gaming courses

Why Study Gaming?

5 Compelling Reasons for Studying Gaming

 

Do you dream of becoming a game developer or designer? Did you know that you can study gaming in a professional college and turn your dream into reality?

The advantages of choosing a gaming career are:

Gaming Industry is Growing

The global gaming industry is growing at a CAGR of 7.8% generating revenues of USD 108.9 bn, as per the Global Games Market Report released by Newzoo in Q2 of 2017.

It is expected to reach USD 128.5 bn in revenues by 2020.

And, mobile games contributes to about 42% of the total revenues in 2017, amounting to USD 46.1bn.

Historically, games were only made for consoles and personal computers. Therefore, it was hard to convince parents and educators to let the children study gaming.

However, mobile and tablet games are gaining popularity now, and India is the second largest market for smartphones in the world.

The growing trend in gaming requires skilled professionals and budding game entrepreneurs to make games that cater to the Indian audience.

Jobs in Indie Game Companies, Gaming Start-ups, and Multinational Companies

According to Statista, India’s gaming market will reach INR 71 billion by 2021. Employment opportunities are wide-ranging. The indie game companies, gaming start-ups and MNCs in India are hiring for specialist roles like unity programmers, unreal programmers, concept artists, game artists, game testers, and so on. Are you ready to join these companies?

A search across all the job portals give us a clear picture of the number of open roles required by the gaming industry.

Real-life Applications and Increased Demand for Gamification

Gamification is the application of gaming mechanisms in non-game situations. The examples of gamification are games that train nurses, pilots and army personnel. The uses of gamification can be seen in child education, fitness, social responsibility, corporate training, customer engagement, and so on.

Examples of gamification are:

BYJU’s learning app uses gamification to teach maths to children.

Corporates app use gamification to simulate and train their employees on data security.

Good Infrastructure and Specialized Courses Available Near You

We collaborate with Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFAU) to offer B.Tech in Game Development and Computer Science and B.F.A in Game Design and Game Art. We are the only college in India offering courses at this price point.

We have specialised courses based on industry research and have a lot of experience in educating India’s future game developers. To know more about our courses and why choose us, read here.

Success Stories to Inspire You

There are a lot of success stories in the field of gaming. Here are some of Backstage Pass alumni who have made it big and are still enjoying the journey. Click here to get inspired.

Game Development is a Not Boring

If you want to make games that appeal to gamers, many elements must be unique, like the story, characters, art, animation, controls, background music/ sound, and so on.

For an innovative mind, game making is the ultimate incentive as it lets you create new things. It is enriching and inspirational.

Game Development is much more than game designing and game programming.

You need an artist (concept, 2D, 3D), writers, programmers, designers, testers, creative director, programme directors, and so on. There is something for everyone to learn and enjoy.

Ubisoft employees talk about how their parents reacted when they told them that they wanted to work in the video game industry.

If you are passionate about making games and willing to work hard, you can achieve anything you want. Prove all the people who doubt you wrong by choosing a career of your choice.

Play Video Games

Do Parents Show More Empathy Towards Kids Playing Video Games

 

The increase in smartphone user base has increased video game penetration among all ages in India and abroad. The other devices used to play games are consoles, computers, and tablets.

The permissible screen-time has been a major point of discussion across the parent community, and there is no broad consensus on it.

Meanwhile, the gaming community has been actively promoting playing more video games. In the year 2010, Jane McGonigal, game designer and author of the book “Reality is Broken – Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” presented a TED talk on this topic.

 

In her presentation, she talks about making games that can solve real-world problems and she encourages kids and adults to play more games.

Though, there are arguments that reject video games as they are considered addictive, violent, individualistic, aggressive, competitive, engrossing and mainly alien to us as teachers and parents. There are quite a few studies and research that support the cause of gaming and argue that it benefits children in various ways.

Therefore, parents have started empathising with their children and allowing them to play video games on consoles, personal computers, mobiles, tablets and so on.

Some of the reasons that have caused this change in the parents’ perceptions are:

Powerful Learning Tools

The video games improve child’s hand-eye coordination, develops fine-motor skills, improves problem-solving skills, logical reasoning, and build computer literacy.

