!

Animesh Agarwal 44:01 And then we all just, uh, fell off. They fell off, and I just continued the name, and established-

Nikhil Kamath 44:07 See, I, I thought that... Thank you. I thought that you are, like, you know, fan of, uh, classic-

Animesh Agarwal 44:12 Oh, no

Nikhil Kamath 44:12 ... uh, classic games.

Animesh Agarwal 44:13 Not really. I'm always a fan of-

Nikhil Kamath 44:14 From 8Bit era. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 44:15 [laughing] high graphic, intensive games.

Nikhil Kamath 44:17 Okay. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 44:18 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 44:18 So I'm gonna ask you most questions, 'cause you're the protagonist of the Indian gaming story, in a way, or the career in gaming.

Animesh Agarwal 44:27 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 44:28 You came from a non-gaming background, and today you're a professional gamer in India. So tell us the story from the beginning, and then I'll ask you things like money, opportunity, all of that. So how did you enter game?

Animesh Agarwal 44:41 Right, so I'll go back to the beginning. Uh, actually, I was... I come from a middle-class family. My father is a chartered accountant. My sister is a chartered accountant. I was pursuing-

Nikhil Kamath 44:50 You're gonna, you're gonna get trolled for calling chartered accountant middle-class, but continue. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 44:55 [laughing] Uh, no. Uh, yeah, but it is a story. When I realize right now that, how, how I was ever in the middle-class segment when my father was a CA, but, theek hai, that's a different story. And I was pursuing CA. My life goal was inspired from Hrithik Roshan, ZnMD investment banker banne hai, Goldman Sachs.

Nikhil Kamath 45:11 Oh.

Animesh Agarwal 45:11 I was doing CFA. I cleared CFA Level 1.

Nikhil Kamath 45:14 Ah.

Animesh Agarwal 45:14 I pursued FRM. I cleared its Level 1. But I did all of this when I was shy of 24, like six years back. So I realized, and I used to play a lot of games, but not professionally, just play games, watch some of the biggest streamers at that point, like Ninja, Shroud, and a game called Fortnite, which is still one of the very popular titles, caught my attention. I don't know why. Like, today, I have an answer why people watch games, but then I did not have an answer. And I used to wake up at 6:30 a.m. Indian time, in Bangalore, just to watch Ninja or these guys go live, because of the time zone difference. They used to go-

Nikhil Kamath 45:46 Why? I still don't get it. When I can play, I guess one can say the same about sport.

Animesh Agarwal 45:53 That's what... That's the answer.

Nikhil Kamath 45:54 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 45:55 Mm. The question itself is the answer.

Nikhil Kamath 45:56 I have never watched anybody stream, but I'm trying to wrap my head around, why is it so much fun to watch someone play a video game?

Animesh Agarwal 46:04 Uh, I think the nature of video games that's being played, the competitiveness that it brings, the storyline that it brings. I think a lot of great, greatest content creators are great storytellers.

Nikhil Kamath 46:14 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 46:14 So they bring a different angle to, apart from the story that is within the game. So those are a few things that really holds the audience together, and also, the competitive side is the biggest part of it.

Nikhil Kamath 46:23 So wait, somebody's watching a game-

Animesh Agarwal 46:24 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 46:25 There is a content creator on top of the game who's giving commentary-

Animesh Agarwal 46:28 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 46:29 -and you're watching the commentary?

Animesh Agarwal 46:30 Right, and you're, because, you know, the way, I think, uh, when you play story mode games, story mode games are games which have, uh, you know, a particular story, and once you finish the story, the game is done. You don't need to play it again. I think a lot of greatest content creators that I've seen are big gamers, they are excellent storytellers. Uh, I mean, like the way they-

Nikhil Kamath 46:48 Give me some examples.

Animesh Agarwal 46:48 I think if you look at-

Nikhil Kamath 46:50 Story mode game

Animesh Agarwal 46:51 ... uh, a story mode game, something like God of War, a very popular game way back in my school days as well. I used to play it on the PS2.

Nikhil Kamath 46:57 So once the story is over, it's done.

Animesh Agarwal 46:59 It's done. The game is done, and then you move on to the next one. Yeah, so and then there are games like GTA that go on forever. Then there have been games like Grand Theft Auto that go on forever. So that's one part of watching streams or content. The second part is obviously when you play games like BGMI or Valorant, which have a competitive angle to it, which have a win, uh, condition to it. So, you know, when some of the famous names who have represented India, who have played tournaments, won in to- won in, uh, those tournaments, and when they go out and show it to the public how it's done, I think that really ca- catches the attention of a lot of people. I think it has evolved over the last three, four years, where a lot of fun elements, because it's a very, you know, these games like BGMI, Valorant, where you're playing as a squad, it has a lot of fun element to it, because you're connecting socially to each other, you are talking. So this conversation comes from... I mean, like, why did, uh, we used- like, I have, even I have watched Kyunki Saas Bhi Kahi Bahu Thi. What was it? It was just this conversation-

Nikhil Kamath 47:51 No, you were 28, no?

Animesh Agarwal 47:51 Twenty-eight. Toh bachpan mein dekha.

Nikhil Kamath 47:53 It was my era, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kahi Bahu Thi.

Animesh Agarwal 47:55 No, but my era also, but I was in class one now, but-

Nikhil Kamath 47:57 You must have seen the later Tulsis and Mihirs, not the original ones.

Animesh Agarwal 48:01 Uh, yeah, possibly-

Nikhil Kamath 48:02 [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 48:02 ... but I've seen all the deaths.

Nikhil Kamath 48:03 Not Sm-

Animesh Agarwal 48:03 I've seen five Mihirs, I guess.

Nikhil Kamath 48:04 Not Smriti Irani time.

Animesh Agarwal 48:05 No, I've seen Smriti Irani, yeah. But yeah, so I-

Nikhil Kamath 48:08 She was so good, right?

Animesh Agarwal 48:09 Yeah, she was good, definitely. So I believe that that's the reason why people watch games.

Nikhil Kamath 48:13 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 48:13 It's just about, they play the game, now they relate to it. It's like cricket. You have played cricket, everyone has played or at least heard a lot about cricket. Now you're getting to, when you see IPL, you get to see a different angle of cricket. Believe me, T20 World Cup is never same as IPL. The masala that comes with IPL is s- is the reason why so many people are glued to it. Like, you know, it becomes a festival in India. I think that's the case with people watching gaming streamers. You know, it becomes a different version of that game for them.

Nikhil Kamath 48:40 And while you're watching a stream, are you all talking to each other?

Animesh Agarwal 48:44 Uh, while I'm watching?... uh, if I'm a viewer, I'll be chatting with other people who are watching my stream. That's what happens on YouTube and Twitch, or Loco, as a matter of fact. Uh, but as a player, if I'm playing a solo person story mode game, then I might be, uh, not chatting with anyone else, but I'm playing squad games, I'll be chatting with my teammates.

Nikhil Kamath 49:00 I'm gonna blatantly ask a question.

Animesh Agarwal 49:02 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 49:03 As a Indian

Nikhil Kamath 49:04 full-time gamer, how much do successful streamers, gamers make in India? How viable is it as a profession, profession?

Animesh Agarwal 49:15 I think it's very skewed, to be very honest.

Nikhil Kamath 49:17 Mm. Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 49:18 The top gamers and top streamers make a lot of money, and there's- like, if you go to the bottom of the chart, people are not making money at all.

Nikhil Kamath 49:24 Describe lot.

Animesh Agarwal 49:26 Million dollar-

Nikhil Kamath 49:26 Who's the number one gamer in-

Animesh Agarwal 49:27 Million dollars com- comfortably in a year.

Nikhil Kamath 49:30 This is a gamer?

Animesh Agarwal 49:30 This is a gaming content creator. It has to be a streamer at this point.

Nikhil Kamath 49:33 Who's the top in India?

Animesh Agarwal 49:35 Uh, I think it could be Mortal, Scout, Mythpat, and Fire-

Guest 49:38 Like, few million subscribers on YouTube.

Animesh Agarwal 49:41 Yeah, million subscribers.

Guest 49:41 Yeah. Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 49:42 Then we have Techno Gamers. They are comfortably making, you know, uh, money around that number.

Nikhil Kamath 49:47 And this money comes from?

Animesh Agarwal 49:48 Brand endorsements plus content, I think.

Nikhil Kamath 49:51 YouTube-

Animesh Agarwal 49:51 Brand endorsements really form a big chunk.

Nikhil Kamath 49:53 YouTube content?

Animesh Agarwal 49:53 Yeah, YouTube content. YouTube or, uh, Instagram, social media platforms.

Nikhil Kamath 49:56 Is it like PewDiePie? I, I remember looking at YouTube for a long time, PewDiePie had the largest subscribers. This is like that?

Animesh Agarwal 50:03 Sort of, yes. He wa- he has been a, uh, an inherent gamer, like, he has played games for quite a bit on his channel, so something of that kind.

Nikhil Kamath 50:10 Okay, remove content creators. [clears throat] Gamer gamer?

Animesh Agarwal 50:15 Uh, gamer gamer, I would say people who have played at the highest level of esports, that is, playing official tournaments for a franchised or... Not a franchise, we don't have franchise here, but for a registered esports team. I think they could be doing close to 30, 35 lakhs a year, by just playing games professionally. They have-

Nikhil Kamath 50:36 And how many of these people are there? Thousands?

Animesh Agarwal 50:40 Uh, not really. I don't think at 35 lakhs, it's thousand. It could be the top 150. Right. Because it's very limited.

Nikhil Kamath 50:50 Where else in this domain can young people make money in India? Streamer, gamer, then?

Animesh Agarwal 50:55 Okay, so now this is where I wanted to come to the conversation that, you know, you were having with Joseph. What I feel that India does not really... So if you look at Indian market, gaming boomed in India 2019, mid. It's exactly when it started booming, and Covid happened, and it, the gaming industry just blew off the lids. I believe if you compare Indian gaming, uh, trajectory to Western and European market, like, uh, European and American market, you realize we paced in, we like... You know, the graph s- was very steep. We moved at a very fast pace. We paced really well. Gaming in India grew by leaps and bounds compared to the pace at which other countries were coming in, but that is the, uh, consumption part of it. India has surpassed US and Brazil in terms of mobile game downloads. India has 568 million online gamers. So numbers are great, but there was a big void in the system, which was this, that we did not have the proper, uh, correct roles defined. People did not know, ki, what jobs are available, but people did not know ki, apart from being a mortal or a scout or play- becoming a gamer, there are other hundred domains where you can enter the gaming industry. So I believe that we are too young for that. The industry is too young for that. India will produce the build- best of games in coming years, but it's not gonna happen at least for the next five years.

Nikhil Kamath 52:08 Why?

Animesh Agarwal 52:09 I believe that building games are super expensive. Uh, from what I have studied, I might be wrong, and, uh, someone can correct me, I don't believe there were enough funds in India, funding game development in India. Uh, gaming, just like all the gaming funds, even Krafton's incubator was announced early this year, and then there's Zucca, and then I think, uh, even MPL is building a game, but all of this happened in the last three, four years. So if there were dreams, you know, when we talk about, uh, where exodus, talent exodus from India, if there were dreams eight years back about building game in India, who would fund it? [lips smack] That's the point. You know, I was just speaking to your, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 52:42 I feel like-

Animesh Agarwal 52:42 ... one of your teammates.

Nikhil Kamath 52:44 I feel like money always follows talent.

Animesh Agarwal 52:48 It does, but then, uh, I believe that there needs to be a base for that ecosystem. I mean, like, eight years, uh, ago, if someone would have gone and said, "I need $2 million or $3 million to build a game," no one would have given that person that money. I believe that. I could be wrong here, but that's what I feel, because I watched the industry only for the last seven, eight years. So I think that is the problem. So I think right now, it's doing good. The money has just started to come in. There are small studios that are trying to work really hard, and will have a good game, and will have that point where we hold India's talent to India and build good games. And also, if you look at it, even he was mentioning it, that China has a stronghold. Tencent makes games that no one else can do it. That is one problem that the entire world is facing. So I believe that India will make its mark, but we need to give it time to breathe. Like, let it breathe. Let this industry breathe. We have talents, we have people who are now keen on developing games, because now they see the money coming in. I believe, uh, you said money follows talent. I believe in India, talent goes where the money lies.

Nikhil Kamath 53:46 Both ways, I think.

Animesh Agarwal 53:46 Both ways. It's actually both ways.

Nikhil Kamath 53:48 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 53:49 Yeah.

Guest 53:49 But, but I would say that if you look at Turkey, for example, right? You, you had a few studios that had pretty big success there, Peak Games, now Dream Games, and then now there's a flood of money rushing to Turkey, right? And so similarly, if India had just a few successes on, on a global stage-

Animesh Agarwal 54:07 Mm

Guest 54:07 ... I'm sure there would be a, a rush of, of money that would come here as well. There's already a number of global funds, right? So I-

Nikhil Kamath 54:15 There hasn't even been one outside of Ludo?

Animesh Agarwal 54:17 There's been Raji, which did pretty well. Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 54:19 Which one?

Animesh Agarwal 54:20 Raji. It's a game that was-

Guest 54:21 Ah. Ah, Raji, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 54:22 Mm, yeah.

Guest 54:23 But then it's a indie-ish.

Animesh Agarwal 54:24 It's a indie game.

Guest 54:25 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 54:25 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 54:25 But it did okay-ish, and I believe that what now Indus is, uh, Super Gaming-

Guest 54:29 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 54:29 ... is building Indus.

Guest 54:30 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 54:31 It's a very promising title. Even MPL is doing UGW, Underworld Gang Wars.

Guest 54:35 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 54:36 So let's see.

Guest 54:36 Underworld Gang-

Animesh Agarwal 54:37 I think there are games coming out, uh, and I believe that India will have great games come out, because, and I've seen Indian gamers are built different. We haven't, we haven't had our cri- you know, the cricket moment of '83 yet for Indian esports.

Guest 54:49 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 54:50 But once that happens, the boom should come in.

Nikhil Kamath 54:52 Are the incumbent Indian market leaders helping out, like Nitish, on your right?

Nitish Mittersain 54:57 [laughing] We are very focused on our-

Animesh Agarwal 54:59 ... Uh, definitely, uh, I got great help from Nodwin, and I'm shooting for Krafton tomorrow. [chuckles] I have a shoot at 6:00 AM.

Nikhil Kamath 55:06 Okay. [chuckles] So if I were a 20-year-old young guy or girl, how do I make money in gaming? I love gaming. I play it in my free time. My parents and my peers are giving

Nikhil Kamath 55:20 me a hard time, saying that I'm wasting time, and money, and resources gaming. What is the path to build a successful career, path of least resistance in gaming?

Animesh Agarwal 55:32 Uh, so I'll talk about the path to becoming a gamer. Very hard truth, if you are 20 year old, I have said, said it on record, and I always say it, gaming cannot be the only thing that you are pursuing in India right now. You ought- you need to have a backup. You need to have a backup plan. If you are a bus- come from a business family, you are pursuing your studies, you need to continue doing that. Continue gaming as a passion until you are at the right place, in front of the right person, and at the right stage, where you get to show your gaming talent. When I talk about India's top gamers, professional gamers or content creators, I believe they are nothing. There could be hundreds, thousands, lakhs of more skilled gamers and better content creators sitting at home. But it's so much about luck, that you- they were at the right place at the right time. The timing matters so much. I wouldn't have been sitting here if I wouldn't had taken my, that break for a year from my academic career. Plus that, uh, the game, I started streaming on 20th July-

Nikhil Kamath 56:28 But if you don't do it full-time, how do you compete with the international ones doing it full-time?

