SuperGaming’s highly anticipated battle royale title Indus Battle Royale Mobile has been generating a lot of buzz, thanks to its futuristic vision that brings an exciting new world to life. With positive feedback coming in from the testing phases, the anticipation for the game’s launch continues to rise. To dive deeper into what makes Indus Battle Royale Mobile special, the team at GamingonPhone had an exciting interview with Roby John, Founder and CEO of SuperGaming. The conversation focused on community building, the game’s long-term goals, and much more, which we will share here.
1. Hello Roby, please introduce yourself to our readers
Hey guys, my name is Roby John. I’m the Founder and CEO of Super Gaming. I’ve been a mobile games developer for the past 15 years, and I believe I was officially the first iPhone game developer in the country back in 2008. I’ve been making mobile games for quite a while now. You’ve probably played some of my games, like MaskGun, which is a large game with about 90 million users, and Battle Stars and Silly Royale.
I’m most excited about what I’m working on now, which is probably my life’s work, Indus Battle Royale. We’re focusing on representing games as an expression of art and culture, and we thought, “What better way to do that than to represent our art and culture through games?” That’s what we’re doing with our Indo-Futuristic vision with Indus. The game is currently in open beta, with about a hundred thousand people playing and giving us great feedback.
2. I’m curious about the idea behind the vision and choosing the name ‘Indus’ for the game. Could you share the thought process?
I’ve mostly made shooters like MaskGun because I’m a big fan of guns. Nobody makes a battle royale shooter unless they’re a fan of guns, or they shouldn’t make one. The reason I didn’t make a battle royale around guns is that I didn’t think battle royale shooters had good gunplay. I also thought a little bit about a good game like CS: GO, MaskGun was CS: GO for mobile. I started it in 2016 and launched it in 2019. Today, it has about 90 million users, it’s grown heavily over time. But I learned about how to make a shooter and how to make a multiplayer shooter.
Back then, I had this chance conversation. One of the early checks that we raised was where Krafton was an LP, and I had an early chance to meet one of the creators of PUBG itself. One of the things he told me is that he knew it (PUBG) was going to be a hit because his kids used to watch him play. That gave me a very clear insight that I didn’t know anything about gaming because I thought that the legibility of games was really what would make battle royale games a hit.
When I say legibility, what I really mean is, that if you’re watching CS: GO, Valorant, League of Legends, Dota, you need to know the game before you can understand it and appreciate it. It’s like watching cricket or American football. If you don’t know the sport, you can’t watch it. Whereas in Battle Royale, you can watch it at any point in time, and you understand what’s going on. It’s almost, I would say, like soccer. Soccer is the most-watched sport in the world, most played because it’s easy to understand, it’s so legible. Even if you’re not a good shooter, you can play the game.
That’s where I understood that battle royale shooters would kind of be the default game for a first-time mobile country, or an emerging developed nation like ours and there are many such countries where people were adopting and playing games for the first time on their mobile devices. That’s when I understood the potential of the idea. I’d already made MaskGun, and I thought that what I learned from that was how to think a little bit about having a community, having a distinct identity.
I looked at the world of gaming, and what I thought instead of it was, what is missing is Indian art culture. In expression, gaming is an expression of your art and culture. We found that missing. When I thought about this very large opportunity and the fact that India’s missing, and India is probably going to be the capital of battle royale shooters in the whole world.
We probably have the most battle royale players in the world in India, but we don’t have any representation of our art. When you marry the two, that becomes this opportunity. That’s really how I came up with the idea. We came up with six or seven ideas, and we thought this was the best idea we had at that time.
3. You’ve already delivered a hit shooter like MaskGun, which is an amazing game in its own right. Given this success, what was the development process for Indus? How did you plan to make it stand out from your previous games?
I’ll tell you two things about it. One is just the size and scale. When you think of the size and scale of MaskGun, MaskGun’s map is the size of a football field, and Indus’ map is the size of a city, that’s the difference. So, one is 13 square kilometers and the other one is less than half a square kilometer. When you think about that, it’s a massive undertaking. You’re creating this whole open world, and all the maps put together inside of the Indus fill up less than 10% of the map. That’s the big difference in what we did with Indus.
The other part is MaskGun is a five-minute game, while Indus is a 15-minute game. All the guns, everything, is imagined from scratch. In MaskGun, our world was fairly contemporary. With Indus, we wanted to connect it to lore, connect it to a story.