Games help the child to get exposed to technology, programming and design very early in their lives. There are a lot of children who can program well and have built apps and games on their own.

Social Interaction and Bonding

Games help to nurture and build a relationship with the teenage children. They serve as an excellent tool for bonding with the family and children. Playing with the kids will help parents communicate well with them.

The social-impact games that reward players who complete a task like cleaning the garbage in the locality, making new friends, helping neighbours are gaining popularity. The children playing these games can develop empathy towards others in their day-to-day lives. Researchers have proved that games can make the world a better place.

High-Quality and Realistic Content

Games have evolved into engaging video games. They have depth, rich narrative and are engaging the audience. The ever-improving technology also provides players with better graphics that give a more “realistic” virtual playing experience.

Sunrise Sector

The gaming industry is the fastest growing market with lots of opportunities for game developers, game artists and game designers.

The companies look for skills like communication, grit, teamwork, leadership, follower-ship and perseverance while hiring. Some of the firms recruit video game players who are performing well in leader-boards of the top games in the market today.

The parents are encouraging their children to take up hobbies like gaming, and they know that nurturing these hobbies will help their children take it up as their profession.

There is a growing community of players, and game players, players, and parents who understand the uses of playing video games and empathise with their kids more than before.

However, the parents should be cautious and monitor the kids who play video games. They can do this by keeping the computers, consoles, smartphones, and tablets in the common areas of their house. They can not only restrict the screen time but also limit access to smartphones, tablets by using parental controls as all the games are not suitable for children of all ages.

Game Design

Why Game Design is Important

 

Game design is a knowledge area that includes game genres, game production, marketing, publishing, and project management. Game design is the common core where game art and game programming take off from to create the game.

Game Design involves market research, level design, designing content, environment, gameplay, characters, and the storyline of a game. As a game designer, you must know the aesthetics of design and its interaction with technology well.

Game Designer roles are often occupied by experienced game developers or artists as this role needs a range of skills spanning design, development, marketing, and publishing.
This blog looks into how game design influences game art and game programming.

Game Design Influences Game Art

A game artist implements the game designer’s idea. He is responsible for creating a unique visual experience for the user by creating art assets that resonate with the game design. For example, a game created to teach nurses about sanitation should use colours such as white, green, and blue as these are the colours typically found in a hospital.
A game artist demonstrates his expertise as a game designer if he achieves this seamless integration without sacrificing the artistic vision and compromising the platform’s technical limits.

Game Design Influences Game Programming

A game cannot be made without close collaboration between game designers and game programmers. If game designers are responsible for the creative vision of the game, the game programmers take the design specifications given by game designers, code and integrate art and sound into it and create a playable game.
Typically game programmers map the terrain of the game environment, implement artificial intelligence engines for non-player characters and connect the player input through the controller to the events happening on-screen.
Decisions related to technology choices, level design implementation, and many other factors are the game programming aspects that the game designer decides upon.

Multi-faceted Role

A game designer has to work with all involved in the game development. As game development is an intense, collaborative process, you will find hardcore computer scientists (who design artificial intelligence engines and complex graphics), illustrators, concept artists, and animators (who bring the characters to life) working in your team. As a game designer, you help all of them collaborate to make the game.

Job Boards and Resources to find game development jobs

How to Find Game Development Jobs

 

There are many of job boards and resources that you can access to find gaming jobs. Some of the resources that will help you find your dream job are listed below:

Websites and Job Boards

To know the available job openings, check out the websites like Naukri, Gamasutra, LinkedIn and Indeed, and the International Game Developers Association.

Gamedevmap is a website that helps you find all the game development companies in a geographical location. It tells you the name of the company, gives a link to its website, and other details like type of company, city, state and country where it is located. This kind of search is useful if you are looking to work in a particular city. By clicking on the company’s name, the website of the company opens. You can go to the “Careers” page to look for job opening posted by them.

The job portals like Naukri, Gamasutra, LinkedIn, Indeed, Shine, Glassdoor also list jobs in gaming companies.

These websites give detailed job description, company information, and employee ratings.

You can use additional filters like date posted, industry, company and size of the company to narrow your search. Also, you can opt to receive job alerts from these websites regularly by email to keep track of the latest available employment opportunities.