Animesh Agarwal 56:33 In- uh, coming to the international stage is a very, very long story. If you are actually getting a chance to compete, that means you have made it nationally. I'm saying to make it nationally also, it's a very big luck factor, because inter... So to explain you what is-

Nikhil Kamath 56:44 What is, what is talent? I know in cricket, talent is timing, time.

Animesh Agarwal 56:51 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 56:51 Maybe you have more time before you hit a ball.

Animesh Agarwal 56:53 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 56:55 Body, physical strength, all of that. What distinguishes one gamer from another in terms of talent?

Animesh Agarwal 57:03 Understanding of the game, the biggest thing. I think every game which is competitive in nature, has so many strategical aspects to it, that you need to give it real time, uh, to understand it. And believe me, a person who gives lot of time... There, so there's a thing called meta. Meta is like, what is something that do- that is dominating the stra- which strategy is dominating the game right now? So how does a meta change? What is that strategy that changes? There is someone spending so much time on the game to bring out something different, that gets him a win condition. Like, you know, he starts winning games, and that's when everyone else adopts it. So I think talent is about that strategical input that you're bringing to a game. Apart from that, if you are playing a first-person shooter or shooting game, reflexes matter a lot.

Nitish Mittersain 57:46 Uh, reflexes also.

Animesh Agarwal 57:47 How fast do you react to situations?

Nikhil Kamath 57:48 So I had an- another agenda today, like an ulterior motive, almost. Our audience who we speak to are upcoming entrepreneurs in India, who are trying to build a business. We try and give them information about different industries. Uh, we have a grant program where we try and give them some funding, somebody really young who wants to build something with promise. And we also try and connect them from a community standpoint, so we will put you guys in front of a bunch of really inquisitive people, who want to be in gaming and make it a career. So the first thing

Nikhil Kamath 58:28 I wanted to know is, where is young India spending time? You guys have the gaming lens. Uh, if I were to make the assumption, not assumption, I think there's data for this, people under the age of 30 in India are spending a lot more time on social media. They're spending a lot more time on gaming. They're spending less time watching TV. They're spending, strangely, less time watching sport. So the amount of time somebody really young is spending on cricket is lesser than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago. They're spending lesser time playing physical sports or physical activities. Print media is going down, online media is going up, but not enough to totally compensate for print media going down. So if I'm a young 16-year-old boy, I have eight, 10, 12 free hours in a day, let's say eight. How much time of that eight is going where today, where was it yesterday, and where will it be at tomorrow? This is essential for anybody looking to build any kind of company in India, because we need to know where the youth are going to be spending time tomorrow. So I'll go to each one of you, and we don't have to, like, narrow our lens down to India. You could talk about America, you could talk about Southeast Asia. Uh, who would like to go first? Nitish?

Nitish Mittersain 59:59 Yeah, no, no, sure. I can, I can go first. So I think, uh, if you go back- if I go back to my own generation, right? Uh, and if I go back to my school days, or when I was 15 or 16, or even younger, cricket was where our life would revolve around.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:18 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:00:18 Right? You would play cricket all the time with your building friends. You would watch cricket. I remember in school, I would even wake up at 5:00 in the morning to watch a test match happening in South Africa or Australia before going to school, right? Your whole life revolved around this thing called cricket.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:35 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:00:36 I especially think the younger you are getting, and your question was below 30, right? But I have a thesis here that the younger you get, the velocity or the amount of time being spent on gaming is increasing, right? So 15, 16-year-old today is probably spending maximum time on social media, some on sports, and a decent amount of time on gaming.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:59 The stats say 40% of their time on social media-

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:02 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:02 ... and maybe 30% on gaming, but the rate of-

Guest 1:01:06 ... change in time spent is going up in social media even faster than gaming?

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:12 No, but if you go even a little younger-

Guest 1:01:14 Uh.

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:14 -I'm saying from experience, I've got, I've got two young kids who are below twelve. Social media, so they're not even allowed to be on it-

Guest 1:01:21 Mm, mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:22 -uh, a lot, but the rest of their time is only gaming.

Guest 1:01:25 And what games are they playing?

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:26 And so today, they've evolved. First, they used to play my games, which was Kidopia, which is very popular. [chuckles] So I learned about shameless plug.

Guest 1:01:33 I like how you plug in- [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 1:01:35 [laughing]

Guest 1:01:35 -listing a company.

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:36 I'm trained, trained-

Animesh Agarwal 1:01:37 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:37 -three years trained no, now. [laughing]

Guest 1:01:39 [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:40 But, uh, uh, now they've moved to Minecraft, right?

Guest 1:01:44 Mm, mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:44 So both the kids are playing Minecraft, okay?

Guest 1:01:47 Sitting next to each other.

Nitish Mittersain 1:01:48 They wake up at six o'clock in the morning. I wake them up sharp at six in the morning, where they will leave for school at seven. The first thing they'll do is pick up their respective iPads and start Minecraft. So six to six thirty is their gaming time. There will be, there's a wake, wake-up alarm, you can say. So they'll do Minecraft. But the more important thing is, on YouTube or on the TV, they're on in YouTube and watching Minecraft videos. They're watching Minecraft streamers. Then, my daughter recently had a birthday, so I asked her: "What birthday theme do you want?" And she wanted to do a-

Guest 1:02:19 How old is your daughter?

Nitish Mittersain 1:02:20 She's just turned seven.

Animesh Agarwal 1:02:21 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:02:21 She wanted a theme. She said, Appmawa. Now, I didn't even know what is Appmaw, so I Googled it. It's supposedly a girl called Jessica in the US, who's a popular Minecraft streamer, and she wanted a whole birthday theme around that. Streamer, right?

Guest 1:02:35 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:02:36 And you have merchandise around that streamer now, so she, she wants me to buy that for her. So whole... What I realized is, for these younger kids, what cricket was for us, has been replaced by gaming. With their friends, the topic is, of discussion is gaming, what are you doing? Which game? Et cetera, right? So it's all revolving around gaming. And therefore, I'm betting that as this generation grows up, which is your today's five-year-old, ten-year-old, into the next four, five years, where gaming will be the, by far, the primary, uh, source of entertainment.

Guest 1:03:10 But why not social media? 'Cause when they grow to be-

Nitish Mittersain 1:03:13 No, they-

Guest 1:03:13 -sixteen, you'll allow them, and they'll graduate to that, right?

Nitish Mittersain 1:03:16 Probably they will, but I think they will still be far more ingrained because they've done this gaming from an age of two. My daughter started gaming at one and a half. So I think it come very naturally to them, rather than adopting to it as a lot of the current generation has.

Guest 1:03:30 So if I am twenty, and I want to sell something when I'm twenty-five, I'm building a business, I'm an entrepreneur, wannabe entrepreneur, do you think I should focus on gaming, social media, sport, movies, TV? What should... What audience should I be building for, towards?

Nitish Mittersain 1:03:50 If you want to sell to the audience?

Guest 1:03:52 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:03:53 I think gaming-

Guest 1:03:53 Continue.

Nitish Mittersain 1:03:54 I think gaming is a great place because the kind of engagement you have-

Guest 1:03:57 Uh-huh

Nitish Mittersain 1:03:59 ... uh, on gaming, right? When you're playing a game, you're very focused and interacting with the game versus-

Guest 1:04:04 Uh-hmm

Nitish Mittersain 1:04:04 -watching it passively. Let's say, watching content passively.

Guest 1:04:10 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 1:04:10 So if you're selling to a gamer, uh, it's a, it's a big potential. Which is why something we've been looking at is, what is a new word coming up, G-commerce, right?

Animesh Agarwal 1:04:20 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:04:20 Which is, uh, selling via games, is a new trend which is pick- starting to pick up, and we'll see where it goes. But yeah, I think, I think-

Guest 1:04:30 And how do I sell to a gamer? Say I'm starting a chocolate

Guest 1:04:33 company, and I want to sell... I think the gaming crowd will be three times as big as they are today in ten years. How do you start selling to them? Do you go to Discord, Twitch, streaming platforms, chat boxes?

Animesh Agarwal 1:04:47 I think the best way is in-game monetization. You know, I think that if, if [chuckles] the crowd is shift- the trend is shifting towards spending more time on games, they would want to market it inside the game. I mean, like, if you look at Hero, uh, your recent partnership that you announced yesterday, now I, I'm guessing Hero will bring their bike skins within the game. And if they are targeting it for the Gen Z, the 125R model, I think they've hit the right chord because, like we see, people are not spending time on TV. If people are not watching cricket, and if they are spending time on social media and gaming, then you just split your spends into the two things. You have your ads running, and then you have things that they are spending time on integrated into it. So I believe that is the best way to go about it, but you will have more insight.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:05:30 Yeah, yeah. I, I have a very good example. Like, uh, my kids love to watch MrBeast, the YouTube. Crazy kids, kids are going, getting crazy. And then, I think he has built some brands. Chocolate.

Animesh Agarwal 1:05:44 Yeah, yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:05:44 Uh, Feastables, Feastables chocolate. They... My kids doesn't really remember Hershey, uh, but kids remember Feastables. So when I went to GDC, just a few weeks back, their request, just only one thing: "Buy lots of-

Animesh Agarwal 1:05:59 Feastables [chuckles]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:06:00 - Feastables chocolate," uh-

Animesh Agarwal 1:06:01 Yeah

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:06:01 ... so that they can have it, also, also they can give out to friends.

Animesh Agarwal 1:06:05 Yeah, yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:06:05 So it's, it's also kind of like showing kind of status, like, "I, I have Feastables," which can be bought from the US, and then give it to friends. So-

Animesh Agarwal 1:06:14 It's big.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:06:14 Uh.

Animesh Agarwal 1:06:16 I paid, like, thousand bucks for a Feastables. [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:06:19 [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 1:06:19 Which tastes the same like Amul Chocolate. [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 1:06:21 [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:06:21 It's the same. It's same, but different labels and-

Guest 1:06:25 Nikhil, I've got a very different perspective. Nikhil, I think one other way to think about opportunity for a young person is, I, I-- and certainly, I think one way to think about it is the current kind of demand side, but the other way to think about it is more on the supply side, and also in terms of new demand. And I think the one thing that cannot be ignored, in my opinion, and I believe we're living in a very unprecedented time, is essentially AI. And if you see the growth of AI today, and we were at GDC, the number of people building tools and capabilities with AI is incredible. It's moving so fast. So if I were to advise somebody younger, I would say that-

Joseph Kim 1:07:09 ... in my opinion, I think AI is going to be as big as the internet, um, potentially bigger in terms of impact to society. And so from that lens, I think that you, you wanna be thinking about a cross strategy, meaning you wanna learn AI as a base, but then cross it with something else.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:27 Explain. What does that mean?

Joseph Kim 1:07:28 M- for example, AI cross gaming. So you're gonna learn AI, but then you're also going to develop depth in a, a different industry or sector, so that you can take the AI capabilities and bring that to that sector. So whether it's AI cross gaming, or banking, or pharmaceuticals, or whatever, right? So then you would... I, I would recommend for younger people to find two- t-to find an area of interest, but then also, um, develop their expertise and knowledge in AI so that they can take those capabilities into that space. Um, and then I think besides that, the one other thing that we're seeing is a fundamental shift. And so for people who are watching that are interested in gaming, I think the big shift that is happening is from a development perspective. And it's something that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:08:15 Before, before you go there-

Joseph Kim 1:08:16 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:08:16 ... if I were to try and incorporate AI into my vocabulary as a gamer, as a young gamer, what tools should I get familiar with? What should I learn?

Joseph Kim 1:08:27 Well, I would say, like, at, in the current state, I would probably learn all of the tools, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:08:33 For example?

Joseph Kim 1:08:34 So whether it's ChatGPT or Claude 3 or, um, y- you know, some of the newer tools that are being developed using those. Uh, there's, there's a lot of applications in gaming in terms of, like, conversational AI and things of that nature. So there's a lot of services being developed, so becoming familiar with the services and the capabilities that are, that are being developed, but in, on top of that, to then learn AI in more depth. So what is a large language model? What, what are the kind of models that are out there today, whether it's Llama or other open source models and things of that nature? So what, what I would recommend in, for AI is act- is basically extreme depth. Learn as much as you can at a foundational, fundamental level, and then, um, and then again, that, that other industry.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:19 And if you had to name two subsets of AI that I should begin focusing on specifically for gaming, what would they be?

Joseph Kim 1:09:30 Well, I mean, I think the biggest push right now is conversational AI, which is meaning-

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:35 You wouldn't say something like Unreal Engine or-

Joseph Kim 1:09:37 Oh, oh, well, I mean, I, I think Unreal and Unity are game development engines, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:43 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:09:43 And so I don't think those... Uh, they're, they're trying to build some AI capabilities there, uh, for example, to potentially write code or to automate things, but, um, I don't think AI has as big of an impact on the game engines as they would probably more on a UGC platform. So I think you'll, you'll start-

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:01 What is UGC?

Joseph Kim 1:10:02 Uh, user-generated content.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:03 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:10:03 And so if you were to look at some of the UGC platforms, the user-generated content platforms like Roblox or UEFN, which is Epic's version of Roblox-

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:14 Uh, can you just explain? Like, think I'm an, I'm a layman.

Joseph Kim 1:10:18 Okay.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:18 Proper idiot. What is-

Joseph Kim 1:10:20 So Roblox is the world's biggest user-generated content platform. Basically, what Roblox is, is a platform in which, um, you know, actually many kids go, and they build game experiences based upon a set of tools that Roblox provides into the Roblox game world. And so you can go to Roblox, and there's a bunch of different games that the creators have made. So in Roblox, creators that are often very young will create these games using the tools that have been provided by Roblox. Uh, and Epic now has something similar called UEFN, Unreal Engine for Fortnite, um, which kind of builds these experiences within Fortnite.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:00 And I don't need any prior knowledge to be able to utilize these?

Joseph Kim 1:11:04 You need some depth of understanding. So, like, Roblox, for example, uses a scripting language called Lua, so there is some knowledge required. But, you know, I would say the user-generated content platforms are also a way in which someone from India could make potentially millions of dollars, right? I think, like, the top creator-

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:25 Excuse me.

Nitish Mittersain 1:11:25 I, I just want to add there-

Joseph Kim 1:11:27 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 1:11:27 ... because I've been very actively involved in that whole thing right now, what he's just referring to. Uh, I just did a Zoom call recently with a 19-year-old kid who has a game called Blox Fruits, and he makes something like 60 million dollars a year or something in revenue.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:46 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:11:46 After that, I've been trying my, to migrate my kid from Minecraft to Roblox. [laughing]

Joseph Kim 1:11:50 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:50 [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 1:11:51 Every day I try that, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:53 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 1:11:54 So it's, it's absolutely crazy, and he's absolutely r-right in terms of-

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:57 Okay, tell me, that kid, 19 year old-

Nitish Mittersain 1:11:59 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:00 Me, idiot, no- don't know anything about gaming, know a little bit about computers-

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:05 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:05 ... can't code, nothing.

