Interview: SuperGaming's Roby John On Start-Up Challenges, Community, And Indo-Futurism

thegamer.com:

Every video game studio in the world, working on any game you can think of, undoubtedly faced – or will face – their own set of start-up challenges. Even if you've assembled a dream team, work with the most advanced tools, and get a blank cheque from your investors, there are some hurdles you’ll need to tackle. Back in 2015, India based SuperGaming faced the usual hurdles when it started work on its multiplayer mobile FPS, MaskGun. But the studio also faced a rather unique problem.

"Since this was days before cheap data rates, we had to make sure our download size wasn’t as big," Roby John, CEO and co-founder of Indian developer SuperGaming tells me. "End result: we had a game that was around 100MB versus the likes of PUBG that had roughly 20 times the download size. In addition to this, getting multiplayer netcode to work as it should, allowing a seamless experience regardless of your location had a lot of trial and error too with our server locations to optimize in-game latency."

India has always been a market that will weigh and evaluate every gram of your product before buying it. So, if your game drives up data costs, that's not going to work for someone looking to save every rupee they can. Thankfully, things are better now, with cheaper rates and 4G, but at the time, data was a precious resource.

Like everyone, John and the team had low days where they felt like there were too many hurdles in the way of achieving their dreams. But they noticed that their community was growing. The team is very proud of their community, as they listed down instances of a vet from Mexico learning English to interact with players, and a real estate agent moonlighting as a clan leader. "It’s the stories of the community that sustained