India - Growing Games Socially

From ‘FarmVille’ to ‘Mumbai Underworld’, game developers see social networks as the way to drive games in India...

All it took Games2Win co-founder Alok Kejriwal to turn his mother into a regular social gamer was showing her how to send ‘FarmVille’ gifts over the social networking site Facebook. Now, the 60-year-old regularly pays real money to buy “virtual gifts” for her FarmVille buddies.

Available as an application on Facebook, FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game that allows members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops and trees, and raising even livestock. It has become a smash hit in the cyber space.

Indeed, social games - casual games that are played on social networking sites with a group of friends - are fast becoming the most used online apps among the 52 million internet subscribers in India. And, this has brought domestic game companies with their own popular portals, like Zapak, Indiagames and Games2Win, into the social networking scene.

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