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:06 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:06 Okay, step one, step two, step three, step four, that kid making 60 million-

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:10 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:11 ... name those four steps.

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:13 No, I mean, coding is one thing, right? Understanding some of these tools, but these kids are kind of hackers, right? They've done it hands-on.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:21 But I'm not. How do I do it?

Joseph Kim 1:12:23 So I would say-

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:24 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:12:24 ... like, first, you, you need to learn the platform-

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:26 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:12:26 ... and then learn the kinds of things that the Roblox players are looking for. And so the experience on Roblox is different from a mobile game, is different from other kinds of games because it's very social in nature. And people are in Roblox to not just play, but to meet and interact with other players. And so step one would be learning Roblox, understanding the kinds of games that are popular, and forming a hypothesis on why they are popular.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:52 And this is not complicated. I can spend X amount of time-

Joseph Kim 1:12:54 There are 13-year-old kids making-

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:56 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:12:56 ... games on Roblox. It's not that complicated.

Nitish Mittersain 1:12:59 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:12:59 And, um, the s- the second thing would be to learn the tools, Lua and, and the Roblox creator platform. And I think the, the third thing would just be to just go, just build as many games as you can, and to then get those repetitions in. And a- as far as, like, building and learning your craft-

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:17 ... and experimenting to see what works and what doesn't work.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:13:21 I mean, if I may add-

Nitish Mittersain 1:13:23 Yeah, yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:13:23 Um, my kids actually trying to make-

Nitish Mittersain 1:13:26 Make

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:13:26 ... game on Roblox.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:27 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:13:28 Uh, so the first you-- I mean, if I may answer to your question, you have to love playing games on Roblox or any other platform first. So you play maybe a hundred different kinds of games first. You like it, you like this, you like-- you don't like that, and then it's a very human nature. Like, if you like certain board game or certain game outside your home, you want to change a little bit and make it more fun with your friends. That is very, uh... You know, same thing happening in Roblox and Minecraft. There are some games that you like, then you want to create something similar, but in a, like, your own way. That's how actually I think s- things are starting.

Nitish Mittersain 1:14:08 Yeah. No, it's great. And s- just I wanted to also highlight that the AI he spoke about, uh, on UGC, right? And I was just hearing the podcast of the founder of Roblox, and they're talking about now introducing, or they've introduced, or they're talking about launching soon, is real-time translation. So when the kids are talking to each other, let's say, I'm an Indian, and there's another Japanese kid, and I'm talking in Hindi to you, Japanese kid, it's going to translate in real time. Uh, so kids can actually talk in their own language and communicate, uh, you know, it translates Hindi into Japanese, and it's fantastic. So the way AI is being used in such applications to actually bridge and connect.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:52 I have one confusion here. You were not talking about creating content around the game because you said UGC, you're talking about actually building the game.

Joseph Kim 1:15:03 Yeah, I think there's a couple of different opportunities, right? So there is an opportunity that we haven't talked about, which is building games for UGC platforms and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:12 Name a UGC platform.

Joseph Kim 1:15:13 Roblox and UEFN. Those are the two biggest right now. And those-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:17 When you say UGC, my head is going to YouTube. [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:15:20 User-generated content.

Joseph Kim 1:15:21 Yeah, right, right.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:22 It could be anything.

Joseph Kim 1:15:23 Yeah. And I think it, you know, we see plenty of examples of com- of games built by kids-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:30 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:15:30 ... that are making tens of millions of dollars, like Adopt Me! probably makes, like, seventy million to, to, to that team. Um, so that's certainly an opportunity. And, um, and then there's the opportunity that I think is more general outside of UGC platforms, which is just by understanding AI and gaming, to then find a specific opportunity to apply AI to gaming. And I think certainly what we're gonna see is we're gonna see a massive shift in how development occurs. It's gonna change dramatically and radically. And as I, as I mentioned, it, this kind of depends on your perspective of the world, but I actually think that this is gonna be an incredibly rare moment in time and probably, you know, I, and I believe, unprecedented, unprecedented in history, where you're gonna have the opportunity for some kid in India to become, like, a billionaire as a single-person company, right? Because one of the things that, um, we're seeing is, um, this shift from what, what I call, like, long vector development. By vector, I mean time, cost, resources, things like that, to small vector development. And so today, you've got a lot of games that have huge budgets: hundred, two hundred, three hundred million, with huge teams. But the promise of AI, and it's hard to see right now because it's hard for people to think exponentially, but when you see the numbers... This is like when Jeff Bezos started Amazon, he saw the dramatic growth in adoption of the internet. When you see that kind of- what we're currently seeing is we're seeing that growth start to happen and that investment starting to happen. But as that happens, you're gonna be able to then have very small teams build incredible games that have massive reach, massive distribution. The mobile platforms, um, iOS and Google Play, they have billions of people, right? They're billion-person platforms. Um, we've also had an example where, talking about UGC, there was a creator that learned their skills on Roblox, but then created a mobile, uh, sorry, created a PC game called Lethal Company. That became a number one game on Steam. So similarly, um, I, I do think that this is a new era, and this is the time where I hope that the young Indian people out there listening to this podcast will kind of wake up and realize that [clears throat] this moment in time in history is very rare. This is the time for them to really, like, focus, learn, and to make something great, because I don't think there's gonna be that many more opportunities in the world after this.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:17 After this is done, can we all, in consultation, put out a process doc of recommendations of what-

Joseph Kim 1:18:26 Sure

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:26 ... a young person needs to learn?

Joseph Kim 1:18:28 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:29 Yeah?

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:30 They say mid-core and core is point four billion. Casual and hyper-casual is point seven billion. Can you explain what that means? Anyone? Sean?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:18:41 Hmm, yeah, I mean, mid-core is... Mid-core, uh, like, hardcore games include, uh, PGMI and maybe other shooter games and some of, uh, maybe sports games, simulation games, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:54 So how do you-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:18:55 Hmm

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:55 ... how do you justify this mid-core? How do you categorize mid-core, this point four billion?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:19:01 Mid-core games require quite, uh, like, focused attention to play-

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:07 And a lot of investment?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:19:08 Uh, to make the game.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:09 Yeah?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:19:10 Yeah. Generally, yes. Uh, uh, but there is also, like, big range.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:15 Mm-hmm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:19:15 But compared to typical hyper-casual or hybrid casual games, it requires more resources, that's for sure.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:22 You guys wanna comment?

Joseph Kim 1:19:23 ... um, my only understanding of the Indian market is that it does seem that it's highly skewed to shooters. It does seem like shooters are making the majority of the money in India. A lot of the-

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:33 They fall in mid-core, in that bucket?

Joseph Kim 1:19:36 Mid-core, yeah. Yeah, um, and, and then it seems like the rest of the money is being made from, like, Ludo, as well as, like, cricket and things like that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:46 And actually, it's a surprising number for me that mid-core and core market is so big, because hyper-casual is understandable-

Animesh Agarwal 1:19:50 Not so big, .4 billion.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:52 But-

Animesh Agarwal 1:19:52 400 million for India.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:54 400 million for India is still... I feel that it's pretty big, that, you know, it's-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:19:58 Most of it he takes, so [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:01 Yeah. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 1:20:03 Yeah, yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:20:03 Often as a major- [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:03 What's your market share for BGMI?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:20:05 BGMI, I would say-

Animesh Agarwal 1:20:09 [chuckles]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:20:10 -5, 10% ish.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:11 That's all?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:20:12 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 1:20:12 He's being, he's being modest. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:17 Modest.

Joseph Kim 1:20:17 [laughing] I don't know.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:18 Is the money going back to South Korea?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:20:21 Some of it, yes. Uh, some of it, yes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:23 [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:20:23 We- but we invest in India and India, you know, tech startup. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 1:20:27 He invested companies like Nazara. He can always invest more.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:30 Right. Okay, so I got an understanding of what is mid-core. What is casual and hyper-casual, which is growing the fastest, apparently?

Joseph Kim 1:20:40 Well, I think hyper-casual is dying down, but it's, it's really like the level of complexity is another way to think about it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:46 Are you saying casual and hyper-casual need lesser money?

Animesh Agarwal 1:20:50 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:20:51 Uh, generally to build, because they're simpler games, less complexity. I would say that, um, the other kind of nuance behind those games is they typically have lower, what's called retention days.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:02 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:21:02 So, like, a hyper-casual game often might retain a user for, like, five days or... And then, um, but I think hyper-casual is starting to die.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:11 Give me some examples.

Animesh Agarwal 1:21:12 I think Candy Crush and Counter Strike. Hyper-casual, casual is Candy Crush, and then mid-core, core is-

Joseph Kim 1:21:17 Well, I would say Candy Crush is more casual.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:21:20 Casual.

Joseph Kim 1:21:20 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:20 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:21:20 Hyper-casual is more like-

Animesh Agarwal 1:21:22 Ludo

Joseph Kim 1:21:22 ... like the, yeah, the voodoo games, right?

Animesh Agarwal 1:21:24 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:21:24 Ludo game. A lot of ways, like-

Joseph Kim 1:21:26 Well, I would say even Ludo is more casual rather than hyper-casual.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:21:29 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:21:29 Hyper-casual typically has a bunch of forced ads and things like that.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:21:33 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:33 Example?

Joseph Kim 1:21:35 What's... Like, the old, old examples were, like, Snake.io and all the .io ones.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:40 Yeah, on the old Nokia phones.

Animesh Agarwal 1:21:41 I see.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:42 Something like a Pac-Man?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:21:43 Pac-Man is also still casual.

Joseph Kim 1:21:45 Casual, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:46 But why is that dying? That seems like the simplest thing for people to-

Joseph Kim 1:21:49 It's... Okay, I mean, I don't know how deep [chuckles] you want to go, 'cause we can go very deep here.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:21:53 [chuckles]

Joseph Kim 1:21:53 But, uh, it has to do with mainly Apple, and basically, this thing called IDFA. Um, and it's-- we're really gonna go into it, but we-

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:03 Give us a summary.

Joseph Kim 1:22:04 The summary is you can't do targeting anymore because of Apple's privacy policies.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:22:10 Privacy, yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:22:10 And so the ability for the hyper-casual games that are largely driven off of the ad-driven model, to then make money off of those ads through targeting, is going away. And Apple just doesn't like hyper-casual games. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:23 Well, I'll tell you this. When I used to play S- Snake-

Joseph Kim 1:22:26 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:27 ... on my old Nokia three three one zero phone-

Joseph Kim 1:22:29 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:30 ... there was no advertising. It came bundled-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:22:32 It was off the phone

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:32 ... with the phone.

Joseph Kim 1:22:33 Right. And it kind of, in, in mobile, it kind of, uh, morphed into a model where you have a super casual gameplay experience, but thrown in, throwing in a bunch of ads, has been the current, like, you know, the, the manifestation of, of, of how hyper-casual evolved into.

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:52 So is that ad model moving from ad to in-app purchases?

Joseph Kim 1:22:57 Yes. So now it's moving more to what's being called hybrid casual, where-

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:01 Can you explain?

Joseph Kim 1:23:02 Uh, and hybrid casual is more of a hybrid between more of a casual or mid-core game and a hyper-casual game, with less reliance on advertising because of things like the, the lack of, um, of targeting, because of privacy and things like that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:16 So if I were building a game today, let's say I followed

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:20 the three steps that we would put out from the course from-

Joseph Kim 1:23:22 I would ignore hyper-casual.

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:24 Okay.

Joseph Kim 1:23:24 I would not look at it at all.

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:25 So say a young guy has done the NVIDIA free course, the Michigan University free course. He's on Roblox, he has learnt how to create a game. Now, when I start building the game, should I plan to monetize my game via in-app purchases versus pay to play?

Joseph Kim 1:23:45 Uh, so it depends on the game, right? So I would say if you're making more of a mid-core to hardcore game, it's generally a heavier IAPCU, and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:53 What is IAPCU?

Joseph Kim 1:23:54 IAP is just in-app purchase.

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:55 Right.

Joseph Kim 1:23:56 Right, so not advertising-based. And then the more casual to hyper-casual it is, the more advertising you would integrate into the game. But I think to, to the point on, like, if you were learning AI and trying to figure out how to apply it, you could apply it to making a game. You could apply it to figuring out a completely new kind of game to make using AI, for example, like, where the A... Like Dungeons and Dragons, where the AI is suddenly the dungeon master. Now, it can do all the campaigns for you, right? There, there's gonna be new capabilities and new games that are enabled because of AI. And the third area of opportunity would be looking at AI and trying to pick a specific segment in the game development process, that you can help reduce the cost of or automate through AI.

Nikhil Kamath 1:24:44 Explain.

Joseph Kim 1:24:45 So, for example, like, in game development, there's a lot of different teams that do different things, right? So there's engineering, there's art, uh, there's, um, product management, but if you could use AI to provide a better tool or to automate one of the workflows there. Uh, like, so for example, right now, coders can use AI tools to help write code for them.

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:11 Like Copilot?

Joseph Kim 1:25:12 Yes. Um, also, AI is being used to generate manuals. Um, product managers can use AI to do data analysis by just dumping in spreadsheets and saying, "You know, visualize some stuff for me."... um, and so there's a lot of different things that AI can be applied to, and so then it would just be figuring out, okay, what is a big problem that I can apply AI against, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:38 Can you give me, like, a low-hanging fruit that you think is an opportunity today?

Joseph Kim 1:25:42 Well, I mean, I can give you specific examples of what people are doing right now, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:46 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 1:25:46 So the, the big thing right now, there's two companies, uh, Inworld and Convey, that have been funded for conversational AI. Meaning, right now, NPCs in games, the non-player characters, so like i- in, like in MMO, you can go to a shop, and then there's a shopkeeper that talks to you. Well, the dialogue that happens often with- wi- whether it's an in-story, um, character or with a shopkeeper that has a very limited amount of dialogue, is w- through, like, a dialogue tree. And so you can use these behavior trees to, like, code what is said and not said, or you could use a large language model and, uh, give the background behind a character. And the large language model, understanding the context of the game and that character that they're supposed to personify, can then just naturally respond to people in real time. So that's, like, one application. Uh, there's other applications where there's... There- there's a company that's trying to automate the art process, right? So, like, um, where you, uh, like, think of a, think of a character or a building, you create the model for it, you put it in the game, and things like that. There are some companies that are just trying to make it so that you do sketches, and then it just automatically goes into the game and completes the whole workflow, right? So there's a lot of different areas that you can potentially apply AI to, and again, this is why it ha- it's like the cross something. So I wanna learn product management in gaming super well, and then try to figure out areas to attack, or I wanna learn art super well and figure out areas to attack. That's the way I would be thinking about it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:27 Animesh, after listening to this, where do you think the opportunity is for someone young?

