India is one of the fastest growing gaming markets right now: Sam Glassenberg

Sam Glassenberg is the founder-CEO of Level Ex, the video game for doctors, which has revolutionized the practice of medicine through medical video games, enjoyed by 750,000 medical professionals. Before Level Ex, Sam was CEO of the top independent game publisher in Hollywood, acquired by Playtech (PTEC) in 2016. Under his leadership, the company created award-winning mobile games for tens of millions of players based on popular films, including The Hunger Games and Mission:Impossible. Earlier in his career, Sam led the DirectX team at Microsoft and was responsible for pushing the visual limits of video games across the industry. Sam accepted a Technical Emmy on behalf of his team, which recognized their contribution to the state of the art in interactive entertainment. His name is featured on several technology patents and popular video game titles, and currently sits on major technology and video game industry advisory boards. When he’s not making video games for doctors, he’s experimenting with new ideas, tools, and technologies—evolving into an eclectic list of personal hobbies, from 3D printing to medical simulation. Adgully caught up with Sam during the Goafest in Goa. Excerpts from the interview:

How can we use gaming in the field of education going forward?

Games are probably the most powerful tool in the arsenal to drive education. I can speak from my own experience. I learned more from playing where in the world is Carmen Sandiego when I was a child. If we think about Pokemon Go, there are probably 40 million Americans who can name 40 Pokemon characters and give you their backstory and their powers but can't necessarily show you where France is on the map and that's because games are exceedingly good at driving learning as an indirect consequence of the play.

When we use games, to drive learning as a direct consequence, it is far more effective than what we call didactic, which means just reading or watching. Games allow you to interact to develop a mental model of the complex system; when we get a new phone, we don't read the manual. I got to play with this, humans learn from play, we just need to take advantage of that more in our traditional education system.

How you will use the application of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies in the field of gaming?

For many games, we've been using artificial intelligence for decades. Even games that would play in the early 80s had, a light version of artificial intelligence, driving the bad guys, the enemies, and the non-player characters. So over the years of gaming, AI has become very sophisticated and with characters that really come to life. This sort of pool of AI and other industries follow lag gaming for years, if not decades.

What are your thoughts on making gaming a worldwide phenomenon through courses, training programmes, etc. in developing games?

Gaming is already a worldwide phenomenon in terms of training; different countries are farther ahead than others. But the beauty of gaming is it's a worldwide phenomenon, like Hollywood, where, all the content is being created in one city or one location and games are made worldwide, and they're distributed worldwide to audiences. The same is possible with games that are used for training.

What are the emerging monetization opportunities in the field of gaming?

Gaming is a rapidly growing industry; we just passed $200 billion this year, in revenue, and games continue to grow double digits year over year. And we do it by discovering new mediums like, social, and mobile, as well as reaching new markets. India is one of the fastest growing markets in the gaming industry right now. And that's going to be one of the areas to try and sort of the industry as a whole.

How are you providing a monetization opportunity?

We're very specific, we are creating content for doctors, and so we are not a platform that is providing a monetization opportunity for other games. However, there's a massive ecosystem of companies that are coming up with all sorts of creative ways for games to be able to deliver their content to their consumers and monetize them through a range of different modalities.

How do you see the Indian market in comparison to other markets? And what are the challenges being faced by the gaming industry?

I have to admit that I'm not that familiar with the Indian market. Obviously, India has a very mobile-heavy culture from a technology perspective. So that's going to be the leading platform. I imagine that mobile gaming is going to be where you see the growth and the activity more so than. Let's say console gaming keys are pervasive in the States because of a digitally connected society; you're going to see a lot of online mobile, multiplayer, collaborative and competitive gaming. And I also see there's likely a huge opportunity here for e-sports as well. Just talking to people here. It's clear that this is an area of interest for advertisers. It's something that is brought excitement for gamers here. And, you know, I think that's going to be an area where you see a lot of growth in the next few years.

What are the potential brands you want to associate with in India?

There's a massive healthcare industry in India, which is growing. We want to meet with agencies that are potentially representing healthcare brands in India, so we can help them solve some of their challenges and their clients' challenges, such as the things that might be limiting the adoption of their products, because of limitations on training or limitations on reach, or because of the complexity of understanding how their product works. We can apply games to solve those models.

So, do plan to have any kind of association in India?

At some point in the future, that would be fantastic. No plans to announce yet; I will say we are a parent company, we are owned by a parent company that has a presence in India. I'm excited about the opportunity to continue to expand our business throughout the world.