Video Game Development in Asia: Voices from the Field

This special issue of the gamevironments journal, published in 2018 and edited by Gregory P. Grieve, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, Xenia Zeiler and Christopher Helland, presents firsthand accounts from video game developers across several Asian countries, including India, Japan, Nepal and the Philippines. Its purpose is to document the perspectives of independent and small-studio creators working outside Western and established industry centers. The collection combines interviews, field reports and an ethnographic study, offering a qualitative view of how these developers conceive their work, pursue creative goals and navigate their local industries.

The India section features interviews with founders and designers from several studios, and one of these interviews details Ogre Head Studio, a Hyderabad-based company founded in 2014. The developer describes the studio's ambition to move beyond the outsourcing and mobile-focused segments that dominate the Indian industry, instead creating original PC games grounded in Indian myth and folklore. The studio's debut title, Asura, a procedurally generated roguelike released in 2017, is presented as a key milestone, developed over roughly three years by a very small team. The interview emphasizes a design philosophy that prioritizes gameplay mechanics, with cultural material serving as inspiration rather than literal adaptation.

Beyond individual accounts, the issue offers a regional snapshot of independent game development, with the Japan and Nepal contributions providing preliminary and ethnographic perspectives on local scenes. The overall scope is qualitative and exploratory, reflecting the first-person testimony of developers rather than large-scale statistical measurement.