Animesh Agarwal 1:27:32 I still feel, obviously, this is a very big opportunity. It's futuristic from all I've read, all I've seen. But I believe that if someone wants to build a, start building a game tomorrow, and actually go out in the market in the next, uh, three, four years, uh, that data where you mentioned that, you know, forty percent of time is going to social media, I think that is very key to India sticking to mobile gaming and my generation, people, the younger generation, sitting, uh, sticking to mobile phones. So I think soc- even if I look at my gaming journey and how I got into games, uh, after a break of- break from gaming for a good seven, eight years, I think after class eight, I haven't played too much games until I got into college and had some free time and I was away from home. So it all started with Facebook, and then I started playing maybe a Zynga game inside Facebook, and then on Facebook, I got maybe a recommendation of a Supercell game, which was Boom Beach. And then I went into Boom Beach, but the reason why I started playing, uh, s- continued to play in Boom Beach was there's a big social element, uh, attached to that game where I could chat with different people, make a clan, we could strategize, although it was within the game. However, what happened next is that I took that entire set of audience, we exchanged our numbers within the game, or we went to a Discord server, but then we were always socially connected. We were chatting, we were conversational. If I also look at... So, and that's been the trend in India, at least, which I can say very confidently, that people love playing games, which has an element where they can connect, connect with existing friends or meet new people.

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:00 So you're saying not so much mid-core games, but more casual with mobile first?

Animesh Agarwal 1:29:05 Casual, mobile first, and ha- needs to have a social, uh-

Joseph Kim 1:29:08 Social

Animesh Agarwal 1:29:08 ... social meeting element to it, where people-

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:10 And how easy or hard is it to build that?

Animesh Agarwal 1:29:12 Uh, I think it's difficult, not easy, to hit the right chords with Indian audience especially, and with the culture also. It's, uh, like, you know, I believe that there are a lot of nuances that they need to be careful about when you bring the social element of being connected online, and it, uh, I think there's going to be a lot of scrutiny, a lot of tapings that if- when they go to build that game. So not so-

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:33 What is a taping?

Animesh Agarwal 1:29:34 Sorry?

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:34 What is a taping?

Animesh Agarwal 1:29:35 I meant that, you know, there's going to be a lot of problems when they try to, uh, have two random people connect online, because I believe a lot of games are facing this trouble even today, in res- with respect to bullying happening, or happening online or cases that we have had, because of people not knowing each other, but connecting, uh, within games. So I believe that those are the key things that need to be sorted, and because Indian gaming development market is still evolving, so these are a few things that they won't be able to solve when they are building in India for India.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:01 So you're saying young people in India want to solve for both community-

Animesh Agarwal 1:30:06 And-

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:07 ... and time pass?

Animesh Agarwal 1:30:08 Correct. That should be the

Animesh Agarwal 1:30:10 key factor, and that is where I believe that Sean can answer why BGMI is so successful. Like, what are those key aspects?

Joseph Kim 1:30:17 Hmm, yeah, my understanding, I mean, people- different people might have different opinion, I think, about, uh, BGMI or, like, similar games.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:26 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:30:26 I think it has very good... Largely speaking, there are two elements, uh, for the success, I believe. Maybe you guys can add. So one thing is social aspects, definitely. Like, it is most fun when you are playing with the other squad members, other three members as a team, uh, which you can keep talking, uh, through the voice chat over the, like, thirty-minute or forty-minute session, uh, which give a good reason for playing another session, another session, maybe tomorrow or next week, next weekend, which that is a one factor. And second factor is unpredictability. Um, it, it is mostly like the similar, uh, elements in many multiplayer games, but I think the battle royale genre itself, it, it has large, open, not really fully open, but large map, like, uh, eight by eight, uh, eight kilometer by eight kilometer. So there are a lot of elements of unpredictability and, uh, less repeatability. So every gameplay feels different.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:31:28 ... uh, you cannot really make it if it is a story-based game, right? If, if you play 10 hours, 20 hours, then it's g- it's finished.

Joseph Kim 1:31:35 Yeah, I've got a slightly-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:31:36 Uh

Joseph Kim 1:31:37 ... different perspective. I'd love to hear-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:31:39 Yes, yeah

Joseph Kim 1:31:39 ... your take on, on this, Sean. I don't, I don't know if I've ever talked to you-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:31:42 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:31:42 ... you about this before-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:31:43 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:31:43 ... but I believe that games are actually a manifestation of a latent human desire. So I think that people generally have, in their psychology, a need for something.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:31:57 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:31:58 And so, and I believe that games allow people to manifest those desires in some way.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:32:04 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:32:05 So-

Nikhil Kamath 1:32:05 Which psychological desire, though?

Joseph Kim 1:32:07 So, so let me, let me give you a few examples. So the, the 35-year-old soccer mom in the US-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:32:14 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:32:15 ... who's driving her kids to school all day-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:32:17 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:32:17 ... going home, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, but doesn't feel like there's much progress happening in her life. But then when she plays Candy Crush Saga, she makes progress. She can see development.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:32:32 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:32:32 She can see all these bright lights and, and positive reinforcement. Um, and I also think that for some guys, um, you know, it's like there's a, there's a h- latent human desire for war-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:32:46 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:32:47 ... to show that I'm special.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:32:49 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:32:49 And battle royale in particular, and I agree with you, right? And I, uh, in, in terms of, like, the variability, right? And there's, uh, there's been studies... I don't know if you guys are familiar with a Skinner box, but-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:00 What is a Skinner box?

Joseph Kim 1:33:01 A Skinner box, um, so there was a, there, there was a research scientist named B.F. Skinner, who did a study on rats that showed, like, how can I get a rat to press this button more often, even though there's an electric shock? And then they, they tr- they tried different kinds of ways to incentivize that rat to push the button, and what they found is that if you provided variable rewards, then the rat will keep pushing that button forever.

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:27 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:33:27 Um, and so-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:28 That's why slot machines. [chuckles]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:33:29 [chuckles]

Joseph Kim 1:33:29 And the way that battle royale is structured, it's variable. And there's two other aspects. So one, I remember hearing an interview with Ninja, who said that the special thing about battle royale is that every battle royale is like a new story, because of that variability aspect.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:33:47 Mm.

Joseph Kim 1:33:47 But the one other thing I would say is that, um, on, on top of that, plus, I think that it speaks to Indian culture. Like, I think that Indians have a latent desire to feel special, to feel like, "Yes, I won battle royale. I was the best out of 100 people."

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:04 Why would you... Is that a cultural thing where Indians feel differently from Americans?

Joseph Kim 1:34:10 I, I think it's similar to-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:11 The psychology-

Joseph Kim 1:34:11 Oh, actually, the psychology is the same for Americans, right? Because in America, shooters are number one. Battle royale is number one in, in, in the States as well.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:18 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 1:34:18 It's not true for Japan. Japan, RPGs are number one, for whatever reason.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:25 What are RPGs?

Joseph Kim 1:34:26 Uh, role-playing games. So they really love role-playing games-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:30 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:34:30 ... more than shooters. But, you know, in India and the US, I think it's a similar psychology. Battle royale, and PUBG in particular, has though, is what I call a high climax moment. Meaning-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:44 Okay

Joseph Kim 1:34:44 ... um, so there was, there's, like, one definition of art, and the definition of art that I ascribe to is that, for me, art is something that makes the user feel something. So from that perspective, that's what battle royale does really well.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:05 What I believe inherently is all humans are permanently chasing status, status in any way. I can be really moralistic about something, really altruistic. I can vie for sympathy. With everything, I can chase some kind of status. So when we're talking about status in gaming, do you think it's my skill being better than Sean's, for example, which is giving me status, or is it something more ulterior, something below that?

Joseph Kim 1:35:36 I mean, I think status can be gained in many ways. So for, for the kind of game, if it's, if it's a shooter game, if it's like PUBG, then it will be skill. So skill will differentiate you. Now, I mentioned that I used to work at a company called FunPlus, and we worked on a 4X game, uh, which is more of a, um... It's you march, you build up armies, you work with other people to defeat other people. And one of, one of-

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:02 Like Age of Empires back in the day?

Joseph Kim 1:36:04 Uh, that's more of a PC 4X game. I think the most famous 4X game for mobile is called Game of War.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:09 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 1:36:10 And one of the things that we say in the 4X industry is, like-

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:14 What does 4X stand for?

Joseph Kim 1:36:16 Uh, explore, ex... I don't know. I don't even remember anymore. I- it, [chuckles]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:36:21 I don't... [chuckles]

Joseph Kim 1:36:23 Exterminate something. I- anyway, there's four X's, but, um, one of the things that we talk about is, like, you know, what would somebody pay to become famous? Like, if you could be known by 30,000 people, how valuable would that be to you? What would you pay for that? Well, guess what? In 4X games, people do pay it so that they can be famous.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:46 Famous in the social circle inside the game. [chuckles]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:36:48 Yeah, in the server. [chuckles]

Joseph Kim 1:36:48 So you might be, you know, you might be Loktar59, but... And nobody in the real world [chuckles] knows who you are, but in a specific game, they, they might be like, "Oh, my God, that's Loktar59!" You know what I'm saying?

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:01 So what you're saying is, like everything else in the world, people inside games that are working are chasing status.

Joseph Kim 1:37:09 That could be one thing. They could be chasing emotion, they could be chasing status, they could be chasing a feeling of progress.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:37:15 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 1:37:16 And I think the different types of games help people cope with their latent human desires for something.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:24 And is it very hard because of the opportunity cost? If I have spent X amount of time on a particular game-... derived Y amount of status. Is there a big moat because of that? I will not switch from that game to another-

Animesh Agarwal 1:37:40 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:40 ... 'cause I'll have to rebuild status? Is there a way to transition status from one game to another?

Joseph Kim 1:37:45 Not, as, as far as I know, not right now. I mean, that was the... I, I'm not sure how familiar you are with crypto games, but-

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:52 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 1:37:52 ... that was, like, what one of the things they were trying to do, is to help transfer assets between games-

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:57 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:37:57 ... but that never really worked out, yet.

Animesh Agarwal 1:38:00 As a gamer, it did work out for me. I mean, like, if I look at, I had a very good following, and people knew me, 8-Bit Thug in Clash Royale, and it really helped me transition as a gamer. Purely as a gamer, transition well into PUBG Mobile in India, and people still knew me, and people would still want to join 8-Bit because they knew me from that, and I had a status in that game.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:19 But are you talking about your status in-game or out the game?

Animesh Agarwal 1:38:22 In-game. In-game. Purely in-game, because that time it was all my friends within the game, were people I have never met. So I believe that it really helps, but that's a gamer perspective. I could be a sa- unique case as well, but it helps.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:35 So while I was researching today, for today, the one thing

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:40 that seemed to permeate every domain is, games saw this crazy spike in COVID, but right now the industry is completely screwed. People are getting fired in most large companies, from Microsoft to Sony. Games are getting dropped, and it seems like a fairly tumultuous time for the industry today. How, how far is that true?

Joseph Kim 1:39:09 I, I actually don't think it's true. I, I don't know if you wanna... What, so, like, yes, because of COVID, there was a huge spike, but if you look at the overall trajectory, at least on the mobile side, the, the growth, uh, like, if you smooth out COVID, then there was an overinvestment because of COVID, and everyone was extrapolating linearly, and a lot of additional people were hired, and things, things like that. And now we're kind of correcting on the downside, but, I mean, that's-

Animesh Agarwal 1:39:37 That's-

Joseph Kim 1:39:37 ... a typical business cycle, right? [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 1:39:38 That, that, that is happening in every industry, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:42 I know Nitish can't say anything about this 'cause he's publicly listed now. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 1:39:45 No, no, he, he-

Nitish Mittersain 1:39:48 Actually, actually, actually-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:48 At least honestly [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 1:39:49 ... I actually answer this question every quarter, so [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:39:52 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:52 But tell me-

Animesh Agarwal 1:39:52 But actually this happened with India as well.

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:54 But tell me this, the money as a gamer, that you made two years ago-

Animesh Agarwal 1:39:59 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:59 ... has it gone down today?

Animesh Agarwal 1:40:00 Of course, it has. That's what I'm saying. But it's a correction, it's best for the industry. If this correction wouldn't have happened today... So a year earlier, around 2020, everyone was saying there's a bubble that's ready to burst in India first. But luckily, it was not a bubble burst, it was just a slight correction after the all the global, uh, crisis that hit in. And it's a correction, a correction for the good. Because now, if I look at my side of the industry, esports team o- owners, orgs, people entering the industry with the mindset of making quick money, you cannot make quick money anymore. When... So if you look at my company, when people were over-investing into their business, when their PNLs were in red, deep red, uh, I was spending the least. And today, when the econo- uh, the market is bad, you know, uh, bad, in a bad shape, where there's not enough money flowing in, there's no streaming platform money, there is no direct money from the brands, everyone has tightened their grip, I'm spending the most, and I've been able to sustain and grow. So I'm growing at a point... So I think it all comes from the understanding of how people perceived about, uh, perceived about Indian gaming when they entered the market. "..." What did they want to make? Quick buck because of the COVID ride, or they wanted to build something for the next 10, 15, 20 years? Like, if they had some inspiration taken from somewhere in, from a team in America or a team in Europe, if a gamer entered the YouTube space to build something for the next 15 years, or someone was looking for an overnight success, because, uh, there were a lot of users logging into YouTube to watch gaming. So I think that changed everything, and the correction is for the best.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:27 One thing I didn't ask you is your personal journey. Where do you make the most money from? Is it your content? Is it the people you manage?

Animesh Agarwal 1:41:36 Uh, I make the most money from people I manage, the talent management business.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:40 Okay, when I look at establishing market size in India, the numbers state that gamers were 400 million in '21, in '23 they are 560 million, going up every year. This doesn't sound reasonable to me. Like, India is a country where 2% of our population pays tax, right?

Nitish Mittersain 1:42:02 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:03 Like, 25, 30 million people, tops. How are there 560 million gamers in India?

Animesh Agarwal 1:42:10 I think this is RMG and skill-based combined, and I'm not sure, because they would have more data. But I know-

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:15 RMG, real money gaming?

Animesh Agarwal 1:42:16 Yeah. I think it's combined, this data, because-

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:19 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 1:42:19 ... we are talking about 55 crore gamers, I guess, 568 million. Impossible, but...

Joseph Kim 1:42:25 Well, I think everybody's a gamer, right? And I- one of the things that we haven't talked about is how, because of some of the stuff that happened between the US and China, going back to that topic, a lot of production is shifting to India, right? There's gonna be a Tesla factory in India. There's all sorts of stuff moving to India, which should then enable a bigger middle class in India, which should then enable higher disposable income, which should then enable a lot of people in India to, who, who maybe don't even identify as gamers, to then spend in games, because they actually are gamers.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:01 So what do you think... Okay, remove real money gaming. How many people in India are pa- playing games on a PlayStation or a computer, versus how many people are playing on a mobile phone, and how many people are doing real money gaming, if you had to break that down?

Joseph Kim 1:43:18 It's all mobile, right?

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:19 I think-

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:20 So it's all mobile.

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:20 Yeah, runs on mobile gaming.

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:21 It's on 90, 95-

Joseph Kim 1:43:23 Console- [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:23 97, 95.

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:23 Console would be the least.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:24 95% what?

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:25 Mobile.

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:26 Yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:26 Mobile games?

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:27 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 1:43:28 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:28 And BGMI being the largest?

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:30 Mobile games?