 Networking

Most companies hire through referrals. Therefore, it makes sense to build your professional network even while you are studying. Both your personal and professional networks help you find your dream job.

You can build your network when you participate in game jam competitions, alumni networks, and gaming forums. By attending these events and competitions, you meet and network with other game programmers, artists and game developers. You collaborate with other gaming enthusiasts to make games. Many of the indie game companies have started this way.

There are online and offline gaming forums. You can enrol and participate in these gaming forums. These gaming forums build gaming communities that help each other, share knowledge and discuss current trends in gaming.

Internship opportunities

An internship gives you first-hand experience of working in a company.

Most companies offer the full-time job to students who completed an internship at their organisation. Choosing your internship well and performing well during the internship will land you in a job at the company.

Read this article to know how to choose an internship in gaming.

Industry events

In India, you can also network at industry events like game developer conference, game jam competitions, industry seminars, workshops.

Make friends with people in the industry by talking to people who do the same thing you want to do. These people will help you land a job in your favourite company.

The NASSCOM Game Developer Conference will be held in November in Hyderabad. Don’t miss the action here.

LinkedIn

Use LinkedIn to build your professional network by connecting with people you met offline at industry events and conferences. You can add your portfolio and projects and seek recommendations from your other connections on LinkedIn. Your connections endorse your skills and expertise. LinkedIn is used by people throughout the world to find job opportunities and build a professional network.

You can also go to websites of game developers and indie game companies to check out job openings.

Though not a complete list, you can use it as a starting point to find your dream job.

A Seminar on Scientific Visualisation – By Sathish Kottravel, a Doctoral Researcher at Linköpings University, Sweden

 

A picture speaks a thousand words.Therefore, the world prefers that acomplex ideais conveyed through an image.

Scientists deal with huge amounts of data when dealing with physical phenomena such as the weather, space, human brain activity, and molecules. They visualise the data using various techniques of image generation. Since these images are based on data, they are accurate. Also, they are more comprehensible than the raw data. Scientists use the images to explore the data better.

According to Wikipedia, scientific visualisation is used to graphically illustrate scientific data to enable scientists to understand, illustrate, and derive insights from the data. Scientific visualisation is a subset of computer graphics which in turn is a branch of computer science.

Seminar

We invited Sathish Kottravel, a doctoral researcher at the Linköpings University of Sweden to Backstage Pass, to conduct a seminar on Scientific Visualisation and its significance in game development.

We bring you an excerpt of his interview and a peek into the seminar.

About Sathish

Sathish Kottravel is a doctoral student at Linköpings University in Sweden. He specialises in Scientific Visualisation. He has published research papers in Scientific Visualisation.

His rendezvous with computer graphics started when he started working, after a bachelor’s in computer engineering, as a simulation software developer. After 6 years of work, he joined the master’s programme in Advanced Computer Graphics from Linköpings University in Sweden. After the master’s programme, he joined the university’ research force as a Research Engineer and went on to become a doctoral researcherspecialising in scientific visualisation.

Scientific Visualisation – The Seminar

Sathish started the seminar withimages of scientific visualisation and introduced the concept to us. The very techniques used for scientific visualisation also power the 3D graphics engines of game design tools. This is the common thread between scientific visualisation and game development.

Further, he spoke about the application of molecular and volume visualisation to 3D graphics and games.To elaborate,he explained how thecommon techniques such as raycasting and the depth of a field are used in making games.

The use of aesthetics in scientific visualisation was also a dominant theme of the seminar. He described the common features that aesthetics and game art and design share.

The session was interactive,and Sathish answered many questions that students had.He enthralled the audience with images and graphs showing the effective and right application of scientific visualisation.

Interview with Sathish Kottravel

Sathish, thanks for visiting us at Backstage Pass and spending 3 days of your vacation here with us. Please tell us something about your research interest?

“Thanks for having me here. I loved the interaction with the students. I specialise in the field of scientific visualisation. This is a unique field of study where mathematics, programming and aesthetics overlap. This field is also quite interdisciplinary, meaning the knowledge that you gained can be applied in many areas such as game development, special effects, graphics application developer, research, and so on.”

