We literally ‘jumped’ with joy when we were invited to the Jump Games HQ to have a look at their workplace and more importantly, to talk to the people who make the beautiful games that you play on your mobile phones.
GameGuru.in has an exclusive interview with the Executive VP Ninad Chhaya, which we will be uploading later this week. However, most importantly we got an opportunity to speak with the heads of the graphics, game designing and the technology departments of Jump Games, who gave us valuable information that would be helpful to you if you are interested in charting a career in the gaming industry.
First up, we spoke to Ninad Chhaya who feels that the best time to get into the gaming industry is right now as it is booming in India and also clarifies the misconception that only programmers and graphic designers are welcome in the creative world of gaming. There are other departments like testing and biz-dev too.
He said, “There are other segments available in the gaming industry across various verticals where they can look at getting into the gaming space. You could look at entering the gaming industry as a tester where you would be spending time testing games or you could look at the biz-dev side on sales and marketing. You could look at overseeing, if you have good skills in project management; you could look at production side of things. If you are a creative artist or a sound designer or if you are good with graphics or animations, definitely there is an art side of it. Audio visuals and sound are another aspect; programming definitely is an option. So it is not just programming or graphics which are an option.”
Ninad is regularly approached by aspiring professionals who play games for twelve to fourteen hours a day and now want to become a part of the gaming industry. He advises that people who want to make it into the gaming industry should look where their core competency lies and accordingly just go ahead and follow their passion. Ninad also feels that passion is an important thing that aspiring gaming professionals should have. He explains, “One of the main points to be a part of the gaming industry is to be passionate about what you do. Apart from that, tools can be taught, skills are something that you need to have and passion is a must.”
After meeting Ninad Chhaya, we then went and had a little chat with Advait Goregaonkar who is the Art & Animation - Team Leader. Interestingly proving Ninad’s point, we came to know that Advait is an interior designer who had a keen interest in games and followed his passion when he joined Jump Games as a Junior Level artist three years ago and then worked his way up. His advice to people who want to come in to gaming, “You need to play a lot of games and live them. You have to study games, what are games and how do you accept the challenges and how to create graphics. If I talk about mobile gaming, it is the smallest screen ever possible you can play upon and to extract in that character, its characteristics, its essence and everything into the smallest possible size, it is a challenge in itself. Therefore, you have to study it and that is the way you get into it. The first thing is you have to play games.”
When asked about the time taken to develop games, he quipped, “It depends on what kind of game it is. Normal course of game could take around graphics team to make upon, it takes around a month or so to make one game, a normal, medium size game as such. But some games would extend to three to six months and some games, of the smallest span may come to seven days also.”
Then we headed to the conference room where we met Jaideep Hotha, Wireless Technology Manager of Jump Games. Jaideep looks after the technology department and told us that they work on three main platforms- J2ME or Java to Mobile Edition, BREW, which is the C platform by Qualcomm and also the binary runtime environment for wireless. They also work on the Symbian platform as well as on 3D games.
Hotha remarked that the most important thing is that there are no institutes or courses available that teach wireless technology. Most of the employees who start with Jump are either freshers who have their basic education with engineering, mostly computer engineers and experienced people who have been working on some other domain but on the wireless side of it, like for example, application development, banking, mobile banking.
His suggestion to the professionals who want to make a career in gaming is, “I would suggest, most important is that when you are choosing gaming as career, you must have interest, first of all, in gaming and faith that gaming is one of the most upcoming areas of careers that everyone is taking very seriously.”
Next up to enter the conference room was Jump Games’ Lead Game Designer - Jaydev Dhakan. Before joining Jump Games, this commerce graduate did a lot of odd technology jobs like programming, graphics and teaching animation. He started as a games tester and then moved to the game designing team that he now heads.
He has to basically come up with ideas and put them down in a proper organized manner so that the entire development team can handle and understand it and convert that particular idea into a final finished product. For that, he his helped by the marketing team who give inputs about the kind of games that are required by the clients. Jaydev then conceptualizes the entire idea and then sends it to marketing team, who in turn send it to the client for approval. Once the concept has been approved, they break it down into meticulous segments like characters and products. For example, what is the game going to look like or why is that character going to walk that way or why is he going to run that way or how fast or slow the character is going to be. Then there is level designing which is an important part in game designing. These are the things he has to explain to the development team.
Jaydev feels that freshers who want to make a mark in the game designing industry should first understand games. He said, “For some one who is a complete fresher, my advice would be to first understand games are. Everyone has ideas that this would make a good game that would make a good game. It is bringing down that idea to the final product; that is what skill is all about. So brush up on your skills.”
He also explained to us that a good game designer should have a lot of knowledge. Jaydev says, “A good game designer is a person who has a variety of interests, someone who understands psychologies and has passion for philosophy and understand the technical side of things like how programming and graphic designing work. He is like a know-it-all kind of a person who knows everything. He is more like a movie director. He should know a bit about everything that goes into making the game and someone who is passionate about gaming could get into testing. That’s how you learn a lot.”
So all in all, if your passion is gaming and you have the necessary skills, nothing can stop you from making your mark in the booming field of gaming.