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:30 Yes, could be. Yeah. [chuckles]

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:31 Could be, but there could be a casual game like-

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:33 Ludo

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:33 ... Ludo taking space. So-

Joseph Kim 1:43:35 From a revenue perspective-

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:36 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:43:36 ... yes. [chuckles]

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:37 But I think the highest-grossing app, uh, [chuckles] -

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:40 Wait, 97% of what? Not 550 million.

Nitish Mittersain 1:43:43 95%, 97, 5% of the whole game- gamer, gaming population in India.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:49 Sean can tell us. He'll know the numbers-

Animesh Agarwal 1:43:50 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:50 ... since he's the market leader.... how many people are playing BGMI in India?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:43:54 I believe, uh, like, people who are actually regularly playing, uh, one specific, one or two specific games, and at least willing to pay, maybe they haven't paid, uh, at all, or they might pay once in a, like, maybe three, five, six months, which has capacity to pay or willingness to pay altogether, might be, I believe, hundred million or eighty million-ish.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:18 That's a lot. That's-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:44:19 That's still a lot. Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:21 Great number.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:44:21 Maybe the, the, the average payment, um, average, uh, paying amount might be much lesser than global average, but at least they are willing to pay for gaming. I mean, that's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:33 The way I look at this space is for content.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:44:36 Mm, content, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:37 Uh, Netflix, maybe six, seven million people are willing to pay the $10.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:44:42 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:43 It peaks at Jio Cinemas, Hotstar combination.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:44:47 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:47 Maybe fifty million people are willing to pay $10 a year for crazy amount of content.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:44:54 Mm, mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:55 So if that is fifty million, but hundred million are willing to play, to pay to play, is a lot. And you're talking more in-app purchases, right?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:45:03 In-app purchase, yes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:03 Not pay-to-play.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:45:04 Mm, mm. Yeah. I... I mean, there is no s- very, like, good statistics from one source. It's more of guesstimation, uh, but that's my guesstimation, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:17 And real money gaming, do you agree with that number?

Nitish Mittersain 1:45:20 Yeah, I think so. I think the important point to also understand is there's a perception that games in India are being played by kids or youngsters, but I think that's not true at all. It's now, e- and especially after COVID, right, it's cutting across demographics, ages, genders-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:35 I read a stat that youngsters are spending 12 hours a day, 12 hours a week on gaming.

Nitish Mittersain 1:45:41 They would be-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:41 But I'm guessing adults can't be spending that much time.

Nitish Mittersain 1:45:43 No, they are, and different use cases for different people. You know, my own grandmom just, uh, touched 90, and she plays games on her phone, and she likes to play board games for a variety of entertainment, right? When we were going IPO, one of the things on my mind was responsible gaming. Uh, we have a game called World Cricket Championship, which is a popular cricket game.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:02 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:04 And-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:04 Don't virtue signal because you're a listed company and talk about responsible gaming.

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:07 No, no.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:08 You wish your clients were playing 24 hours a day. [chuckles]

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:10 No, no, but still, I still [laughing] have, still have to look at it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:13 [chuckles] You're selling a game at the end of the day, right?

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:16 No, no, but still.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:17 Another stat I wanted to ask is, I read that in the gaming split, while we were establishing market size, first thing, uh, Sean said 100 million. Let's go with that number. I'm assuming of the balance, 450, a lot of it is real money gaming?

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:36 Should be.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:46:36 No, because 100 million, he said, were potential players. There are a lot of casual gamers, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:42 Who are not playing.

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:43 Yeah, a lot of people, and all, again, as I said, across demographics, uh, playing for time pass, playing for to kill time.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:46:51 Like, board games, cooking games-

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:53 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:46:54 Sports game.

Nitish Mittersain 1:46:54 And they don't pay, so they, they're happy to see some ads and continue playing.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:59 And how big-

Nitish Mittersain 1:47:00 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:00 ... is Dream11? What is their number of users count?

Animesh Agarwal 1:47:03 I think it's over 200 million.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:06 Yeah, that kind of starting to add up, right? 200 from there, 100 from here.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:47:11 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:11 The balance, 115 casual. And people say that the split is 60 men, 40 women. Is that right? I'll talk about my industry. In finance, the split is more like 83 men and 17 women, participants. Is it really 60/40?

Animesh Agarwal 1:47:29 I think it's 75 or 25-ish, is from what I read latest.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:47:33 So maybe, uh, like mid-core-ish games, which is more like, um, which needs more time span and more focus, that would 75, uh, like, male and 25 female. I think casual games, it can become, like, more balanced. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:49 Do you guys have an opinion on real money gaming? Uh, I'm sure you heard about the taxation-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:47:56 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:56 ... in India. Uh, I'll go through each one of you, because it's such a big monster in the room that we have to talk about it, right? Like, while I see this, Harsh is a really good friend of mine, the Dream11 guy. I think he's Nitish's friend as well. But how do you think it affects Dream11 and all of his competitors, this tax? Do you think it's fair that they did what they did? Let's start with, uh, Animesh.

Animesh Agarwal 1:48:24 I don't think it's fair. I think it was too harsh, but then-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:27 It was too harsh, too harsh.

Animesh Agarwal 1:48:29 Too harsh to Harsh. [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:48:30 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:31 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 1:48:31 But I felt that it was more harsh on the profitability from my layman understanding, because, uh, I saw that Dream11 did put out a coupon code in a way, you know, it did not affect the end user at the end. So I think smart plays always come into play, and... But yeah, I guess it did take a hit. I had good friends in MPL and WinZO who were really affected. I met the WinZO co-founders a couple of times, and they, they have been a very good clients, uh, so has been MPL. People were really hit hard, so I actually pity for the industry, because that was like a one-night thing. It just suddenly changed everything for them. So, take care. But yeah, I think the government has a big team working on them, so they always take the best decision.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:11 I'm all for free market capitalism. I feel like if somebody is willing to engage with a certain platform, consciously, somebody able, willing, adult, spending his own money, I feel like regulations skews industries in, in manners which is not always conducive to innovation and evolution of whatever industry. I feel like there should be less control and not more. Nitish, this is a more, uh, nuanced question for you, because I know Nazara doesn't really do RMG, but you have a tiny component-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:49:49 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:49 ... which is, like, 1% or 2%.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:49:51 Two, 2%, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:52 Yeah.... what do you think?

Nitish Mittersain 1:49:54 Look, I think over the last few years, uh, it's clearly been demonstrated that the consumer demand is there. Consumer interest in participating and playing real money games is definitely very high in India. It's not new, right? Uh, people participating and betting in cricket has forever been there. Uh, whether... It's not even allowed, it's banned, but it's been-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:17 Would, would you argue that it formalized what was otherwise a black market, where we, as Indians, were not benefiting from the tax revenue?

Nitish Mittersain 1:50:25 Yeah, absolutely.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:27 What do you think about it personally? If I were to ask you about fantasy, fantasy cricket, rummy, poker, a whole bunch of games like that-

Nitish Mittersain 1:50:39 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:39 ... which game requires the most skill to least skill, in that order?

Nitish Mittersain 1:50:43 I think, uh, so it's not necessarily the game, but how it is played and who is playing it, whether it is for skill or not, right? But my overall thesis here is that there is consumer demand. People are going to play. When you ban- you've seen in many states, for example, in India, where games have been banned, the online real money games have been banned.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:07 Mm-hmm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:51:08 The business has usually gone underground to more irresponsible players-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:13 Right

Nitish Mittersain 1:51:14 ... which completely exposes the users.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:16 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 1:51:17 So I think the right balance with the, the right amount of regulation and framework-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:24 Mm-hmm

Nitish Mittersain 1:51:25 ... for companies to responsibly do it, as well as the government to get its fair share of tax, is probably a healthier, healthier place to be, versus a completely unregulated market, uh, which is going underground and, uh, getting, uh, you know, screwed up. Now, in terms of what is the tax, what is the fair amount of tax, I think there's no perfect answer. Obviously, if there's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:48 Currently, what was the number? 30%.

Nitish Mittersain 1:51:50 No, no, so-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:51 28.

Nitish Mittersain 1:51:51 It's 28%. Now, the latest tax on the GST is 28% on deposits, uh, which was earlier twen- I mean, gaming companies were paying 18% on, uh, their rake, right? Uh, now this spectrum can be very large. It could be 18% on rake, it could be all the way 28% on entry fee.

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:11 Is the tax now on rake or the money?

Nitish Mittersain 1:52:14 It's on the money you deposit. So if you put in 100 rupees in your online wallet-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:17 Do you think that is the part people are contesting, that it should be on the rake and not the money put in?

Nitish Mittersain 1:52:23 Yeah. I mean, the industry is, of course. I mean, they would want the least amount of tax, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:28 So that is the main contention. It is okay to charge the revenue of the company, but like in e-commerce terms, not the GMV.

Nitish Mittersain 1:52:37 Yeah. So that's where it is right now. But I think over the next few months, hopefully there will be more clarity on how this, uh, pans out. [upbeat music]

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:06 I want each of you guys to come up with one thing. What is it that will be relevant five years from now? Major I guess. You wanna go first?

Animesh Agarwal 1:53:14 I think that person needs to realize that attention span has already declined. It's gonna decline further. So whatever they are making, it needs to move at a very fast speed for the user. And-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:24 So you both are in contradiction there, because Joseph thinks casual and super casual, which might require lesser attention span, is declining.

Joseph Kim 1:53:35 Well, hyper-casual is declining. I would say casual is not necessarily declining-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:39 Mm

Joseph Kim 1:53:39 ... but hyper-casual, in terms of these very casual games with a bunch of ads-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:43 Yeah

Joseph Kim 1:53:43 ... for reasons.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:44 In my mind, I think Snake is hyper-casual. [laughing]

Joseph Kim 1:53:47 [laughing] Right. So think Snake, but you're, you- they load a bunch of ads on top of it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:51 Right.

Joseph Kim 1:53:51 Yeah, so that stuff is starting to go away.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:54 Right. So what do you, what do you mean by, uh, your time-

Animesh Agarwal 1:54:00 Like-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:00 ... focused on the game going down? How much time?

Animesh Agarwal 1:54:03 I think it's not about the time, it's about the next event that's gonna happen when I'm playing the game. So I think if, if I, for example, if I'm meeting an NPC, a non-playing character, uh, in the game, and the, it progresses my storyline. Earlier, when I've played games like Batman, et cetera, we used to have long chats, long dialogues, that they would just... The story used to be really beautiful. I don't think people are gonna be ready for that in the next five years. The first event, the next event, needs the, the rate at which events happen in the game or events occur in the game needs to be faster. Because I think swipe up generation is gonna take up the world, and it's just gonna be swipe, swipe, swipe. So we need to have events that happen faster. Attention span, games that are fast-paced, very fast-paced. I think that's the reason maybe Battle Royal or FPS games would live longer, because it al- it always involves action. Like, you know, even if they, even if you're standing at a position, you are still, you still are doing something which will help the next event occur. But when you're playing story mode games or normal casual games-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:59 Right

Animesh Agarwal 1:54:59 ... you cannot just be moving slowly and wait for something to happen.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:02 Give me an example of the kind of game which will work in five years and one which won't.

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:07 I think, uh, s- there's a game called Among Us. It should still work in five years. And even it-

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:13 And that works in five years because? Something is happening.

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:16 Because something is happening really fast.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:17 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:17 I believe that we cannot have those slow story mode games that we used to play.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:22 Same thing we established why watching movies and sport is not working anymore, because you're not interacting with the-

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:30 Right

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:30 ... interface in a manner.

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:31 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:31 You're watching, and it takes a long period of time.

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:32 Long period. Also, I think it could be a major reason why TikTok, and Reels, and Shorts are doing really well.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:38 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 1:55:38 I mean, like, last night, I was actually scrolling your podcast shorts, and it, it really took me into a loop of two and a half hours, where I just got related content. I got so intrigued. Then I was looking at your guests speaking at some other places, and I dived, dived into Ritesh's other interviews. So it's just a loop.... and I just saw the clock, it's 3:00 AM, and I was like, good three, uh, good two and a half hours, but that is what it is about. But I won't watch a two and a half hours of movie, uh, of a content of a related, uh, topic.

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:08 And one example of a game which won't work in five years?

Animesh Agarwal 1:56:12 Uh, a very beautiful game that I used to play, I'm not able to recollect its name, but something like, I would say, a Batman: Arkham Knight wouldn't work. It's one of a very fantastic game. I think it's slow-paced because, you know, you have those dialogues coming in, then you have to go-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:30 Character-based.

Animesh Agarwal 1:56:31 Yeah. You have to go from one place to another. The movements are difficult. I think even if you talk about the way the movements happen in-game, people would want more simplified versions of it. Like, you know, just give us two buttons, two joysticks, allow us to move. Like, even me, I've evolved, like, I am playing less games nowadays because I have other work to do, but when now I want to play new games, I, like, tend to play simpler games-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:52 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 1:56:52 ... which do not have too many, uh, abilities, too many buttons that I need to use. So maybe I think there could be a trans- and I believe that there are a lot of people like me who are transitioning into such type of games. So these are a few things that might change five years later.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:04 And Nitish, one insight, five years from now, that people should bear in mind, looking to build a career here?

Nitish Mittersain 1:57:10 I think gaming is on the cusp of many new technologies, and therefore, the experience

Nitish Mittersain 1:57:15 of gaming itself is changing.

Animesh Agarwal 1:57:17 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:57:18 We already spoke a lot about AI, so I won't repeat that. But also, for example, I'm personally of the opinion that, uh, virtual reality will become far more tangible in the years to come, right?

Animesh Agarwal 1:57:30 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 1:57:31 And I've been playing with the Apple Vision Pro and the Quest Pro, and I think now the experience... We've been looking at it for a decade, I think. The company we've been looking at VR for a decade. It was never there. I think the experience has got there, and I think once it transcends a little bit more-

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:45 Mm

Nitish Mittersain 1:57:46 ... maybe two, three years down, now you have three big players, Sony, Meta-

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:50 Mm

Nitish Mittersain 1:57:50 ... and now Apple, in that frame. I think you will go from potentially playing a game to being in the game, which can be transformative. I know that a lot of people are still very pessimistic, because I think-

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:02 Mm

Nitish Mittersain 1:58:02 ... they're burnt for very long-

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:03 Mm

Nitish Mittersain 1:58:04 ... on VR and stuff like that. But at least I believe that's the future of gaming.

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:09 How does somebody build the proficiency required to cater to games on VR and AR?

Nitish Mittersain 1:58:17 I mean, it's the same tools that you're using largely, uh, in the game-

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:20 Is it, is it, like, a completely different thing-

Nitish Mittersain 1:58:22 The gaming, gaming engines

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:22 ... building a game for VR?

Joseph Kim 1:58:25 You can use some of the same engines.

Animesh Agarwal 1:58:26 Yeah, the engines, engines, engines are similar.

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:30 Mm. Sean?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:58:32 Mm, I mean, Nitish mentioned about AR.

