In the small office of Ether IT Solutions in Tripunithura was born an iphone application (app), ‘Ghostcity'. The free version of the game (Ghostcity Lite) is now ranked 11 among the top free iphone game apps and the paid version (Ghostcity) is ranked 15 among top paid iphone game apps in India.
As Gokul Elayadath and Sharath Mohan (managing partners) settle down for a chat in their office they look satisfied, confidently smug. The third partner is Sujesh K.R. who is based in West Asia. One would think that both youngsters have a background in engineering. Turns out it was presumptuous. “I am an MBA and Sharath is a BCA,” says Gokul. He used to work for a bank and Sharath for a BPO.
During recession
They started working at Ether (which belongs to Sharath's father) in 2009 when recession was turning many lives upside down. A wrong time to quit a job one would say, but not for these enterprising young men. For them however it was the best time, a now-or-never kind of time, “for us, it was the best time or we would never have done it.” While developing websites they discovered the potential of mobile phones. They developed monkeyshops.com, an online mobile phone recharge site for prepaid phone connections. Somewhere along the line, seeing the potential of games, they decided to give that a shot and developed a couple of other games such as ‘Fix me' (a puzzle) and ‘Mr. Bee'.
‘Ghostcity' happened in November, 2011. Very patiently the duo educates about the difference between a casual game (which their game is) and a pure game. The former kind is the kind that we have in mobile phones which you can “play while waiting for the bus, for instance. Anyone can play a game.” And the other is for serious gamers and needs devoted equipment.
“If you think about job security and the comfort of getting your salary on the appointed time every month then you will end up doing nothing of consequence. We have a dream which we are working towards,” says Sharath. Developing an app for iphone is not too tough (get a developer's license from Apple for $ 99), but “getting noticed in an app store (itunes) where there are five lakh other apps is tough,” says Gokul. Now that they are among the top 25 (in both categories) in India, they hope to repeat the feat on the United States (US) charts too. The paid version of the game costs $.99.
Days of brainstorming with their team of nine staffers resulted in ‘Ghostcity', a game about a ghost which hates light and goes about breaking light bulbs. Why breaking light bulbs? Sharath says, “because children love doing things like that, they think it is fun.” Makes one wonder how many bulbs they have broken growing up. They are full of praise for the team of graphics designers who created the interface for the game, “we gave them an idea of what we wanted and they translated it into graphics,” he says. Every member of the team, they say, has contributed to the success they are enjoying. Team is - Nikhil Jain, Basil T. Paul, Sreekanth S., Jifin Francis, Akhil P. M., Brijitha B., Sruthy U., Sona M. V. and Sreeja C. A.
Made in Kerala
What makes this ‘made in Kerala' game different is that Ether owns it. “There are several other companies in Infopark which develop games for companies in the United States and Europe but none of these can put their names on the games they develop,” says Gokul. It is too much of a risk, he goes on. A certain amount of investment is involved and if the game doesn't do well then it turns out to be a sheer waste of time and money. ‘Developing a game for someone else is any day safer' and safe is, very clearly, not for them.
And they are resting on their achievement. It is all about upgrading, and they are working on upgrading the game and developing the android version of the game.