Indus is slightly different because it also has a story and a background that comes with it. The short story around it is imagining that ‘what if the Indus Valley civilization didn’t die? What if it was so advanced that it fled to a distant galaxy, and we are now discovering this galaxy in the year 2500?‘ That is the backstory of the Indus Valley civilization.
We showed it to people, and you probably saw it in 2022 as well. People would ask us, “Oh, I really like this. This looks like Wakanda.“ I thought that was a compliment because I was very inspired by what the movie Black Panther did for Afro culture. When you think about Black Panther, it combines the art, culture, and tradition of Africa, but also portrays Wakanda as the most futuristic city in the world. I thought it gave the whole Afro-American image a boost, making them feel so much better.
I do think that our country suffers from being almost depicted as a ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘ kind of place. Everywhere we go, people are surprised at how advanced our country is now. But it’s not reflected in our art and culture; it’s not reflected in our games. That’s where we wanted to build and reflect our art and culture through games. That’s really what we put into Indus, almost as this aspirational vision for India. You’ll see some of the art and cultural content within Indus reflecting this.
4. The Battle Royale genre is highly popular, especially on mobile, and there are already some big names dominating the space. With Indus entering the scene, what’s the plan to differentiate it and compete effectively without directly challenging those titles?
“What is the largest restaurant chain in the world? It is McDonald’s. Do you eat at McDonald’s every day?“ The answer is simple, there are many restaurants, but you’ll go to one that treats you differently. My favorite restaurant isn’t any of the famous ones; it’s a small place where the waiter knows my order, the chef knows how I like it, and the cashier asks me, ‘Sir, how was it?‘ when I pay the bill.
That’s how I think about games. I see games as a place, not just a thing. Games are communities, places where people hang out. It doesn’t have to be the best game, just like it doesn’t have to be the best restaurant, it needs to have the best community. So, when I think about games today, I think about them very differently. I’m not competing with PUBG, Free Fire, Call of Duty, or Apex Legends.
I see games as a place. It doesn’t have to be the best game, it needs to have the best community.
I think of what we are making as unique. Every restaurant has something unique, even if they serve the same dish. The way I think about games is that each one is unique. Every game forms its community and has its taste. The reason we feel confident coming to this market is that we’re not trying to make the same game as everyone else. We’ve learned from all the games that came before us. We believe that these games have created great evolution, but shooters and racing games are staples in the industry.
When we thought about Battle Royale, we approached it differently. Battle Royales have been around for five years, so we asked ourselves, what’s the innovation? Is it just changing the setting? We decided to think about it systematically. I’ll use the food analogy again. Battle Royale is like a buffet. A good buffet typically has three courses: starters, the main course, and dessert. The starter phase in Battle Royale is like the looting phase when you land and gather resources.
We noticed that Battle Royale games usually only had the last man standing as the win condition, which can become boring. If you lose a few squad members, you have no chance of winning. We introduced an alternate win condition, Cosmium, an extraction mechanic where you collect items. We also introduced a dual win condition in Battle Royale. We think this leads to more exciting moments, like the tension in the final moments of the World Cup (T20 WC 24).
(explaining the standout features) Now when you think about it, all the other games that we saw, were just putting in more content and didn’t change meaningfully. We wanted to introduce a whole new mechanic of saying that what is the one thing that people hate? They hate getting killed by somebody. They want revenge immediately. But that is not possible.
We introduced that as a feature, the Grudge System. You can now set a grudge and it can happen any day, even the next day. That has led to a whole new level of engagement. This is also igniting friendships between the players. It’s exciting to watch people streaming it, and that’s creating a whole new kind of game. We are trying to build the modern battle.
We still haven’t added a tutorial, what we are counting on is simply because you played these games for hundreds of hours. What we’re trying to explain to you is, “Hey, we have something new“. We have a cosmium, we have a grudge, and you want to kind of have you play those and experience playing a much faster game, play with your friend. That’s kind of something that we’ve reinvented in the battle genre, and that’s how the games industry goes forward.
(on the game improvements) I think games get better with time. I generally don’t worry about what is the current version, or what is the current feedback. We always think about direction and rate of improvement. And that is really what we look at from our improvements. Every time player perception keeps improving, players give us good feedback, and it gets better.