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:37 Mm-hmm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:58:37 Uh, I mean, VR. So I would, uh... I feel that AR might be closer-

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:43 Mm-hmm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:58:44 ... than VR. I mean, I also bought, like, different version of, uh, Meta Quest-

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:49 Mm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:58:49 ... uh, which I used maybe for two, three hours, uh, like maybe one week or two weeks, [chuckles] and then I, I gave up.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:00 Why?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 1:59:01 Because, uh, like, it doesn't feel very comfortable to play long hours, and that uncomfortableness doesn't, uh, sort of, uh, allow me to re-engage. But I think AR, for example, like Pokémon Go, which blend, uh, the reality- I mean, the realistic, the physical space with your smartphone, actually give a lot of different experience, which traditional game didn't offer. I think that can be actually invented in a lot different ways if you, uh, if as a game designer or a game producer, if you can, you know, really become innovative and experimental. So that, that is my sort of... yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:48 What is the role of Discord and Twitch in the gaming world? Nikhil?

Animesh Agarwal 1:59:56 Yeah. So Discord is- was more of the chat room that we used to exist when games did not have, uh, VOIP, like, you know, you could not, uh, talk in, uh, within the game.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:05 Mm-hmm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:00:06 There used to be TeamSpeak, a software called TeamSpeak, then Discord took over. However, Discord also brought with itself the community-building angle be- in the form of a server. It's called a Discord server. So what you could do, is you could get your friends or people only whom you want to join inside a particular server, and do a closed chat and a closed call outside the game. So I think Discord really changed everything for gaming a lo- in a lot of ways, but now Discord has gone into a lot of things. Like, it's for, uh, relevant to a, a lot of industries. Relevant to a lot of industries that are non-gaming, that are into... It's a big space for Web3 also. I think a lot of Web3 games are being discussed, and the communities are being formed within Discord. It's great for art as well. Even, like, I've joined some servers which used to have artists in it, who used to help me out. So it's a good community building. It's a social media platform, I would say.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:54 Is it a good way... Somebody said Discord is democratizing game marketing.

Animesh Agarwal 2:00:59 I don't think Discord has too much of a role to play in that, but I would let them take this question.

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:04 Like, if a game is really good, people will chat with each other in the gaming community in Discord, discover it, so traditional marketing for games might be getting disrupted?

Joseph Kim 2:01:15 I mean, I, I would actually think that it's more, rather than Discord, it's more Twitch and YouTube-

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:20 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 2:01:20 ... that are-

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:21 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 2:01:21 ... allowing influencers to become the new marketing for games, right? And so today, and you know, you mentioned Among Us, but, like, some of those games were going nowhere for, like... I think Among Us had, like, nothing for, like, three or four years, and then some influencers picked it up and talked about it, and then it blew up. So I would agree, where Discord is more of, like, the community tool, the ways that, that you can have a one-on-one conversation with your player- with your players and your audience, to get that direct feedback.

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:54 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:01:54 So I view it more as a feedback and community-building mechanism, a- and we think in similar ways on that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:02:00 Right.

Joseph Kim 2:02:00 But I think that in terms of marketing, that would be more Twitch and YouTube. And certainly-... that has been a big shift, is that influencers now are really driving many installs and driving a lot of the, the word of mouth and awareness for games today.

Nikhil Kamath 2:02:15 If I had a game, I did all that we discussed. I did NVIDIA's free course.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:02:22 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:02:23 I did the University of Michigan free course. I learned whatever Roblox is, and then I built not a hyper-casual, but a casual game, which is mobile-first, 'cause most people in India are playing on mobile. You said ninety-seven percent. Do I then integrate influencers, Discord, and Twitch to sell the game and get the word out? Is there a particular way to do that? How does a game garner virality?

Animesh Agarwal 2:02:58 See, that's a very typical way of doing it. Like, you are launching a product in the market, and you have influencers talking about it. The other way of how me as a gamer would want things to happen, is involve those influencers or those key stakeholders or those gamers that you actually want to target. Obviously, it cannot be the entire cohort, but at your alpha or pre-beta stage, or even before alpha.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:23 Mm-hmm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:03:23 So this is one thing that Indus did, the super gaming that I'm talking about. Indus invited us a year and a half back to, you know, just show us the game-

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:31 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:03:31 And just take casual feedback of how it's doing, what do you think about it? I think those are some key things that are very important, and it really helped strike a chord between... So it was me and Mortal who went there. That, you know, if they invited us at such a stage to take feedback, that means it's a sort of a moral responsibility towards us that when this game comes out, we'll talk about it. And we actually went ahead and talked about it. Even today, we talk about it. Like, that's the reason I'm talking about it, because I felt really connected to it. So I believe that generally, the development story also helps. That was the case with, uh, what- how Riot does it. You know, they will call the game Project X, then they'll talk about it for two years, then they will release teasers, then there will be leaks that will come out, and then they will release a game with alpha, beta, pre-beta, and an official launch. So I think a good way to go about is talk about it, start very early. If you are, if your product is ready and then you want to launch it, it's always very expensive. I mean, like, you know, the marketing starts way early.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:04:27 So this is external marketing. You can also build virality into your game. So one is, if you can play the game with your friends, right? For example, in India, Ludo blew, blew up because when I was playing Ludo, I wanted to play it with my friends, and I would automatically, through the game, easily be able to invite my friends or family to play with me, right? Many games incorporate stuff like, "You can unlock special features if you refer this game to five friends." There are a lot of, uh, hacks that you can build into your game-

Nikhil Kamath 2:04:58 Mm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:04:59 ... also to drive organic virality from within your game.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:04 If I know nothing about the gaming world, and I wanna go talk to people who are in the gaming world, where is the easiest place to connect with them? I'm starting from scratch.

Joseph Kim 2:05:15 In India, probably IGDC, the gaming conference, the biggest Indian-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:20 Gaming development conference.

Joseph Kim 2:05:20 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:21 When does it happen? Who organizes it?

Joseph Kim 2:05:23 November.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:25 Uh, Hyderabad. In Hyderabad.

Joseph Kim 2:05:27 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:27 Mm, who puts it on?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:29 Sorry?

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:29 Who organizes it?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:31 Um-

Joseph Kim 2:05:32 It's a volunteer organization.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:33 Mm, there is a committee or council members, uh, like, who has been in the industry for, for a long time.

Animesh Agarwal 2:05:41 I think but the Indi- Indian typical mind would work differently.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:44 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:05:44 Like, if I want to know about something, I would search who the most famous person is, and try to figure out that, where that person is doing a dialogue, and then reach that. I think majority of the Indians would first come to a gamer-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:05:54 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 2:05:54 ... who is streaming on YouTube or Twitch, go to his chat, speak, and then start. IGDC, believe me, no nineteen-year-old boy who knows nothing about gaming would never enter IGDC.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:05 But maybe a good idea for him to?

Animesh Agarwal 2:06:08 Yeah, if, on the other side, it's a great idea. Obviously, IGDC, I think, is the biggest gaming event, uh, gaming industry event that happens.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:16 What are some other topics that you guys think are relevant that I might not know about?

Animesh Agarwal 2:06:20 Uh, why... For me, it's very relevant, I actually want Sean and

Animesh Agarwal 2:06:25 Joseph to answer about it. Why is that only BGMI and Free Fire were able to do so big? CODM failed. A lot of other games came, games came to India-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:06:33 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 2:06:33 ... tried for two, three months, and failed.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:06:34 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:06:34 And why is it only BGMI and Free Fire on mobile games? The reason why I'm asking this, because I don't have an answer for this, except for the fact that I praise you guys a lot, that the publisher took keen interest in the country. You guys did, set up the esports ecosystem and everything else. This argon would want to know.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:06:51 I think Joseph might be the best person to answer this question from the developer perspective. I'm not-

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:57 Sure

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:06:57 ... myself, I'm not a developer.

Joseph Kim 2:06:59 Mm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:06:59 Uh, but let me just start, uh, as an appetizer, he will serve main dish. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:04 [laughing]

Joseph Kim 2:07:05 [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:07:05 So, um, from my point of view, um, this size of a success, and I believe the, the Battle Royale game, uh, has opened up India gaming industry into the different direction, uh, compared to, you know, what, uh, has existed before- had existed before that. It actually happens not very often, and it doesn't really happen with a lot of intention. It happens in a very, maybe luckily or in a very, um, coincidentally. Uh, I think it could happen because of definitely, like, 4G, you know, penetration was there.

Joseph Kim 2:07:41 Mm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:07:41 And then there was no other genre or game which has that sort of reach-

Joseph Kim 2:07:46 Mm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:07:46 ... uh, before Battle Royale. And also Battle Royale game, not on just mobile, in console and PC, it has opened up shooter game into different, different sort of, I mean, expanded, uh, the appeal. So that actually coincident- coincide in that time period, and also [chuckles] after two years, COVID happened-

Joseph Kim 2:08:07 Mm

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:08:07 ... which also amplified that, uh, that sort of, uh, trends. Um, so I, I wanted to emphasize in a slightly different manner for this because-... I feel that if India wants to become a powerhouse in gaming, especially game development perspective, I think young people in India should, uh, try many games and try to make their own games. I haven't seen many game developers who become very successful in the first, uh, title. I think even 19-year-old boy on the Roblox, he might have made, uh, five, ten different games, and then maybe it's eleventh game or, you know, fifteenth games. So I think you should not, uh, try to become perfect to start something. You should try something original on your own, even if you feel not ready.

Animesh Agarwal 2:08:58 So I have a question for you.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:00 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:01 You launched BGMI in India, you did RTV, you have done Bullet Echo two days ago.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:05 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:07 The spends that you, you are doing towards popularizing the game or making the esports for that particular title popular-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:12 Yeah

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:12 ... will it be even, like, what percentage would you allot to RTV or Bullet Echo compared to BGMI?

Nikhil Kamath 2:09:19 Explain RTV, Bullet Echo.

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:21 Road to Valor. It's a game that Krafton launched.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:23 It's a strategy...

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:24 Yeah, and it took off really well, and even I was playing it, and then interest fell off.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:28 [chuckles]

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:29 Because, like, interest fell off for me and a lot of other creators because we saw that the esports ecosystem is not building as, uh, great as you guys are doing-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:36 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:36 ... for BGMI.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:37 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:37 Because this is, like, the gamer within me asking you-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:39 Yeah

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:39 ... like, how do you guys go about it? And then why someone should build every other game if a company as big as Krafton-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:46 Mm

Animesh Agarwal 2:09:46 ... is not, uh, you know, trying to build every game with equal interest?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:09:51 Mm, mm. That's a, that's a very good and tricky question to answer. Uh, but I, I will be just bold enough to answer, give, give some answers, um. So I feel that, um, uh, I think you can try to make certain game to be esports compatible, uh, when you first design the game. Uh, but when you launch the game, uh, either it's a soft launch or, or a commercial launch, you find a lot of, uh, gap between what you actually fe- felt it would work, and actually it didn't work. I think in case of Road to Valor, I think we felt, uh, that feeling. You design certain things, like, uh, one versus one would be fun, and fun to play and fun to watch. It was fun to play in a way, but not so fun to watch, uh, to be honest. So we added recently, like, two versus two.

Animesh Agarwal 2:10:43 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:10:43 We changed the UI for people to naturally come into two versus two, more like dynamic and social experience, but maybe the timing-wise, it's a little late, uh, maybe, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 2:10:54 That's a very interesting insight. So games today to work have to be fun to play, but also fun to watch?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:11:00 Yeah, exactly.

Animesh Agarwal 2:11:01 That's where my business is built.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:11:02 Yeah. Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 2:11:04 Anything else that you guys think is relevant, Nitish?

Nitish Mittersain 2:11:06 Uh, yeah, I just want to add a couple of points, which I think are very important for our young Indian developers. One is that they need to iterate and ship fast.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:11:17 Mm.

Nitish Mittersain 2:11:18 Okay? Because if you start a game as a young developer with a plan that I'll ship it in 18 months or 24 months, they run out of money, it doesn't happen, right, and they lose confidence. So I think initially at least, they need to take on games and projects which are shippable fast, and then they can get their MVP out, or the minimum viable product out, and then look at the data and iterate it. And if the data is a disaster, then maybe give it one or two shots and move on to the next project, right? Because I'm, I'm seeing... I see a lot of developers get stuck in this, uh, loop otherwise, if they're not shipping out, and that's a big failure for many of them. So I, I just wanna highlight that. I think the second thing is, it's very important that, that they focus on the right metrics. I often say it's important for them to focus on the re- real metrics versus the vanity metrics early on. And just to give a example of what I mean, usually when a developer comes to me and says: "I have fifty thousand downloads of my game," to me, immediately, that's largely a vanity metric, right? I don't react much to that because I'm being honest. Uh, the downloads may mean nothing. Uh, but if the developer comes and tells me, "My D1 retention is forty percent, uh, my D7 retention is twenty percent..."

Nikhil Kamath 2:12:39 D7 being?

Nitish Mittersain 2:12:40 Day seven.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:12:41 Day seven.

Nitish Mittersain 2:12:41 The retention of the user. Suddenly, my eyes will start lighting up, right? [chuckles] I'll be telling my BD team, "Okay, meet this developer. He's got a good-" [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:12:48 Do you have a mechanism where young people can come pitch you games, to all of you guys?

Nitish Mittersain 2:12:51 Yeah, absolutely. So we launched something called Nazara Publishing now, which is actually meant to help developers, because we really believe that Make in India is a big opportunity for Indian developers, for India and for the world, right? So we ha- we, of course, have to have that, and we do have that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:08 So how does someone pitch Nazara Publishing?

Nitish Mittersain 2:13:11 They come to publishing.nazara.com and fill in an application form.

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:16 Nice. Do you guys have that, too, at Krafton-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:13:18 Yeah, yeah

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:19 ... in Lila?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:13:19 We do.

Joseph Kim 2:13:19 We don't.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:13:20 Yeah. I mean, they are more like a pure core-

Joseph Kim 2:13:23 We're, we're focused on-

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:24 Building the game

Joseph Kim 2:13:25 ... only one or two games.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:13:26 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:13:26 We can't make anything else.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:13:27 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:13:27 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:28 What is the biggest hurdle you're facing in building the game that you are right now?

Joseph Kim 2:13:31 Talent.

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:32 Yeah?

Joseph Kim 2:13:33 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:34 Because you're in India?

Joseph Kim 2:13:36 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:36 Or talent at a cost?

Joseph Kim 2:13:37 Ta- talent, and it, like, I touched upon this before, right? Because there are so many people who, uh, leave India, a- and it's, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to argue for someone who wants to live in another country, who wants to make dramatically more money, why would you wanna stay in India? Um, and-

Nikhil Kamath 2:13:54 But if the games are going to compete in the same market, one could argue that you could pay them the same amount of money.

Joseph Kim 2:14:02 Once we're profitable, sure. And I think that, um, in some industries, like, to some degree, that's starting to happen. So we've seen a, a pretty fast acceleration in the compensation of engineers over the past four or five years, as the world became more remote. Certainly after COVID, I think engineers got paid mo- dramatically more, right? So we're starting to see some of that impact as well. But, you know, one thing I would-... want young people to think about, really try to start with, what do you, what do you want from your life? And I think that's a question that not enough young people have asked themselves. And I think that some people have bought into, like, these notions of, you know, the, the popularized notions of quiet quitting, side hustle, things like that. And I just think that if more people really thought critically about what, what they're really searching for in their life, that they'd be able to make better decisions about the path that they would choose. And there's, there's an exercise, actually, I, I believe it was Clayton Christensen, who wrote about an exercise that he recommended for people, which is to think about your life, um, when you're on your deathbed and thinking back, and what would make you proud, right? Like, how would you measure the value of your life looking back? I think not enough young people do that, and I, I, I think that that's something that, as an older guy who didn't think about that for way too much of my life, I wish I had.

