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Making Money out of gaming

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

If Indian Gaming industry is compared to the gaming industries of Europe or

US, you'll find that it's still at a nascent stage, but going by the reports of

NASCOMM or Price Waterhouse Cooper, it is poised to grow at a tremendous rate in

future. So if you are spending countless hours in front of your PC or console,

pounding away at keyboard or controller to drive crazily or shooting down

enemies, then you can seriously think of chalking out a career in games

development.

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The growing Indian games industry has opened up career avenues for

professionals who have a unique combination of technology and creativity, and

are passionate about gaming technologies and culture.

Games development as a career is not only fun-filled and creative, but also

provides attractive global employment prospects.

Hot opportunities in Gaming



Entertainment industry is growing at a fast pace in India, and gaming has

become a new genre of entertainment that is making huge progress in this vast

landscape. As per the NASSCOM report, the gaming industry in India was estimated

at $167 million in 2008 and is poised to see an annual growth rate of 49% to

reach $830 million by 2012. The gaming industry comprises of not only PC and

console based games but also mobile and online games. And with the spurt in

broadband and mobile penetration in India, the latter two are transforming into

a strong market segment for games development. The gaming consumption across

platforms--PC, console or mobile has seen tremendous growth in the past few

years. Mobile gaming has significantly caught up in India owing to the fact that

mobile penetration in India is greater than PC penetration, and also that many

Indian telecom providers are providing mobile games as value added services to

their subscribers. The online gaming sector is fast growing in India and is

being driven by the fact that availability of bandwidth isn't a hindrance for

Internet users in India any more, and also that they have disposable incomes.

Not to forget about social networking sites like Facebook, which have become a

new platform for gaming.

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All this has opened business opportunities for Indian game development

companies to tap the market, and mobile gaming accounts for the larger piece of

the Indian gaming industry and the trend is only expected to continue. Companies

like Dhruva Interactive, Lakshya Digital, FXLabs are not only developing games

for the Indian audience, but are also increasingly getting outsourced games

development works from major international game development companies. Even on

the online gaming front there are Indian companies that have forayed into

development and marketing of such games, and have been successful (for instance

Zapak). With games development taking up in India, in coming years, games

development as a career can be the next addition to the vast resource pool of

skilled Indian professionals. Outsourced game development activities is already

a major revenue generation source for South Korea and Taiwan, and India can also

compete with them. But there is a demand-supply gap, which is due to the lack of

recognition for career prospects in gaming domain and also to the fact that

there are no well-known educational institutes giving education or training in

game development.

The

Gaming industry literally evolves on a daily basis. Controller design has

been significant over the past few years with Nintendo launching their

motion controlled system on the Wii. But the most significant change has

been the transition to online where almost every game is now either online

only or has a significant online component. This opens up a whole new world

in game design. In Asia alone, online gaming industry is approximately $7

billion.

Chris Thompson Vice President and General Manager, EA

Asean

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Career opportunities



The game development industry is a varied mix of skills and knowledge. It

can be divided into two categories: artistic and engineering. If you have

artistic skills, you can pursue a career in game designing and visual art

creation, but if you have Computer Science knowledge then you can opt for game

programming, sound engineering and game testing. Game development is a highly

creative field, and one can choose a role depending on the skills a person

possesses. If a person has game programming as his skillset, he can have options

in AI programming, game engine programming, and in game development itself, as

it is the game programmer who lays the foundation of the entire gaming project.

However, if you are creatively inclined, you can have career options in

animation and graphics modeling, where you would be required to conceptualize

characters, design the storyline for the game and its various levels and

document it. India has no dearth of IT programmers, but such is not the case

with gameplay designers. Gameplay is like the whole storyline for the game, if

its interesting then only would a person play a game regularly. AI plays a

critical role here. In Need for Speed, the game wouldn't be any fun if the

traffic on streets doesn't move like real traffic. For instance, in scenes where

police is chasing the rash drivers, the police need to have highly sophisticated

AI to avoid collisions, follow them closely and figure out a way to pull you

over. Thus, having an enticing game play ensures that the game shall be popular

and gamers would play the game again an again. Be it mainstream gaming, online

gaming or mobile games, all involve programming and art design, and there are

plenty of options available for you in the gaming industry.

Skills required



'Game Programming,' as such is not a specific language, it can be any

programming language that can be adapted for game development. If you want to be

a game developer for AAA category games, which involves PC or console games,

then you should know C++ as it is considered the industry standard for game

development. Also, you should know game development libraries like OpenGL or

DirectX. If you work with C#, then there is also XNA from Microsoft, which is a

wrapper over DirectX to make game development easier. Game engines are the core

around which a new game can be created. If you are starting with game

development, you can use Unity 3D, Neverwinter Nights 2 or Pygame, as they are

easy and have a great tool set for game development at the entry level. Unreal

or Gears are game engines which are meant to be used by professional game

developers. For the designing side, skills on animation and graphics tools like

Adobe Photoshop, 3D Max and Maya are required, but importantly you need lots of

creativity. For programming aspects of game development for mobiles, one needs

to be skilled in BREW, J2ME and Flash Lite.

Whatever

the format of gaming--mobile, console, PC or even online, each has a

projected growth rate of 30-55%. The force behind this growth is the

availability of better gaming platforms, penetration of mobiles and PC

becoming higher, etc. Gaming is being treated as adjunct to animation

industry, people doing animation courses branch out to this domain. India

needs courses which are specifically aligned towards the requirements of

gaming industry.

Anuj Kacker



Global Head, Arena Animation

Online gaming based on Flash and Silverlight technology is also catching up.

You can create games for websites like Facebook, and your work is instantly

visible to the world. Scrabulous was one of the most popular games on Facebook

and was developed by two Kolkata based brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla.

Developing games for social networking sites has come up as a new platform where

budding game developers can showcase their skills and creativity.

Certifications



To get training for learning the nuances of game developmentin India, there

aren't any government recognized courses available yet at the undergraduate or

professional level. Institutes like Arena Multimedia and AAG offer certificate

courses on game development. Global School of Animation and Games, Delhi is also

providing undergraduate and professional level courses for game designing and

programming. With their MBA program, they are offering gaming courses as

electives so that budding entrepreneurs with a passion for gaming could have

knowledge on various nuances of game development and its marketing and

management. So, if you are from the software development field and have always

been excited about gaming, then with some training on game programming, you can

venture into games development. Similarly, if you have animation or graphics

design skills then you can carve out a career in game design and enter the game

development domain.

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