Seminar on Gaming Industry 2008 @ ICAT, Chennai

On the 18th of April 2009 a seminar was organized in ICAT to inform aspiring Gamers how to be a part of the gaming Industry and provide expert guidance on the same. The seminar mainly addressed the needs of the Final year engineering graduates who have a flair for gaming and want to be beyond playing and make a career in Gaming.

The seminar featured speakers from India’s pre-eminent gaming companies – RZ2 Games (Goa!!!) & Raptor Entertainment Ltd (Bangalore). The first session was addressed by Mr.Antony Whitaker – Technical Director, RZ2 Games. Mr. Anthony is a technical visionary who served on the technical teams that developed titles such as X-Men Legends, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Doom 3 and Quake IV.

He expressed the view that gaming was in the forefront of technology and therefore requires employees who are highly skilled. He also quoted ABI Research which has predicted that the gaming industry will grow to over $65 billion by 2011. (Currently at ~$35 billion). He also shared some interesting statistics about gamers in his address. Did you know that Thirty three is the average age of a gamer, Forty is the average age of the clients who purchase games, 60% of Americans play games regularly, 38% of these are females and 70% of parents feel that gaming with their kids brings the family closer???

The second session was by Mr.Jayanth Kannan, COO & Co-Founder of Raptor Entertainment Ltd. He gave an insight about the gaming industry in India and also reiterated the following points of Antony - trend which is prevailing currently. The male and female gamer gap is shrinking. More women are into gaming at present, that gaming is no longer only accepted by anti-social teenage boys, the global game industry is growing at a rapid pace and Mobile gaming is increasing in the market. The future of gaming is Casual and Online games and globally, gaming is a widely accepted medium of entertainment and will continue to grow in that regard.

Both speakers highlighted the job opportunities available in the Gaming Industry and spoke of the many jobs that existed at different levels including Game Producer, Game Programmer, Game Artist (Concept Artist, Modeler, Animator & Texture Artist), Level Designer and Game Tester amongst others.

The audience were very pleased to hear from these experts and even more thrilled to know that there exists a global opportunity within India for Game segment and Gaming is the entertainment medium of choice in the future!