The gaming industry is undergoing transformation and is set to become one of the fastest growing employment sectors in the country in the coming years. Hence, now is the best time to take it up as a career, says Manvendra Shukul
In the information age, the Internet has changed the way we perceive, recognise, organise, think and act. Mobile telephony has made access seamless. leave alone working, options like media on demand, entertainment on call and gaming portals and multi-dimensional cinema experience has changed the way we relax and let loose and play or entertain. This boom in new media is making the back end of entertainment a top-class career alternative.
As an industry, gaming has grown manifold in the last decade, with new markets emerging from countries like the US, Europe, China and Western Europe. With the current estimated revenue from game and games content in the US growing bigger than Hollywood, the global industry is expected to touch $80 billion by the end of this year. While the primary consumers of gaming content continue to be young men in the age groups ranging from 13 to 35, with growing Internet bandwidth, more and more people across all demographic groups are engaging in game play now and this trend has only been steadily rising.
Within the Indian Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry, gaming has created a significant niche for itself and is on the cusp of a strong phase of growth driven by rising digitisation and higher internet usage over the last decade. According to NASSCOM, the Indian gaming sector is valued at $300 million (around Rs2,000 crore). Video games have become a big part of modern culture and are now becoming one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Factors that include rising disposable incomes, increase in consumption of smartphones, availability of better data network and connectivity like 3G and now 4G and a youthful population which is a quick convert to technology advancements, have all aided the fast growth of the gaming industry in India.
India is emerging as the next big hub for game process outsourcing led by major international gaming companies that are setting their sights on its industry prowess and a ready workforce. With the availability of a large working population at our end, we have managed to develop the right skill sets and professional aptitude to meet international game standards. In other words, gaming industry is undergoing a rapid transformation and is on its way to become one of the fastest growing employment sector in the coming years. It could be the best time to taking up game development as a serious career. A host of top international studios like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Zynga have already set up development centers here and have drawn up aggressive growth plans.
As an industry, it offers career opportunities in different functional areas like Game Design, Game Art creation in 3D and 2D, Game Animation, Game Programming, Game Testing, Project Management, along with general management positions. Game Art creation is an evolved field of art involving various specialised workflows and developing a game requires a large team of skilled individuals and a special set of development process.
Although, the industry offers multiple career options one can choose any specialisation depending upon the area of interest. It is always better that the candidate researches the various disciplines of the game development industry before taking up any specialisation. An entry-level game artist needs to possess basic to intermediate level knowledge of their specialised domain. For example, an animator will need to be comfortable with the animation tool-set in Maya or Max while a 3D artist will need to have an understanding of tools for creating polygonal models in software like Maya and textures in Photoshop.
The field of gaming is by and large an artistic and a highly technical one. It takes a natural creative bent of mind along with a disciplined study of techniques to make a good professional. To make a career specifically in the Game Art field candidates should consider enrolling for a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) programme at a good university, followed by a training programme at a specialised training institute. InGame, the training programme run by lakshya, for example, provides hands on training students by experienced game artists and also accepts talented non-BFA degree holders.
Game design is a structured discipline and each functional area has its own specific skill requirements. For example, Game Designers need to have a clear understanding of the different game genres, as well know what makes each genre unique and fun. They also need to have strong written and verbal communication skills, as well as knowledge/exposure to product design. Meanwhile, Game programmers typically need to have a strong foundation in Mathematics (especially Coordinate Geometry) and Physics. They also need to be able to programme in one or more languages such as C, C++ and Java.
The gaming industry is a high paying career and a game developer in India can make between Rs5 lakh to Rs7 lakh per month. In order to grow, however it is imperative that one regularly updates oneself with state of the art developments in the field frequently.
(The writer is CEO of lakshya Digital)