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:34 I want to highlight or pick five most relevant skill sets required

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:42 to build a career in gaming. Each one of you can tell me one. What do we start with? You mentioned art earlier.

Joseph Kim 2:15:49 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:50 So-

Joseph Kim 2:15:50 Oh, you mean the disciplines?

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:51 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:15:52 So there's probably four main disciplines. There's art, uh, engineering or-

Nitish Mittersain 2:15:57 Programming

Joseph Kim 2:15:57 ... development. Um, third is, uh, product management or production, and fourth-

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:06 Game design

Joseph Kim 2:16:06 ... is design.

Nitish Mittersain 2:16:07 Design, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:08 And fifth is, if I can go with the fifth-

Joseph Kim 2:16:10 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:11 ... is, I think, which is very important, is also your data analytics.

Nitish Mittersain 2:16:15 Data analytics.

Joseph Kim 2:16:15 For sure, yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 2:16:16 Being able to understand data-

Joseph Kim 2:16:17 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 2:16:18 ... and, uh, react to data, uh, is very important.

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:23 Okay, so what does somebody need to build a career in art in the gaming world?

Nitish Mittersain 2:16:30 Hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:16:32 I mean, get the, the necessary skills. Also, to... There's, there's a big difference between 2D and 3D art.

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:39 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:16:40 Uh, there's a difference between doing, like, like, concept art versus, like, production art. There's, there's a lot, lot of nuance there within art.

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:49 So give me... Okay, let's say there's 3D art, there's 2D art.

Joseph Kim 2:16:52 Yeah. And then, um, in within that, there's also, like, are you focused on characters, or are you focused on environment?

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:59 Okay.

Joseph Kim 2:17:01 Um-

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:03 And how does somebody learn how to make 2D art, 3D art, character, or environment?

Joseph Kim 2:17:08 Usually there's, there's schools for that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:10 For example?

Joseph Kim 2:17:11 I, I don't know the name of the schools in India.

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:12 In India, it could be something like an Arena Animation or something.

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:15 And how much does somebody working in the art side of gaming make as a starting pay?

Joseph Kim 2:17:21 Not much. [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:22 Art is lower side. Art is lower side.

Joseph Kim 2:17:24 Yeah, it's the lowest. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:25 Yeah?

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:25 But depends-

Joseph Kim 2:17:26 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:26 ... who the consumer is. Just-

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:27 But lower side is how much in India?

Joseph Kim 2:17:31 I would say the very lowest I've seen is, like, like, five lakhs or less.

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:36 Per year.

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:36 Entry level.

Joseph Kim 2:17:37 Entry level.

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:38 Entry level.

Joseph Kim 2:17:38 We're, we're talking-

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:39 Mm

Joseph Kim 2:17:39 ... entry level.

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:40 Five lakhs a year. And you also mentioned, Joseph and Nitish, actually, that AI may- might make this entire se- section-

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:49 Section

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:49 ... redundant very fast.

Joseph Kim 2:17:50 It might be. Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:51 At least-

Joseph Kim 2:17:51 It might

Nitish Mittersain 2:17:51 ... the lower or mid-level, up to mid-level. Maybe very senior or maybe someone at the, like, who can make some direction, uh, maybe they... But then they can be replaced by some game designer or product. [laughing]

Joseph Kim 2:18:05 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know if you guys have checked out sona.ai, but, like, if you haven't, you absolutely should. You just give it, like, some, some descriptions, it'll automatically create music. And you can see that where that is today, in two to three years, I- it- we could be living in a world where most of the music we hear is AI-generated rather than generated by human beings. Similarly, for art, we're kind of getting to a place where you can kind of describe things, and then just many variations just kind of pop up. Um, if-

Nikhil Kamath 2:18:38 You wouldn't recommend... If you had a 14-year-old child, you wouldn't say-

Joseph Kim 2:18:41 If I'm thinking macro, I would be like, "Ugh, art?"

Nikhil Kamath 2:18:44 No.

Joseph Kim 2:18:45 I'd, I'd probably, unless you really had a very specific skill-

Nikhil Kamath 2:18:50 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 2:18:50 ... because I think ultimately, masters at their craft are masters at their craft.

Nikhil Kamath 2:18:55 Mm.

Joseph Kim 2:18:56 But otherwise, I would probably avoid it.

Nikhil Kamath 2:18:59 So you're swimming against the tide in art?

Joseph Kim 2:19:01 Yes, and maybe even in engineering, too, because-

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:03 What is, what does the engineering breakdown look like?

Joseph Kim 2:19:06 So for... Well, I would say there's, there isn't- there's more of a linear path in engineering, I, I, I would say, e- except for you're, you're generally thinking in terms of front end versus back end.

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:19 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:19:19 And in the front end, you're generally going to be working with one of the two primary game engines, Unity or Unreal.

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:27 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:19:27 And so you would learn either C# or C++, depending on which engine you use.

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:31 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:19:32 And then for back end, um... So the front end means, like, the thing you actually play-

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:37 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 2:19:37 ... right?

Nitish Mittersain 2:19:38 The app.

Joseph Kim 2:19:38 The, the-

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:39 Mm-hmm

Joseph Kim 2:19:39 ... combat, the characters-

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:40 Mm

Joseph Kim 2:19:40 ... that move around, all the functionality.

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:41 Like the UI, in a way.

Joseph Kim 2:19:42 All that stuff.

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:43 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:19:43 That's, that's included there. And then the back end is, like, when you're saving your stats to the back end server, the netcode, so that you can play against other players, all the stuff you kind of don't see but makes the game operate in the back end.

Nikhil Kamath 2:19:56 Mm-hmm.

Joseph Kim 2:19:57 So then, generally speaking, you have engineers oriented around one of those two, uh, either front end or back end, but you also have some full-stack guys.

Nikhil Kamath 2:20:05 So you would go C#, learn how to use Unity, Unreal, and become really proficient at that?

Joseph Kim 2:20:10 Mm, yeah, I would probably recommend, um, for India, for right now, Unity, C#, but later, I would recommend C++, Unreal. Un- Unreal's starting to take over, but, you know, in the long term, if current trends continue, Unreal is likely the, the engine of choice in the not-too-distant future.

Nikhil Kamath 2:20:29 Nice. And how much would somebody in engineering make on average, front and back end?

Joseph Kim 2:20:34 It depends on-

Nikhil Kamath 2:20:34 I think they're very different

Joseph Kim 2:20:34 ... that depends on the school.... [chuckles] Right? So, like, if you go to IIT and you come out, you can make, you know, 40, 50 lakhs. I mean, it's, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 2:20:44 With no experience?

Joseph Kim 2:20:46 With no experience. It's possible, yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:20:48 Assuming that you will catch up very fast.

Joseph Kim 2:20:51 Yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 2:20:51 And also assuming that you will actually get hired.

Nikhil Kamath 2:20:54 But he's saying they're lacking talent. They're looking for people and they're-

Animesh Agarwal 2:20:57 Actually, you know, I see a lot of job openings on LinkedIn from the popular pub- developers or publishers. I don't see any opening for a newbie into the industry.

Nikhil Kamath 2:21:06 Really?

Animesh Agarwal 2:21:07 Yes. I might be wrong here-

Nikhil Kamath 2:21:09 Mm.

Animesh Agarwal 2:21:09 ... but from the openings that I'm trying to go by, I don't think big studios are hiring people who are freshers.

Joseph Kim 2:21:15 The, the, the small guys, well, we still do. We still hire freshers. Um-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:21:18 We also, we try to hire, like, experienced guys. Uh, but then it didn't work out that very well, and then there is some gap.

Joseph Kim 2:21:27 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:21:27 Like, we expect this level of experience, but they don't, uh-

Joseph Kim 2:21:31 Yeah, we-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:21:31 So we also changed the direction.

Joseph Kim 2:21:32 Right. On the engineering side, though, there's a big gap, right? So, like, we generally don't like to hire from IIT just because there's such a huge premium [laughing] for those guys.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:21:39 [chuckles]

Joseph Kim 2:21:40 But, uh, yeah, it, it can come down quite a bit.

Nikhil Kamath 2:21:43 Is there a way somebody who does engineering learns Unity, Unreal, C#, C++ can get experience without having a full-time job?

Joseph Kim 2:21:54 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:21:54 Internship opportunities?

Joseph Kim 2:21:56 Uh, they build their own projects, uh, publish them, uh, submit them to GitHub. Uh, so yeah, there's a lot of ways where you can distinguish yourself as a good engineer if you wanted to. But, um, also, I think the thing that's missing from most of the people that I've interviewed in India for game development, uh, unlike other places, is just hardcore, like, math and logic skills. That's something that is critical as an engineer, but seems to be lacking quite a lot.

Nikhil Kamath 2:22:29 Okay. Even from the IIT crowd?

Joseph Kim 2:22:31 No, the IIT guys are fine. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 2:22:33 [laughing] Okay. Do you hire from the same place?

Nitish Mittersain 2:22:39 Yeah, but, uh, you know, we have a very distributed way of working, so we have different studios that we own, and each have their own different policies of how they are recruiting.

Nikhil Kamath 2:22:49 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 2:22:49 It's not very centralised.

Nikhil Kamath 2:22:51 Right. Right. Okay, prod- production, product management?

Joseph Kim 2:22:55 Yeah, so product management is, I would say, a pretty difficult skill to kind of, um, learn on your own. It does r- in, in my opinion, it requires, like, hands-on practice. Um, but there, there are a number of online resources. I, I... We, we provide some resources as well that teach about product management, so, um, I can share some of those links, but I don't-

Nikhil Kamath 2:23:20 Would it typically be a engineering guy upgrading or getting promoted to be a product manager?

Joseph Kim 2:23:26 Not necessarily, n- not usually-

Nikhil Kamath 2:23:28 Mm

Joseph Kim 2:23:28 ... but I will say that in our product team at Lila, two of our product managers we hired from engineering. And similar to Sean's case, what I have realised is that in, in our case, too, we prefer to hire people who are new but hungry and wanting to learn, versus people who have worked at an existing game company in India for four to five years. Because it, I kind of touched upon this before, live services and live operating a game, that set of skills is very different. It's, it's, it's the difference between zero to one versus one to n.

Nikhil Kamath 2:24:03 What is the skill?

Joseph Kim 2:24:05 The, the skill in terms of, like, new game development is so different from live operations, where everything's kind of figured out. It's, it's like I'm just following the normal playbook, right? I think in new game development, you have to be kind of brutal, very effective, um, the communication style. There's just, it, there's, there's a whole difference in culture and mentality for new game development versus live operations.

Nikhil Kamath 2:24:35 And does it also equate to the nuance of scale, building for scale? Is that the product manager's role?

Joseph Kim 2:24:42 Well, I think it's, it's building for product market fit relative to one to n, where you are building for s- for larger scale.

Nikhil Kamath 2:24:50 And I'm assuming these guys get paid the most, right?

Joseph Kim 2:24:53 Uh, I would say engineers right now get paid the most.

Nikhil Kamath 2:24:56 More than product managers?

Joseph Kim 2:24:57 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 2:24:57 So this would be the-

Joseph Kim 2:24:58 Probably second most

Nikhil Kamath 2:24:59 ... 30 lakhs, 20 lakhs?

Joseph Kim 2:25:01 Uh, starting off, it's less. I think starting off, um, product managers... [sighs] I mean, again, it depends on the school, but I mean, you know, I think starting product managers would make 10 lakhs or less. I don't know, you, you guys, you guys know the numbers better than I do.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:15 Yeah. I, I, I agree. Like, product manager in the junior level, they don't make too much different- difference, so their entry l- uh, salary would be lower.

Joseph Kim 2:25:25 Lower, yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:25 Slightly higher than artist.

Joseph Kim 2:25:27 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:27 But I think if they go to the, like, the, the producer, like we are-

Joseph Kim 2:25:31 Yeah

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:31 ... the main producer level, then their salary can be as equal as engineers, I guess.

Joseph Kim 2:25:35 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:35 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:25:35 On, on the higher end.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:36 On the higher end.

Nikhil Kamath 2:25:37 And the design?

Joseph Kim 2:25:39 Design, so-

Nikhil Kamath 2:25:41 I would have assumed art and design are very similar, no?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:44 It's not like art-

Nitish Mittersain 2:25:45 Design

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:45 ... design, it's more like game-

Joseph Kim 2:25:47 Game design

Nikhil Kamath 2:25:47 Structure, strategy.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:25:47 Or gameplay. Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:25:48 Now, I would say that-

Nikhil Kamath 2:25:49 Ah

Joseph Kim 2:25:49 ... design

Joseph Kim 2:25:50 is the weakest area in India.

Nikhil Kamath 2:25:52 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:25:54 So finding a good designer, I don't even know where you go to learn that here.

Nikhil Kamath 2:25:57 Why is that?

Joseph Kim 2:26:00 Um...

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:02 Let's see.

Joseph Kim 2:26:03 I don't know.

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:03 Yeah, no, no, it's because traditionally in India, animation art has always been an industry, right? Even job work for just animation, forget gaming. Similarly, coding across industries has always been there.

Nikhil Kamath 2:26:18 Mm-hmm.

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:19 But design specifically for a game, which requires how do you make a game that is engaging, right? How do you get the user in that flow state? I think that thinking, it comes naturally when you are really exposed to it over a very long period of time.

Nikhil Kamath 2:26:35 So if I am a designer-

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:36 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 2:26:36 ... a game designer-

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:37 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 2:26:37 ... I will pick when to shoot, when the real characters come in, when the static characters go out, stuff like that?

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:45 ... Yeah, the gameplay structure.

Nikhil Kamath 2:26:47 Right.

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:47 Is the gameplay.

Nikhil Kamath 2:26:48 And then there's not design as much as figuring the flow?

Nitish Mittersain 2:26:50 It's complex.

Joseph Kim 2:26:51 And it, yeah, it's, it's complicated, 'cause there, there's actually like... I, I would probably characterize game design in two parts. One is gameplay, right? Which is like, for, for any kind of- the, the way you typically think about a game. You know, for Snake, what do you do? What are the actions? What is the kind of specific things happening? And then the second part of design is systems design. Um, you mentioned meta, right? And so the, the meta or systems part is like the progression, compulsion part, where you might have a crafting system, you might be building a house. It's not the main gameplay. You might play the game, earn some stuff, and then go craft something somewhere else, right? But these two are generally separate, and generally, like, someone great at gameplay design, or in terms of the combat, feel of the guns, things like that, is often different from the person who is designing the systems.

Nikhil Kamath 2:27:39 And then-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:27:40 I would, I would say the game design requires, like, creativity most among all other disciplines, and then it can be generally taught, uh, through some kind of apprenticeship, but it also require kind of natural born or educated creativity. So which, if you don't have that, uh, culture of bringing up those talents, then it might not come out easily. So-

Joseph Kim 2:28:07 I, I actually think In- Indians could be great at design. They just need the proper educational resources.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:28:12 Yeah, yeah. The bridging that sort of, uh, the creativity in their culture and, and in their brain, and make it... transforming it into the more professional or practical level. That actually, it's difficult to happen, actually, uh, but-

Nikhil Kamath 2:28:26 And where can a Indian learn that, a twenty-year-old?