My goal is very simple. It is to find a thousand fans, even if I have a thousand fans, that’s good for me. I’m not trying to win everybody else. As I said, I’m happy to be the roadside dhaba (food stall) where you come in regularly. That’s all that I want.
5. You’ve conducted several beta testing phases since the game’s initial announcement, and you’ve likely received a lot of player feedback. Is there any specific feedback that stood out to you as particularly helpful in the development process?
I would say there are two types of fans. One, who wants to make you already know they know more, suggesting ideas or features because they exist in one game. But there is also a different side of more discerning fans who already know and are trying to understand. Then they’ll give you feedback and say, “You could have done this better“ or something similar.
So, the idea of going to your community and all of these cities is to listen to your audience and understand from them if you tried our game or different features likeable? Those are all things that we go and talk to our players about, because ultimately, what I’m chasing is legibility. Do people understand what I’m trying to do? That’s a journey, but that is the point I want to explain: “Hey, I’m trying to do something different, something real, something connecting with the audience and does it resonate with you?“
I’m keeping that creative vision true to what we’re trying to make and seeing whether people enjoy that experience.
I’m in every WhatsApp group in my community, people talk to me directly. People are one message away from me. My number is out there. I get a thousand calls and the point is to listen. I don’t think that around your audience there. I’m getting that feedback, but at the same time, I’m keeping the creative vision of what our team thinks. It’s not my vision; it’s my team’s vision. I’m keeping that creative vision true to what we’re trying to make and seeing whether people enjoy that experience. In some cases, we explain it to them if they don’t understand it, and in other cases, we adjust it if they don’t understand what we are trying to do.
I always tell people, I am always going to be available to you. I’ll build this friendship with all of my players. I’m trying to build a family. People will talk to me, and I chat often with a lot of players. For me, this is the exciting part is saying: “What am I trying to build? I’m trying to build a game with players’ feedback, with understanding, and listening to my players while still delivering on the vision.” I think it’s a balance of both.
6. I’ve seen that the excitement around the game has been incredible, and you’ve been breaking pre-registration records as well. A big factor seems to be your focus on organizing Esports tournaments and community playtests. How important do you think these early initiatives are for the game’s success?
I’ll tell you a little bit about how I think about it. When I was doing MaskGun, I was in the community. I was talking to my players every day. I’ve been talking to players every day since 2015. There are videos of me from nine, or ten years ago, doing streams and talking to players. Community playtests were important. What happens typically is, that if only you are talking to the community, then your team does not understand that feedback. Sometimes the team wants to do one thing, but the community wants something else. That’s always a tension.
As a founder, my job is to ensure that both are aligned. So, I made a new hack: every person on my team has gone and played, talked to the community, and played with the community. They understand that feedback directly. They are also in a lot of those groups. Now, my team has grown to understand the community at the same rate as me.
The more expensive part is meeting my team, going there, and putting that time into community building so they can talk to players directly about whatever they are making. Direction and rate of improvement, whenever they make something now, they’re always making it in the right direction with player feedback. That’s why community players were really important.
Now, when you think about it, what’s an Esport? Esport is a special community player who is playing professionally. It’s a special test with a special set of people, but the approach is still the same: for my team to meet these Esports players, and understand what and how they play. Even before our first Esports pretest, we hired an Esports team to play any game they played inside our office for eight hours a day.
My team was just sitting and watching them play, not just our game, but other games too so that we understood. We got all of them in, looked at what they wanted in the game, and put it in. When hosting a tournament, we sat with a tournament operator, and Esports owners, and brought all of those people into our office. We talked to them and got their input so that what we are building is in the right direction.
7. It might be an early question, but do you have plans for more collaborations and bringing popular names as in-game characters in the future?
I don’t look at celebrities. If you see my game, I look at inspiration. For example, there’s Heena Sidhu, a world-famous shooter, and a great female role model, who also grew up playing Call of Duty. She’s a great inspiration to our women audience. For example, my oldest is a daughter who looks up to inspiring figures.
When I was meeting these inspirational people, I looked at what would inspire the next generation. Today it might be Manu Bhaker or any one of these people, but I wanted to tell the story of New India, not the most celebrities, but the most inspirational stories, we also had Hardik (Pandya, Cricketer) do a MaskGun ad, for example. But I haven’t included them in Indus yet, because I want to tell real stories, not of the most famous, but also of the most unknown.
