Did You Know That Two BioShock Games Were Made in India?

Although Indian-developed games have more in common with Bollywood and cricket as well as some not so well-received PS2, PS3, and PSP fare, there stands an exception. BioShock. No, you haven’t slipped into an alternate dimension. We’re not referring to the PC, Xbox 360, PS3 or remastered release of the 2007 classic. Rather, the mobile game. Few gamers these days are aware that BioShock for mobile handsets was developed in India by Indiagames.

In this special episode of Transition - Gadgets 360’s pop culture and gaming podcast - we have Hrishi Oberoi and Srinivasan Veeraraghavan, two developers on BioShock for mobile, joining games editor Rishi Alwani and host Pranay Parab to tell us more. From working with an IP as heralded as BioShock to managing the intricacies of file sizes, frame rate, and even dabbling in episodic content, we discuss what went behind the making of one of India’s critical successes.

They talk about all the effort that went into making the BioShock 2D and 3D games for feature phones and how much time the team spent on making these. It was one of the biggest feature phone game projects at the time and a lot of the stuff they did was revolutionary at the time.

And that’s not all, the duo explain what went into making Indiagames’ many cricket games as well as some user statistics and challenges faced when transitioning from the feature phone era to smartphones. Finally we speculate of the state of game development in India and how Reliance Jio might be the shot in the arm game developers need.

You can subscribe to Transition via Apple Podcasts or RSS or just listen to this episode by hitting the play button below. The music for this episode comes via Magnus Souleye Pålsson's album PPPPPP, which is the soundtrack for the game, VVVVVV.