"Become an avatar and live your parallel life in the other world...Though commonly known as MMORPG to the less-informed, this is really a secret gateway to The Other World," shrieks the Ragnarok website in bold type.

Ragnarok is India's first MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Level Up, a global publisher of online games and Ragnarok, has its presence in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai.

The managing director of its Indian operations, Venkat Mallik, is also known as the "Soothsayer". In fact, the word is there on his visiting card too.

A graduate and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, he has worked with corporates  like JWT, Unilever and was a part  of Euro RSCG (Chennai) in its start-up stage. Before he could join Level Up!, he was an executive director on the Leo Burnett India board.

In a conversation with Leslie D'Monte, he explains why MMORPG is picking up in India.

You appear to be very gung-ho about India

True. India is a huge market. We are bullish about the Indian economy. The huge middle-class market out here holds a lot of promise for the gaming market.

Our company has always focused on playing a pioneering role in the online gaming world and MMORPG. We want to be an interactive entertainment company. Of course, the idea is a bit premature at this stage, though. PC gaming has proved to be a killer application. It is only but natural that we should look at India.

What's your business model? How do you popularise the game, given that gaming is a niche market?

Ours is a free model currently. We do not make money as of now. It's an investment. We have compact discs priced at Rs 100 which the gamer has to install and connect to the Net to play the MMORPG. Besides, we have done some online advertising and tied up with more than 1500 gaming cafes to popularise our MMORPG game. The number of tie-ups is growing.

In India, we see Internet-caf�s transforming into gaming cafes. We have entered into partnerships with all leading Internet-cafe chains in the country. We are already witnessing a number of caf� owners looking towards gaming as a major revenue earner.

We surely have plans to move to the paid subscription model when we fell the time is ripe and the market ready. And as with any business, we have to make money.

How popular is MMORPG in India?

Online gaming itself is very popular. MMORPG is a sub-segment of it. Sure, there are a lot of figures floating around (50,000 online gamers and 10,000 MMORPG gamers). However, it all depends on how you cut the pie. These figures are underestimates.

We believe (says he cannot divulge exact figures about Ragnorak India players. Market reports peg it at around 20,000 currently) there are hundreds of thousands of players which include the ones who play on PCs, consoles and mobiles.

It's difficult to say how many are beginners and how many seasoned players.

What's the kind of audience you get for MMORPG? Is it different from the ones who are regular gamers?

These are youngsters, anywhere between 15-25 years of age. The MMORPG mindset is a shade different from the normal shooting and racing games played in India. The purpose of Ragnorak is to nurture an online Avatar
(character). The players can adopt that Avatar for a fairly long period of time. Hence we call it the parallel world or the other world.

Is that akin to an alter ego? And aren't these games addictive creating psychological problems? Do you keep tab of what's going on?

Well, we do read about a few such instances. However, our MMORPG is about having fun, making friends online and, of course, bask in the joy of gaming. Besides, in any business, it's important to keep the consumers happy.

So while self-regulation is needed, on our part we encourage the gamers to meet offline and hence organise offline player meets, guild meets and parties at the cafes. These meets are well received and there's a lot of emphasis on these real-world gatherings since people in India are affliation-oriented.

What gaming trends do you see in the coming couple of years?

We will continue to see a lot of mobile gaming happening. We will surely enter that space when we feel the time is right. As for PC and console gaming, there is a lot of movement in this arena. With increase broadband, faster speeds and more personal computers, gaming is bound to increase. And hopefully, we should see less piracy of computer game CDs.

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