Lights, Camera... Gameplay: Is India Ready for The Magic of Transmedia?

Indian cinema, for all its swagger, still feels a little breathless. Films like Saiyaara and Kantara: A Legend Chapter-1 have reaffirmed the star system, and juggernauts such as RRR successfully continue to cross borders. Theatres are awake again, but just barely; streaming has gone from a haven to a symptom of a larger problem. Between the spectacle and the fatigue lies a deeper anxiety: can the stories keep up with the screens?

The box office jolts, the platforms surge, the algorithms hum — but sustained attention is harder to earn. Audiences are restless; loyalty is a relic. What the industry seeks is not merely another hit, but a way to hold attention across platforms and time.

That search has led, curiously, to the joystick.

Video games have consistently outpaced both film and music in global revenue. The numbers tell the story: Grand Theft Auto V has earned over $7 billion since 2013, compared to the highest-grossing film ever, Avengers: Endgame, which peaked at $2.7 billion. Games don’t just make money differently — they make it longer, through content updates, in-game purchases, and sustained player engagement.

For Indian storytellers, long schooled in emotion and scale, that shift represents both opportunity and inevitability. The line between cinema and play has begun to blur, and Indian developers are starting to bet on the convergence.

A Market in Motion

Under PlayStation’s India Hero Project, Mumbai-based studio underDOGS is developing Mukti — India’s first narrative-driven video game that stitches live-action performances into playable architecture. Set inside a museum and built around the theme of human trafficking, it represents a test case for whether Indian storytelling can translate to interactive formats without losing its cinematic texture.

Director and developer Vaibhav Chavan, a self-described film buff currently bingeing Malayalam cinema, wanted the game to feel “raw, authentic, regional.” His influences range from Tumbbad and Bramayugam to 12 Angry Men — atmospherics, mythmaking and the intensity of single-locations. At the centre of Mukti is Ahilya Bamroo (I Want to Talk) playing a protagonist who resists the conventional hero mould.

For Bamroo, the appeal lay in the medium’s depth. “The narratives in games are often far richer than what we see in mainstream films,” she says. “You’re able to engage with it in a way that is more immersive than cinema.”

That interactivity challenged screenwriter Ankita Narang, who adapted her writing process to a player’s perspective. “This is not a journey to be just seen,” she says. “It’s going to be lived by the player. The flow must come from action, not dialogue. It is storytelling by discovery.”

The Transmedia Question

For industry observers, projects like Mukti signal something larger than a single release.

Rohit Agarwal, founder and director of Alpha Zegus, sees it as “a compelling evolution in Indian gaming — melding cinematic narrative, live-action ethos and interactive mechanics into a single experience.”

Sony’s investment through the India Hero Project reflects a broader shift: the world’s biggest console brand now sees Indian talent and stories as sources of fresh IP and global appeal, not just localisation outposts.

It’s a turning point for an ecosystem that has long been defined by outsourced service work and mobile-first games. “For the Indian ecosystem, it signals that the market has matured: developers, gamers, infrastructure and ecosystem partners are all aligned for high-quality, global-grade output,” Agarwal says.

The creators of Mukti are positioning the project as transmedia — spanning game, live-action, and digital narrative. In India, that term often exists more in theory than practice, but Agarwal suggests the audience may already be primed. “Indian audiences are increasingly comfortable with this: we’ve seen it in OTT series, influencer-led extensions, mobile games spun out of films. For gaming, this is the natural next hill to climb,” he says.

Still, execution will matter. “The challenge will be synchronising release timing, maintaining quality across formats and ensuring the world feels unified rather than fragmented.”

Playing the Long Game

Akash Menon, head of gaming and strategy at Tulsea, a talent agency bridging game developers and film producers, says, “Games don’t have a shelf life. You can keep adding content. The upside is limitless.”

Streaming saw a boom during the pandemic, but so did video games — because you can play them for hours, even years.

For a film industry caught between theatrical fragility and streaming fatigue, transmedia may offer a third path by building loyalty through IP, immersion, and interactivity.

The bet is both creative and commercial. On paper, a premium console title with an Indian setting, narrative depth, and Sony backing ticks a lot of boxes. The risk, naturally, lies in execution — quality, marketing reach, and post-launch support.

But the broader principle still holds: when RRR breaks out in Japan or Jawan does well abroad, it’s not because of spectacle alone. It’s because those films are rooted in authentic storytelling. Games are already immersive because the audience is inside the world. That makes hyperlocal stories instantly global.

Menon distils the logic simply: “Movie makers make movies; game makers make games. Together, they make IPs that travel across mediums. And everyone makes money.”

The question Indian entertainment has been circling for years may be reframing itself: what if the next great cinematic universe doesn’t begin in a theatre — or on OTT — but on a console?

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