'Let girls have some fun'

Gaming companies in India are crooning a new melody. Call it an adaptation of Cyndi Lauper's record-breaking song (Girls just wanna have fun) or a genuine realisation of market trends, the latest theme among gaming majors is "� Let girls have some fun.

That's why, while some companies are doing research to unearth the choices of girls with regard to games, others are simply wooing the female fraternity to join the gaming industry.

Tony Garcia, chief executive officer of FXLabs, a Hyderabad-based provider of game development and production services, says, "Though the male audience is the target for the lion's share of game development, female protagonists are being featured in many as well. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend is a case in point."

Incidentally, FXLabs' yet to be launched action/horror game for PC and Xbox "� Inferno "� has a female protagonist who is pitted against the characters of the underworld. The player, however, has an option to switch to a male character for using different powers.

FXLabs has an employee strength of around 90 today, with the number of female employees being merely five. Garcia, however, says that things are changing.

"Traditionally, the gaming industry was not viewed seriously. The attitudes have been slow to change but more and more women are getting into the business and are considering it as a lucrative career," he says optimistically.

Rajesh Rao, chief executive officer of Bangalore-based Dhruva Interactive, says that they have been trying to get in more female game developers as they would be the best judge on the kind of games that would appeal to their fraternity.

"Women comprise around 50 per cent of the population today and it would be foolish on our part to ignore them as a market," Rao says.

Dhruva Interactive has also been doing research on the gender-based choices of games.

"We have learnt that while a male gamer uses the default character for playing a game, a female gamer likes to personalise. We have adapted this input in our game designs. Our upcoming game will have the personalisation option wherein a player can choose the clothes or accessories that a character would use, so that it appeals to the female gamers as well," Rao says.

Dhruva Interactive has 80-85 game developers of which five are women.

Ninad Chhaya, executive vice-president (operations and production) of Mumbai-based Paradox Studios, says that there are many mothers evaluating the games that their children play. So, keeping their choices in mind makes economic sense. Paradox employs 70-80 developers currently of which 15-20 per cent comprise women.

"The change is visible now. In the past one year, we have been receiving a lot of resumes from female aspirants and are happy about that," he gushes.