Joseph Kim 2:28:31 They, they can start by designing for Roblox, [chuckles] for example, right?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:28:34 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:28:34 On the UGC platforms. Um, but I, I guess one of the drawbacks for India is because, like, most of the people I know d- building for Roblox, they don't do it on their phone, they do it on a PC, and because there aren't a lot of homes with PCs, that may be one of the, the things holding India back, um-

Nikhil Kamath 2:28:56 Why don't they do it on their phone?

Joseph Kim 2:28:58 It's just too difficult, right? And then if you're coding, like in, in Lua, yeah, I mean, you don't wanna [chuckles] be doing that on your phone.

Nikhil Kamath 2:29:05 But it- that's different in the West? People are-

Joseph Kim 2:29:07 Well, almost every home has PCs in their house-

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:29:10 Mm

Joseph Kim 2:29:10 ... as well as, you know, tablets and other things, so... But, I mean, um, similar for China, there aren't a l- I mean, there are some places that have, uh... I think there's PC penetration is probably higher in China, but still not as abundant as, like, US and other places.

Nikhil Kamath 2:29:24 How much does a game designer make, the most?

Joseph Kim 2:29:27 Like an artist. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:29:29 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:29:30 It varies a lot.

Joseph Kim 2:29:31 Var- yeah, it varies a lot, but pretty low.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:29:32 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:29:33 Maybe, maybe around what an artist makes, slightly higher, but not much.

Nikhil Kamath 2:29:37 Like, as much as the art guy?

Joseph Kim 2:29:40 Maybe a little bit more. A little bit, tiny bit.

Nikhil Kamath 2:29:43 Eight.

Nitish Mittersain 2:29:45 Seven, eight.

Joseph Kim 2:29:46 For, for... Yeah, for-

Nitish Mittersain 2:29:47 Entry, entry

Joseph Kim 2:29:48 ... For entry, eh, less than eight, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:29:51 But that's surprising, 'cause this seems like the most critical part of the entire-

Joseph Kim 2:29:55 But that's because they don't have... Like, if you, if you were a really good game designer, then sure, you, you could make a lot more.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:30:01 Yeah. And I have seen, like, creative director, creative director who actually set the direction of the core gameplay and even certain part of the out game, uh, elements, they are maybe as equal as co-founder or founder in terms of stock options or, you know, uh, incentives they get from the success.

Joseph Kim 2:30:21 I mean, gaming's a creative field.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:30:23 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:30:23 So yeah, there, there's certainly potential for high payouts.

Nikhil Kamath 2:30:27 Data analytics?

Nikhil Kamath 2:30:31 What does he do?

Nitish Mittersain 2:30:33 It's all about, uh, looking at the underlying data that is being generated by your game. Users-

Nikhil Kamath 2:30:39 For example, what are the data points?

Nitish Mittersain 2:30:41 Retention is one of the biggest ones. For example, uh, if 100 people played your day on the first day, when they downloaded the game, how many came back the next day? Now, once you know that forty came back the next day, which is a good retention, generally, you lost sixty. Then you need to get into your game data and see what are the drop-off points. Where am I losing these users or these players, right? Are they launching the game and dropping off from the main menu of the game without playing anything? Are they going into a certain level? Are they getting stuck there and then dropping off? So there's a lot of in-depth data that you need to get into to understand how you can improve-

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:22 Mm-hmm

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:23 ... the engagement of your game, right? So, so I think, uh, no game can, unless it's just a hit by itself, by-

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:29 And how does somebody learn that, inculcate that skill?

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:34 I think it's, um-

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:36 Is it college? Is it-

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:37 Yeah, and, you know, of course, it's, uh... You need to have very strong grip on numbers.

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:42 How do you get that?

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:44 I'm assuming, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:45 Arts, maths

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:46 ... you're strong in maths, et cetera.

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:48 Khan Academy. [laughing]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:31:48 There is-

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:49 There's also an a- a- aptitude to data and numbers, right?

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:53 Khan Academy teach you some maths.

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:53 Yeah, and it's-

Joseph Kim 2:31:54 Yeah, it's good

Nitish Mittersain 2:31:54 ... aptitude to, basic aptitude and interest in data and numbers.

Nikhil Kamath 2:31:58 Where do you hire your data analytics guy?

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:01 I think, uh, we've hired, and at least for us, many of them are from some of these good business schools.

Nikhil Kamath 2:32:07 Business schools?

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:07 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:32:08 And how much do you pay these people, typically?

Joseph Kim 2:32:12 Uh, we just have our product managers do it, so we don't have a dedicated data analyst.

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:15 Yeah. I mean, we, for at least at a corporate team where we have a few people looking at data of a lot of our, uh, uh, s- studios, maybe 20, 30 lakhs a year.

Nikhil Kamath 2:32:30 It's a lot.

Joseph Kim 2:32:32 That's entry level?

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:34 No, I mean, we don't have entry level.

Joseph Kim 2:32:36 Okay.

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:36 At corporate, we have, like, six people looking at data, so-

Nikhil Kamath 2:32:38 Yeah, but I think if you... I were to bring it down to entry level, I would assume it would be around 10, right?

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:41 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:32:42 10, yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 2:32:43 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:32:44 Now, I think the interesting question is to Animesh, what skill sets?

Animesh Agarwal 2:32:49 ... I think I'll

Animesh Agarwal 2:32:50 just give a few advices to how to be a gamer, because there's no rule of thumb how can you be-

Nikhil Kamath 2:32:54 Yeah

Animesh Agarwal 2:32:54 -a gamer. Uh, first, I would say, in India, first thing, backup. It needs to be mentioned that until you have reached that spot, it's always your backup thing that you are chasing. It's a passion project. To become a gamer yourself is also a passion project that you are working on yourself.

Nikhil Kamath 2:33:09 When do you transition from passion to full-time?

Animesh Agarwal 2:33:13 Uh, I would say your first contract where you're getting paid at least 35K a month-

Nikhil Kamath 2:33:21 Rupees.

Animesh Agarwal 2:33:22 Rupees, is where you- I can say that you are, it's your profession here on.

Nikhil Kamath 2:33:27 You're talking about gamer or content creator?

Animesh Agarwal 2:33:28 Gamer.

Nikhil Kamath 2:33:29 Gamer.

Animesh Agarwal 2:33:29 Content creator, I don't believe should ever chase money or contracts. Build on your own. There is no rule of thumb. Even I cannot give any pieces of advice, because it's so many factors, how good the person is, how creative they are, how fast they go viral, what clicks, what not. But to a gamer, so starts there. Second is your game type, you know, what sort of games you played. It's not always necessary to chase the har- uh, hurdle, be- herd, which is like going for battle royale games or a shooting game. Very fine example, Tirth Mehta, who was also a part of my panel, won an Asian Games medal way back in 2017, Hearthstone. So that is another way. So you can always try to step out of your, of the normal thing and find a different game. Third would be knowing the, knowing... So if you're in India, you want to ensure that the publisher of that game is taking, uh, enough interest in India to build around that game. For example, there's a game called Dota 2, per se. It does not have an active India, publisher interest in India. However, it's a very, very big game outside, as big as the- there's an event called The International, which, whose prize pool go beyond twenty, thirty million dollar for the main event. But if the publisher is not interested in it, then I would suggest don't opt for a game, because then it would be very difficult for you to get into events or represent India at an, uh, international stage. Because you might be clubbed with the Oceanic region or entire South Asia region or the Sea region, which is difficult. Fourth would be if you're going for a team game, I would say, it first- so everyone asks me how to build a team. It's a very normal question if you're playing a team game. I think you do- you cannot just go out and, uh, find other professional players who would want to build a team with you. You just start casually, you get a few gamers, get to know people online, and it's a process. It could fin- the process could be finished in two months, you might not find a team in the next five years. There is no rule of thumb, again. It's just how social you are, how well you are aligned, how well you can talk to people. It's like, you know, those elements come- your characteristic and your personality comes into play when you're finding a team. Skill though, comes at a later stage. Fourth would be, uh, once you are contracted, that's when the real hustle start, if you are ever contracted. But I believe right now in India, Krafton, with this grind that Krafton is doing, they have recognized 256 Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 means top teams of India. There is no- it's a very subjective thing. Again, there is no benchmark of what a Tier 1 team is. Then there are Tier 2 teams who are trying to move into bigger events and, you know, qualify. So Krafton has right now identified 256 teams. That means there are 256 good odd teams, which means 1,250 odd players are not, if not in a contract, they are doing something in gaming, and they might have treat it as a profession. But I would say there are another thousand. So the number of teams are growing. There are so many teams coming up in Tier 2 cities, a businessman, a shop owner trying to build a team of his own, maybe because his son insisted. So those are the things happening. So, the point is, people need to be aware about, a gamer needs to be aware of what's going on around him. Don't just look at Thug or Immortal and try to be them directly. It was not easy for everyone, for anyone. And then I would say, when you get contracted, that's when you start doing your research. You have to just follow the correct way to move up the ladder. Don't get complacent at where you are. That's what happens. Even in my team, you know, I have had, I have, guess, in last six years, contacted 80 players who have moved on to now different teams. Some have called it, uh, hang their boots. But I think, you know, I always want my players to keep moving on, you know, at a better stage. Even if not better, but at a parallel stage. But I think it's a- a gamer needs to keep moving places. Don't get stuck, especially in India. Don't feel-

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:04 I'd love to come hang out with you guys once.

Animesh Agarwal 2:37:06 Yeah, you need to.

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:06 Yeah. Just for fun, right?

Animesh Agarwal 2:37:08 Just for fun.

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:10 Yeah, I think we covered, like, as much as we could.

Nitish Mittersain 2:37:12 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:13 Uh, the last bit

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:15 of every episode, what we do, is something for the community, in this case, gaming. So I ask each of you guys if you'd like to allocate money, time, something like that, and then we'll put out a open poll where we will filter and select maybe 20 people who show great potential in gaming. Like what you mentioned earlier-

Animesh Agarwal 2:37:39 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:39 ... taking them to all the gaming companies in Bangalore, for example.

Animesh Agarwal 2:37:42 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:37:43 That would be great. Internships would be great. Grants, small amounts of money to give them to pursue any of these paths at different stages would be great. So, uh, Nitish, you wanna start off? You wanna, like, allocate or money or time or anything like that to help the gaming industry?

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:05 Absolutely. I mean, as India's only listed gaming company-

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:08 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:08 ... it's our-

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:09 Worth 5,000 crores.

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:10 It, uh, [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 2:38:11 60 to 250.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:12 Yeah. [laughing]

Animesh Agarwal 2:38:13 60 to 15. [laughing]

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:15 That's the least we can do-

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:17 Yeah

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:17 ... and we are already doing a lot of that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:18 Yeah.

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:19 But, uh, yeah, very happy to allocate-

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:21 Do you wanna allocate, say, a amount, and then we'll figure out?

Nitish Mittersain 2:38:25 One crore, to start with, but we can double down on that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:31 Done. Joseph, would you?

Joseph Kim 2:38:33 I think I've already committed to doing that tour-

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:35 Yeah

Joseph Kim 2:38:35 ... of some kind.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:36 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:38:36 So I'll, I'll do that, and certainly, I think, not at this point until we're profitable, but once we're profitable, we absolutely-

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:43 Yeah

Joseph Kim 2:38:43 ... intend on investing back into the community.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:45 But you would be okay with, say, the 20 that we pick-

Joseph Kim 2:38:48 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:49 ... allocating maybe, like, five hours of time just in educating them?

Joseph Kim 2:38:52 Oh, of course.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:53 Some of them you might be able to hire.

Joseph Kim 2:38:54 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38:55 Yeah.

Joseph Kim 2:38:55 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Animesh Agarwal 2:38:57 ... Uh, I would actually love to, you know, 20 that short list, I would love to mentor and actually know them, why they are getting into it. And then, obviously, with the, uh, consultancy, I would like to then offer them the grant. I first need to, like, the gamer within would always want to ensure that the person is in the correct, like, wants to do something good.

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:14 Perfect.

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:15 Yeah, but I would love to give as much time-

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:17 But you'll give them, like, proper time?

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:18 As much time. I'll, I'll go down to their city, like, forget-

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:21 No, we'll pick who it should be, the-

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:22 Correct

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:22 ... who the winners should be together.

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:24 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:24 Like, you guys come up with what metrics.

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:26 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:26 We'll put this out, thousands of people will apply. We will try and find the most talented young minds in gaming available in India.

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:34 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:34 Make a group of 20, and all of this for those 20.

Animesh Agarwal 2:39:37 100%, and the grant would come depending on the talent.

Nikhil Kamath 2:39:39 Done. Sean?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:39:41 Um, yeah, I mean, I think s- somewhere in this conversation was briefly mentioned that we started incubator program. Uh, that is actually for quite professional level of developer who has actually made at least one or two games, then they are, uh, capable of launching, uh, the game at the commercial level. I think you meant to help someone, like, before that.

Animesh Agarwal 2:40:07 Yeah.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:40:07 Um, I think for that, we actually started to talking about how we expand the program to cover wider range, especially for younger folks. I think we can maybe consider to, um, uh, to combine this.

Nikhil Kamath 2:40:23 Mm-hmm.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:40:23 So we, anyway, we had a i- idea of expanding the incubator program for wider teams, maybe, uh, uh... The, the inc- original incubator meant to, uh, get, like, two, three, four team per batch, maybe six, six, uh, six to eight per year. I think that, uh, sounds larger than that. I think that's, uh, they can fall into that expanded, uh, extended program. Um, we can offer mentorship. Uh, we can offer certain, like, short duration of, uh, uh, teaching course. Uh, and also we, we have certain partners on the cloud side and et cetera. They can offer also credits, uh, credits for cloud. So we, we have that sort of program.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:05 Perfect. So I'll do one crore as well.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:08 Mm. Super.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:09 So we will pick these 20 people and do all we can from time, money, grant, cloud credits, mentorship. The only key here is, I will lean upon you guys to pick who the 20 should be, 'cause I will get the applications in, but maybe you guys can come together and figure out who the rightful 20 are, because we'll do so much for them.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:32 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:33 Yeah?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:33 Sounds, sounds interesting.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:34 Done.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:34 Exciting.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:35 Super. So thank you all for coming. This has been fun. I've learnt a lot, and I hope some people watching this will find this really useful. [upbeat music]

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:44 Hope so.

Animesh Agarwal 2:41:44 Should be.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:44 [chuckles]

Animesh Agarwal 2:41:45 Thank you.

Nikhil Kamath 2:41:45 Thank you.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:46 Thanks.

Animesh Agarwal 2:41:46 Thank you so much.

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:41:46 Thank you. Thank you for time. [upbeat music]

Speaker 2:41:56 Hi, everybody. I'm here with the famous Nikhil. We just recorded a podcast, WTF is..., and looking forward to seeing whenever it gets published.

Nikhil Kamath 2:42:05 How did we do? How did we do?

Sean Hyunil Sohn 2:42:06 We did well. Very well. [chuckles]

Speaker 2:42:08 Okay, hopefully it wasn't too bad. [chuckles]