PUBG Animated Project Creator Adi Shankar on Working With Krafton, Indian Game Development, the Metaverse, Netflix, and

Last month, Krafton made waves when it announced that Indian filmmaker Adi Shankar would be creating a PUBG animated show. Known for his work on Castlevania for Netflix, he’s also working with Ubisoft to bring Assassin’s Creed to Netflix as well as Capcom’s Devil May Cry.

IGN India was fortunate to catch up with Shankar who spoke to us on a range of themes including his Indian heritage, the state of games, entertainment, and the metaverse, his game development aspirations, working with Krafton, and more. Edited excerpts:

How has living in India and your Indian heritage influenced your work?

I certainly identify as Indian. I do feel like an alien around most people though, whether they are from India or elsewhere, but most artists feel that way.

I experience a level of survivors guilt because the West has given me an abundance of opportunities that simply do not exist in India. I’m grateful for those opportunities and if there ever comes a way to amplify voices in India or create sustainable pathways for under acknowledged sectors within the creative arts in India to flourish I’m ready to go.

What was it like moving often in your formative years and did that influence your perspective?

This is corny but there’s the saying, “you can take the Indian out of India but you can’t take India out of the Indian” and this rings true to me.

Moving in the 90s, a time period where the Internet did not exist, felt like jumping between parallel universes. It gave me a perspective on the illusionary nature of society. It also showed me that the world was really a sci-fi dystopia that served the needs of the very few.

What was it like to work on Castlevania for four seasons? Were there any learnings from working with a games companies like Konami, as well as Ubisoft and Krafton?

For Castlevania I personally didn’t actually work with Konami other than when it came to some promotional activities and an initial presentation to their executive ranks. With Ubisoft I’ve been working directly with the team in France and with Krafton I’ve been working directly with the team in Korea.

Both Ubisoft and Krafton are not only amazing creative partners, both companies are also extremely innovative and poised to grow into bigger and even more dominant cultural forces over the next decade. With both Krafton and Ubisoft the growth potential is limitless.

Do you feel that gaming will surpass film and television as the dominant cultural force?

As a sector, film and TV aka legacy media in the West and in India has existed akin to coal mining where a few stakeholders like the movie studios attain control of a cash cow which is distribution and then work together as a cartel to create pacts that keep competitors out. With legacy media the name of the game was to control the supply, distribution, and tools to manufacture content. Legacy media was not incentivised to innovate.

The gaming sector, by definition, is forced to innovate every year in order to survive. With tech coming in and disrupting everything legacy media companies have neither the corporate culture nor the tools to evolve and adapt to survive within the apparatus of this new global tech paradigm.

Gaming companies on the other hand have been forced to innovate for so long that they essentially became tech companies who make products that emotionally engage their audience. Within the ecosystem of top gaming companies, again like Ubisoft and Krafton, you get incredibly open minded innovators and senior management who have the tools and wherewithal to capitalise on their limitless growth potential.

What’s your take on video games and how do you adapt them for passive entertainment?

Games are like books in that they exist in a plethora of genres, formats, and tones. Mega Man and Dark Souls are both games but by every metric they are completely different experiences that share very little commonality other than the broad nondescript classification of both being ‘games’. So, just like there’s no one size fits all approach to adapting a book to a movie and just as there is not one right way to make a cover song, there is no one size fits all approach to adapting, translating, or expanding games into another medium.

What are your thoughts on game development? Have you ever thought of making a game?

Yes I have thought about making a game. In a lot of ways I feel like I’m better suited for game development than I am for Hollywood, though perhaps this is a case of the proverbial grass being greener on the other side.

A few of those in the film business like Bad Robot and Annapurna have ventured into the realm of video games with some degree of success, do you see that as a natural evolution of sorts?

So there are three different trends happening that on first glance may seem like the same trend.

Firstly, legacy film and TV content development companies like Bad Robot and Shondaland are venturing into games because there is a greater demand for games. If there was a greater demand for documentaries they would explore that space as well. It remains to be seen what these games will look like, and slapping a production company’s name on a game is a lot easier than building one from the ground up. My guess is that these games will fall into the casual category and at most may veer into Telltale Games land.

Second, TV and film financiers like Annapurna are financing indie games. This is no different to corporate juggernauts like Reliance investing into games, fashion brands Luis Vuitton investing into games, or indie game distributors like 505 Games investing into games. Annapurna, specifically, are making high-brow indie games for the critical acclaim crowd and moving the conversation of games as an art form forward, which is admirable.

In my opinion when an actual game company like Krafton invests into a game they have the tools and resources to help that independent developer grow and scale their game in a way that a TV and film media investor simply can’t.

Third, on a distribution level everyone is starting to compete with everyone. A few years ago Spotify dominated the music space. Netflix dominated narrative content. Then Spotify got into podcasts and then video podcasts and slowly started encroaching on Netflix’s turf. Now Netflix is getting into podcasts and now games. Amazon and Apple aspire to be in every vertical including gaming. Then there are the incumbents PlayStation and Xbox who will need to figure out how they fit into this new paradigm.

The bottom line is the gaming space is hot, the industry of the present and the future, and since the barriers to entry have been removed by technological innovation, everyone wants in. The conclusion to draw here is regardless of how this plays out, the time and future is great for the actual independent makers of games, smaller companies like Heart Machine and bigger companies like Gearbox who have the ability to develop and execute the creation of a game can write their ticket.

