Careers in mobile game development

Careers in mobile gamedevelopment

Not all professions require you to compromise on your passions. Work and play have become
synonymous in many professions, and quite literally so in the case of game development. We
dive into the world of mobile game development to see how viable it is as a career option.

The ‘Jobs’ page at Indiagames.com is always populated
with new vacancies for game developers

Mobile game development is still a relatively small field in India. There aren't too many mobile game development fi rms and very few institutions actually off er courses dedicated to mobile game development. It is quite possible that the few students who do take up this career are simply enthusiasts who would like to convert mobile gaming into an occupation. Sumeet Shrivastava, Center Academic Head, Arena Animation (Andheri, Mumbai) says, “Most students who are interested in gaming careers have very little or no knowledge of what it takes to make a career out of it. There are several layers to the gaming industry, which also requires programming knowledge. However, students do enter the gaming field as character designers, level designers, game environment modeling artists, etc.”

AN INCREASE IN POPULARITY

Smackall Games is a another Mobile Game Development portal

Figures suggest that there is an upsurge in the field of mobile game development. This is quite evident with the large number of gaming domains that have taken roots all over the world. With home platforms such as the PC, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 and PS2, and handheld devices like DS, PSP, iPhone and Android-based devices, aspiring developers are spoilt for choice as far as picking a singular career is concerned. And the addition of new technologies like Kinect for Xbox 360 and PlayStation Move for PS3 give game developers opportunities to expand

their horizons. However, when it comes to mobile games specifically, the scope is comparatively narrower, but by no means negligible. “A NASSCOM report projects the gaming market in the world (from the demand perspective) to grow from $21 billion in 2008 to $53.6 billion by 2012. The Indian gaming industry is expected to grow from $167 million in 2008 to $830 million by 2012,” says Sumeet. “Nowadays gaming has found various outlets like Xbox, PlayStation, mobile phones, and even DTH media. It looks interesting and students feel that it is a fun career option. So students tend to get attracted to this field very easily.”

IS IT THE RIGHT DECISION?

Making the right decision about your career solely depends on the kind of education you have

received, the passion you have for the job, and the growth opportunities. The curriculum at Arena

Multimedia makes it possible for any undergraduate to take up the course with a mere 10+2 education requirement. The Center Academic head explains, “While any 10+2 student can opt for a course in game or art design, a good game designer should have a passion for games and an eye for detail. Students also need to have a good sense of concept and visualization, composition, aesthetics and timing, storytelling, and an interest in research and experimentation. Students must also have good taste in music, a sense of rhythm, and sound

knowledge of colors and lighting.” Developing games may not always be fun. It can be quite stressful when you are faced with deadlines and when you battle program bugs. Most institutes

that provide game development courses in  India do not require you to have any significant prior
knowledge of the field. Mumbai University, among other noted universities, provides Advanced Java as an optional subject in a few courses that they offer. This lays the foundation for mobile game development.

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS?

There’s a fair amount of learning and practice that goes in before you can embark upon a career
in game development. Sumeet summarizes the curriculum offered at Arena Multimedia. “The
course off ered from Arena Animation not only gives students an overview of the development
of computer games from their inception to the present day, but also prepares them to be an active part of game development. Through seminars, workshops and practical sessions, students are taught to effectively use visual storytelling.” “The course will help students acquire knowledge about the fundamentals of games, history of games, design and composition, drawing, concept visualization, storytelling techniques, character and environmental modeling, lighting and texturing, rigging, animation, use of motion capture data, 3D effects, sound design, user interface design, level design, etc. The curriculum is structured in a way that a trained student can use his creative and technical skills effectively.”

Is the PC dead?

Is the PC dead?

It has served us for decades, but the end is now approaching for desktop computers. Sleek 

mobile devices could replace the old fossils.

It seems as if Thomas J Watson was right after all: Watson, Chairman of the Board of IBM till 1956, had made this legendary quote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." This forecast has been ridiculed for a long time, but as far as the personal computer is concerned, it will soon be a reality. There is growing evidence that the PC era is coming to an end. With small, powerful machines, new freedoms that users want, and new services that make computing omnipresent like oxygen, the digital world is transforming into something in which communication, data is readily accessible anywhere, anytime. Beginning of the end:
desktop computers are losing importance The classic PC that sits on a desk with a noisy fan is now too bulky for this new world—it’s too stationary and inflexible. The computer revolution might well be over; the concept itself has become outdated. It is now time for multifunctional mobile machines in the form of smartphones and ultra-slim media tablets that fit into the pockets of our jackets. They use computing power which is called on demand at any time and is always available like tap water. They form a new type of network that will possibly make the possession of today’s computers completely redundant. Considering that approximately 84 million PCs were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2011, the view that the PC generation is over would seem far-fetched to some. But things change very quickly in the digital world. When IBM and the small company Microsoft signed a contract for developing an operating system for the planned IBM PC in November 1980, Bill Gates' secretary Miriam Lubow saw her young boss walking into the office in a three-piece suit one morning. Gates was usually dressed very casually; he occasionally had pizza crumbs on his t-shirt and his glasses were constantly blurred. Shortly after this, three men arrived in jeans and sneakers with thick briefcases. They said that they had come from IBM. The engineers had tried to adapt to the style of Gates—and Gates had done exactly the same. When they met in his office, they all began to laugh. But the smiles were soon wiped off the faces of the people at IBM. Given the sheer size of the company, what nobody could have imagined, happened. At the beginning of the nineties, IBM, which had practically pocketed the abbreviation PC as a brand name for its computer in the initial years, lost the market leadership to its competitor. Since the beginning of the new millennium, market research firms which closely follow the worldwide PC market, such as Gartner and IDC, have been seeing increasingly weak demand. The sales figures are declining; only notebooks and netbooks
have been doing well. People today need devices that are mobile, handy, and flexible thanks to a variety of available apps which can connect them to the Internet, allow them to have fun, and of course work at any time and any place. The trend is obvious, even if demand for low-cost conventional machines has been revived due to the financial crisis, the PC is dying.



