Hungama Game Studio and Mid-Day offer filmy games on Mid-day.com

With a library of more than 50 games from Bollywood and Hollywood, the development aims to increase user engagement and time spent on the website.

Riding on its expertise in movies coverage, Mid-Day has joined hands with Hungama Game Studio to offer premium Bollywood and Hollywood games online on Mid-day.com. The games offered will be sourced from Hungama's gaming portal, The Gamebox.com.

Users can play more than 50 games already available, which includes games from Bollywood movies such as Ready, Azaan, Om Shanti Om, Jab We Met, Love Aaj Kal, Kurbaan, Billy and Hollywood films such as Friends With Benefits, Twilight, The Bounty Hunter, Get Him to the Greek, Rainman, Notting Hill and When Harry Met Sally, among others.

The games can be accessed at http://www.mid-day.com/filmygames.

Manish Malik, assistant vice-president, gaming and applications, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, says, "The concept of gaming has caught on well in India and with Mid-Day, we have a new platform where gaming content can be distributed. The youth of today enjoys new concepts that break the monotony of their regular digital world. It will give us an opportunity to reach out to the highly connected youth using this entertaining and innovative platform. With the growing popularity of Bollywood games, we hope to introduce many new games in the coming few months."

Players are not required to undergo a tedious registration process and can just come, play and submit their scores. The scores of the top 10 scorers will appear on the leader board or scoreboard of that particular game.

Zafar Sawant, product manager, Midday.com tells afaqs! that this venture into gaming will ensure increased amount of time spent by users on the site.

"Mid-day's forte is Mumbai and Bollywood coverage. We have extensive content on both on the website. However, when it comes to Bollywood, it is very visual-driven. Hence, in order to increase engagement and the time spent by the user on the website, we thought gaming around our area of expertise would be a good idea," says Sawant.

He adds that movie gaming is relevant and contextual, and is a win-win development for both Hungama and Mid-Day. Hungama, too, is a strong player with experience in gaming around movies, having pioneered more than 100 Bollywood games for various production houses.

The model will be ad-funded. Mid-Day plans to promote the initiative beginning April. While print will be an obvious medium for the same, banner ads will be used on the website and on inventory available with various other media partners.