Ever since India went into lock down, reports suggest that there has been a 39% increase in mobile game downloads. The Gaming Market is in an interesting position right now with the global slowdown caused by the pandemic.
The general trend is that whenever there is a global slowdown, the gaming market picks up and usually does well. Especially during lockdowns, all established gaming brands saw a massive positive boost to their KPIs. Given that lock downs and economic slowdowns will happen to various degrees in different parts of the world until a vaccine is found, gaming is expected to receive favourable results from the market in the short to medium term.
Looking to leverage the current market conditions and demands is Mysuru based Longbow Games, which has unique and interesting games very close to being released. The company was founded by passionate, creative, and experienced game industry veterans with a track record of creating very successful and high quality F2P games on mobile devices. Longbow Games is a mobile-first game development company that started in January, 2019 intending to make games which deliver amazing gameplay and visual experience for mobile game players.
A Gamut of Offerings
The Longbow team consists of seasoned artists and developers. The artists have worked on a wide variety of games with different art styles ranging from AAA console games to mobile casual games. Developers at Longbow are full stack engineers. Their expertise in Server and Client architecture allows them to build any game, thus offering Game Development Solutions. It has expertise with implementing Agile Methods which allows them to achieve a high development velocity.
It also provides clients with accurate estimates of production timelines, prototyping of gameplay and feature concepts with transparent and progressive tracking of projects.
The team at Longbow has extensive experience with Live Operations on multiple top grossing games while working in their previous roles at companies like Zynga and Goodgame Studios. They used to regularly assess game health and address complex issues to improve the health of the game, be it revenue, engagement or any other KPI. A regular way of testing the efficacy of solutions in the game has been through A/B testing and analysis of data collected from running these tests. The team is proficient with the popular Analytics Tools used by Game teams across the globe.
Another of Longbow’s offerings is Augmented Development / Consultation for client projects (which could be in any stage) to support the partner’s game team. This involves collaborating with its partners and scaling up (or down) the team according to specific needs. It also helps troubleshoot common issues with process, tech stack or tools and de-risk/support the core team and help ship the game on time.
The Leadership
Longbow is led by Amogh Chakravarthy, who holds the position of CEO and MD. He has over 16 years of experience at all levels of software engineering with more than half that time spent in F2P games and the rest outside, in the SaaS industry. He has experience with all aspects of game development on web and mobile. He has filed patents at Oracle, has published flash games which he developed by himself, end-to-end, worked on popular titles like Empires & Allies, CastleVille and Draw Something (1 & 2) while at Zynga and holds a Masters from BITS Pilani. He currently oversees the projects underway at Longbow.
Along with co-founding Longbow and being responsible for all things Data, Shubha Vijayaraghavan, COO, currently also takes care of all operational aspects of the company. Shubha has over 13 years of experience working with data; both, in the gaming sector and in previous roles for the financial sector.
Built on Values
Longbow brings together, as a team, talented individuals who give it the ability to take the long shot and focus on what matters most, player delight. Longbow values its employees, their work and ultimately the players and believes that if it takes care of these three things, everything else will fall in place. The team firmly believes in focus, precision and looking at the big picture.
Longbow places a strong emphasis on –
People –
Teams are made of people and skilled people collaborating with each other make effective and fun teams. Longbow hires people who will make effective teams and deliver quality work and collaborate with its partners and clients.
Communication –
Clear and timely communication is the bedrock of every partnership. Longbow comfortably uses different methods to communicate with its clients and partners.
It firmly believes that being transparent and open in its communication with its partners and clients is the only way to communicate when doing business.
Processes –
The process followed by the team is what determines the quality and timeliness of its deliverables. Longbow has created its own process based on standard processes adopted by the industry but with the aim to fix common problems encountered in these processes and also to make the lives of people following these processes easier. This process, backed up by custom developed tools in all areas of its business, ensure that its partners, clients and team members always know what to expect from each other at all times.
Quality –
Longbow is very particular about quality. Be it the quality of communication, processes or deliverables, Longbow follows methods to ensure that the quality of what they deliver to their partners and clients meet expectations.
The Future
In the near to mid-term, Longbow is working towards having a healthy portfolio of mobile games out in the market. A long-term goal is to have successful games in multiple genres in the stores and have multiple titles in the top grossing charts. Longbow would also aim to continue its Live Ops and Consultation businesses along with running its own games.