Revolution: From heavy colossus to 
interconnected multimedia PC ...


The term “Personal Computer” was first used in October 1968 in the magazine Science, in an advertisement for a programmable calculator by Hewlett Packard, the HP 9100A. The device,
weighing 20 kg and costing US$ 4,900, had hardly anything in common with what was later referred to as the personal computer. It was soon clear that the PC revolution had nothing to do
with hardware. When the Apple computers came to the market, business people first thought
they were toys, but VisiCalc, the mother of all spreadsheet programs appeared in 1979 and changed the business world. Operating systems—first DOS, then Windows—in combination with a software suite for the office made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. The appeal of PCs was in the fact that everyone could now have a machine which could be transformed into an amazing number of devices with the help of software. At the beginning of the 90s, when the Internet found its way to the masses, the formerly islanded PCs got interconnected: and the PC, with a browser, was now something that led the people into a new world. iVolution: cell phones turn into computers At the same time, mobile telephony became suitable for mass consumption.
In the early and mid 90s, there were only a few hundred thousand cell phone users even in developed countries, but by the year 2000, millions more were coming on board. Now in the second decade of the 21st century and the rise of social media, it has turned out that we are no longer living in the information era but in a new communication era. These coexisting technological threads are best when bundled into one device: the smartphone. The flow of digital media is now in the process of turning into a part of our environment. We no longer want to remain in front of a desktop PC, we want to be completely digital. With stationary, heavy computers, this is not possible. Only post-PC technology will do. With the iPod (2001), iPhone (2007) and iPad (2010), Apple, the former pioneer of the personal computer, stepped out of its niche and became a trendsetter for digital entertainment and mobile Internet use. Apple showed
that operating a smartphone could be a pleasure, an important distinction from Microsoft, which was listlessly tinkering around with Windows Mobile. Steve Ballmer tried to fix the mess by simply defining tablets also as PCs. Apple, however, called these “post-PC devices”. Even until a few years ago, the PC was solid as a rock. But attacks had begun even in the eighties: viruses spread via floppy disks, long before the first Internet worms and malicious programs that spy on PCs or take control of them. Many consider the PC to be a digital counterpart of themselves, but the border between it and the network, ie the outside world, began to disappear— for better or for worse. Even while new viruses attempted to penetrate every defense, users were drawn to the Internet because of their curiosity. Scott McNealy, head of Sun Microsystems, once perkily declared that the classic PC was dead - "The network is the computer", he said. It was still too early in the nineties, but it’s actually happening today: the migration from the PC to the cloud, cloud computing, has begun. The PC loses its P. Large data centers comprising of thousands and thousands of interconnected, impersonal and easily substitutable computing resources,
are now increasingly available to the online community for use based on requirements.


 The future: miniaturization continues, 
  the interface falls behind


 If one looks into the future, something amazing appears to be emerging: hardware is disappearing, and only the functions remain. The always-and-everywhere network will ensure that you can always be online, and write, read, call, watch TV, listen to music, search, blog, all without having to carry around bulky equipment. With the miniaturization of components, a 20 kg PC can be reduced to such an extent that the technology moves inconspicuously in the background. Perhaps it will be integrated into the streetlights one day, and will be a part of a public infrastructure like today's increasingly common Wi-Fi hotspots. Instead of having to carry a notebook or a tablet around, one would then have the option to use instances of virtual screens, keyboards and other future ideas. There are already systems that project screen contents on any surface—clothes, palms, a park bench—and also cameras that detect where you are pointing and what gestures you are making. You use your hand instead of a mouse and just a small tinge of reflected light is enough to recognize
that something has to be done. The next step after post-PC technology is a completely new and intense feeling of ever-present, transparent communication. With a simple flick of the hand, whatever you need will be right there. What will remain then is only the recreation of an interface; the user interface of the device, which is the point at which doing anything a computer used to do, without a computer, will feel like a bit like magic.