When you think of the Pokhran character (in Indus), it’s the story of Homi Bhabha, India’s nuclear architect. It’s something that nobody knows about how did he play such a pivotal role. For me, it was a homage to him. Mech-Balika is a homage to the Indian girl child who is treated like a puppet but is now breaking through.
The Sir-Taj character is a homage to India’s most recognized monument, the Taj Mahal. There are three in the game because there are three Taj Mahals in India. The White Taj, which is the most famous, the Pink Taj in Aurangabad, and the Black Taj, which was supposed to be built for Shah Jahan. All of that is true to lore.
8. What are the long-term goals for Indus Battle Royale? How do you plan to expand this Indofuturism universe further?
While we’ve created Indofuturism in India, we think that many cultures can also be represented that are poorly represented in the world. For example, when we launch in Brazil, we’ll do Afrofuturism, or rather, Amazofuturism, which is Brazil’s futurism. We had a team go to Brazil recently to meet with our players, figure out what that culture looks like, and bring that in.
If I launch in the Middle East, I’ll do Arabfuturism. When you think about it, that’s a region that is usually represented in games as terrorists, but that’s not true about their culture. The culture is so much more, and I want to represent those cultures well in my game. When I launch in these regions, I launch with what I call Ethnofuturism. That’s our intention to be true to not perpetuate stereotypes.
If you look at all my content and characters, they are non-stereotypical, which is why they’re refreshing. That’s what I want to do for all cultures around the world. I’ve got many players worldwide who became fans when I made MaskGun they’re all in my Slack. I talk to many of them every day, just like I do with others. That’s something I enjoy, talking and building with all these players. That’s what I continue to do with Indus. Indus is not just for India; it’s for the world.
If you think about it, what are the stories that aren’t told? When I saw Wakanda and Black Panther, I thought it was a great story to tell, but I didn’t want to make a movie. I don’t think people consume movies as much as they consume games. Games are an interactive consumption medium. So, I’m telling the story of Black Panther, Wakanda, and Afrofuturism, but through a slightly different interactive medium called games.
9. Any thoughts you would like to share with our readers before the global launch of the game?
I’d say, you know, when people mention we look like Apex agents, the point is, when you go for a futuristic look, there aren’t many games that have done it. A lot of it is very realistic. When we think of Indus, we think about what’s aspirational for India. Our vision of the world isn’t like the usual dystopian world. We imagined a world where it’s all green. In the future, we have a positive, optimistic hope that we’ve figured out how to live in harmony with nature. We don’t have to have nuclear bombs that destroy everything, which is the setting in many games. It’s not about war anymore.
Our vision of the world isn’t like the usual dystopian world. In the future, we have a positive, optimistic hope that we’ve figured out how to live in harmony with nature.
“Can’t we just have fun in a game? Can’t we treat it like a world of pixels? Can’t we treat shooting as a sport, like in the Olympics, rather than as violence?“ That’s how we built Indus and that’s what people enjoy. What people don’t understand is that we work with teams worldwide, and they appreciate the work we’ve done. Whether it’s Apex or anyone else, they’ve been to our office, they’ve written us appreciation, and they’ve given us a bunch of stuff that’s right here at my desk.
People appreciate all the things that you have done because they’re coming from a maker mindset. One thing I want to stress is to understand what the maker mindset is, and understand the objectives, not just try to gain short-term use. I think we’ve got to learn to be a better community. If you think about it, China is celebrating its Wakanda moment. To the West, the book inspires a lot of it. Everybody’s trying to make things, but they’re all supported by the China ecosystem.
That’s the support that is needed in an ecosystem to rise to the next level. Around the world, people might still hate us. But at the same time, I feel like we’ve got to look at support and supporting each other. This can only help build the ecosystem. As a company, we’ve always worked with supporting our players with everything we do but also supporting other game companies.
We run Indus Grant (Not For Profit Fund), and we’ve supported many game studios. We’ve not talked about it, but we’ve supported many game studios, including some you might think are competing with us, which is something that nobody knows. It’s a nonprofit grant. We don’t take any equity or anything in their company. We’re trying to stay true to our vision, which we call BIGR – Building India’s Gaming Revolution.
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