Have you mulled on that possibility for yourself?

I think whenever an artist transitions into being a business owner the art and the business both suffer. We’re entering the era of individual specialisation and while diversification can feel like low hanging fruit, it’s actually a trap and when it’s all said and done the specialists are the ones who will survive the transition into the new world order.

I feel like I should stick to being an artist and allow business people to build business around me.

Do you think we could see great games coming out of India?

Yes, I could see great games coming out of India, there’s nothing intrinsically limiting about India that would prohibit anyone from India creating a world class game the way developers in China, Spain, Japan, and Korea have.

The real question is as India “should we be making great games?” and the answer is an astounding yes. From my vantage point gaming has larger implications on the future of the human species and India’s role in it.

Furthermore, should China be surpassing India in every metric creatively in the industry of the future with games like Genshin Impact? The answer is absolutely not. The world is transitioning into a global creative economy. If India does’t embrace this and nurture our creative cream and allow it to rise to the top we will get left behind and spend the 21st century as China’s back office.

The industrialists of the future will come from this space. The question is will those industrialists be Indian?

What’s your take on the news of Netflix having games on its platform?

Just like getting into podcasts I think this is a logical move. Games add another vertical of value to the Netflix subscriber base. Also, I would never bet against Netflix’s senior management, they are some of the best and brightest people I’ve met.

Here is the challenge: competition is stiffer in games. Legacy media executives were asleep at the wheel and handed over the keys to their cars to Netflix. I mean this metaphor literally, legacy media executives literally gave Netflix the content that built Netflix’s subscriber base.

Games on the other hand are a hit-driven business, the bar for those hits are very high, the dev cycles are long, and game companies are innovative tech companies who are competing more directly with Netflix for eyeballs.

Netflix’s best bet, in my opinion, would be to acquire a few indie developers who can feed their gaming content pipeline.

Do you see games versus movies versus TV versus other entertainment forms competing for user’s time or do you view competition within each category?

The world now exists within an economic apparatus where the metrics that define growth are driven by attaining attention versus sales. Therefore by the sheer limitation of only 24 hours existing in one day, everything is competing against everyone for time and eyeballs. Drinking water, then, is competing with a users time and engagement. Listening to music is competing with binge watching a TV series. Sleep is an existential threat to a companies’ growth.

This new attention economy incentive structure in my opinion is dangerous and has directly led to social media algorithms being designed to turn kids into Instagram crack addicts.

I think there’s a conversation to be had about this being the 21st century version of colonisation. The colonisation of someone’s life.

I’m not saying that any of this is good or bad, I’m just saying some larger conversations are warranted and overdue and the conversation should be directed towards social media platforms and not gaming companies.

Do you see a confluence of games and cinematic experiences being a reality outside of Hideo Kojima’s games?

For sure. Kojima is the forerunner to something that will one day be the norm. Transitioning between mediums has never been easier. I’m seamlessly able to transition between both animation and live action today whereas 10 years ago that would have been exponentially more difficult.

As costs of production drastically drops, as the market place for talent becomes truly global, as the tools and engines that allow folks to create in these mediums become readily and democratically available, and as the appetite for content and innovative experiences grow there’s nothing stopping someone from existing and thriving in multiple verticals of entertainment.

It goes to reason then that this cross-pollination of creators working developing skill sets across mediums will lead to those artists creating projects that feel like new mediums all together.

Do you think the future of video games is the metaverse?

No. I think the metaverse will be it’s own thing.

The future of gaming is going to be very complex and it won’t all converge into one thing whether it’s the metaverse or any one single thing that everyone plays. If you look at history, whether it’s the history of products or the history of human evolution, things always diverge and get more complex, they never ultimately converge into one giant amoeba.

The closest we will get to a convergent-esque experience is if the metaverse acts as an iTunes-esque storefront platform. However, even in that scenario there will be multiple metaverses competing for users. Once these metaverses grow in both users, revenue, and influence they could become the nation states of the future.

Also, the future of gaming involves a ubiquity whereby everyone is a gamer in one shape or another. Through AR filter contact lenses real-life will likely start feeling like a game as well to compete with the metaverse. The the rise of psilocybin in the west will likely lead to drug manufactures creating VR drug experiences. The bottom line is the future of gaming will be vast, varied, and unrecognisable to us.

Who do you think builds the first metaverse?

This will be an arms race for sure as this isn’t just big business, it’s potentially the future of business.

We’re already seeing Facebook enter the space and Google will likely follow, but I see a gaming company building the first truly successful metaverse platform. If you think about it the metaverse is an extension of what gaming companies already make and have the expertise in.

Another variable is that while the metaverse is a software play there will be a hardware component to the equation also. With that in mind I think what happens with the Neurolink, advancements in 6G brain augmentation, and how the aforementioned integrate with a metaverse platform will play a big role in determining what company wins this arms race.

We also can’t discount the role of design and functionality with regards to which metaverse platform takes off. If we’re building an apparatus where our descendants will eventually live within it will have to be more appealing that than the real world and less clunky than the Facebook UI.

Finally, what games are you playing right now?

PUBG and I’m replaying DMC 5 because it’s awesome.

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