Work at Play

Akhlaque Sheikh,from Seamless Education Pvt Ltd,says,“The profession has evolved by leaps and bounds right from the old 64 bit games that were developed when the video game industry was beginning out. Primarily,we offer courses in Game Art and Game Designing,which are both for a duration of one year.” The field of gaming can be distinctively divided into Game Art,Game Designing and Game Programming. Game Designing mainly deals with the structure of the game and its layout,Game Art deals with the creation of the characters of the game,the game props as well as the manner in which the final game will look on screen.

The city offers a host of institutes and colleges for someone who is seriously interested in the field. While a lot of the courses are post graduation courses,there are a few undergrad courses also. Umesh Tahsildar,CEO DSK Supinfocomm,located in Loni says,”Video game designing is a field that has found recent takers in India owing to the fact that the gaming industry is not a very glamorous one or has not been written about extensively. We have a course in Game Designing which is a four year course that a student can pursue after class twelve. A student is taught about basic 2-D,3-D gaming techniques,learn to make the layout of the game,and also create a base for which the game can be made. Also on the anvil is a course on Game Art which will be a five year course starting from the next year.”

Ravi Jain,who owns one of the franchisees for Arena Animation says,”We offer a one year course in Game Art,which basically teaches a student the basics of the game industry,right from character creation to the storyboard development. Along with it comes the options of learning multi-dimension game developing which enables a student to widen the horizon.”

And as far as work options in India are concerned,Tahsildar states,“The gaming industry is huge in India. A lot of online gaming companies focus exclusively on game design. More importantly it is companies like India Games,and Zapak,which usually take in designers and developers to develop content for them.” Adding to that Jain says,”A lot of IT firms also outsource the game design and development characters for gaming companies,so a fresher has an option of even working with them. As far as money is concerned it is a case of showcasing one’s creativity. The better you get the better are the money prospects.”