Can you tell us about your research in this field?

” I do research in thevisualisation of scientific data. Currently,I specialize in molecular visualisation. Here, my primary goal is to explore material structures and proteins at theatomic level in high-detail. Also, my research implicitly includes volume visualisation at low-detail representation.

My team of researchers work in close collaboration with physicists to help them understand the scientific process through any desired visualisation techniques. Some of my research publications are published here.

How is this related to computer graphics and gaming?

“The volume visualisation techniques such as volume rendering is often used in 3D graphics. For example, realistic rendering of fire. In molecular visualisation, we use techniques such as ambient occlusion to create the effect of soft shadows to improve the depth perception. The depth of field is also another technique inspired by digital photography thatfocuseson one plane. All these techniques are quite common in 3D games that borrow ideas from computer graphics.”

What are the new technologies that are being used in Scientific Visualisation?

“The new technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and haptics are used for scientific visualisation.”

What Activities Did You Conduct for the Backstage Pass Students?

“On Day 1, I conducted a seminar to give an overview of scientific visualisation and its significance in the field of 3D graphics. On day 2, I organised a workshop.  The aim of the workshop is to introduce shader programming tasks to implement special effects filters. We framed the tasks into basic, intermediate and advanced levels and day 3 was open for discussions and Q&A.

How was Your Experience Interacting with the Students of Backstage Pass?

“During the seminar, the students were very enthusiastic about the techniques that I presented in the seminar and had many questions. They asked about GPU optimization and raytracing.

During the workshop on Day 2, the student’s feedback was excellent. Also, I observed that the students are good at programming. They could solve all the tasks that we assigned to them. They showed interest in extending the basic ideas discussed on Day 1.

This shows that the institute has awell-structured syllabus and active environment for learning game development. I am certain that the students are industry ready.”

What is Your Advice toBackstage Pass Students?

“Backstage Pass has an excellent infrastructure that is easily accessible to students. The college has strong ties with the gaming industry, and these industry collaborations put themmiles ahead as the ties increase the students’ industry interaction multi-fold. To stand out in the crowd, students must make use of this resourceful environment as much as possible.”

 

Thank you, Sathish, once again, for sharing knowledge and giving a glimpse of scientific visualisation in gaming.

Backstage Pass alumnus game - Enemy Waters Naval Simulation Game

Backstage Pass Alumnus Launched Enemy Waters, a Naval Simulation Game

 

TeaPOT Games has launched a naval battle simulation game called Enemy Waters.

About Enemy Waters

Enemy Waters is a naval battle simulator where you can command and manoeuvre warships and submarines to fight pirates. The aim is to defeat the enemy warships and submarines using deck guns, depth charges, and torpedoes (a torpedo is a cigar-shaped self-propelled underwater missile fired from a ship or submarine). By defeating your enemies, you can conquer seaports and oil wells.

The game features the submarines and warships from nine countries. They were used in World War II, Cold War, and some of them are part of the current fleets of leading navies.

This is an action-strategy simulation game where you ambush and destroy Pirate John’s convoy by laying the perfect trap. You are the captain of the ship and you can choose to sneak past Pirate John’s convoy or face their torpedoe salvo directly and launch a counter-attack before they destroy your ship. (A salvo is a slew of weapons released from one or more warship or submarine in quick succession.)

The simulation grade controls will let you fire missiles and torpedoes, engage silent running on your submarine to sneak past the enemies, control the depth of your submarine and dive into deeper waters as you escape the depth charge from enemy warships.

We bring you an exclusive interview with Satish Chandra, founder of TeaPOT Games and an alumnus of Backstage Pass Institute of Gaming & Technology:

Why did you choose to make a naval battle simulator?

“The inspiration to make this game came from the many anxious moments spent watching underwater war films. We wanted to create an authentic submarine experience for the gamers who play a lot of mobile games.”

Can you elaborate the stages the game went through from start to finish?

“The game’s combat mechanics went through many iterations to get that perfect balance between simulation and fun. We felt we were spending a lot of time experimenting without any sense of direction. However, in the end, we are satisfied with the well-balanced combat mechanics you see in the game. Our effort didn’t go in vain. All this was possible as we were very clear about our objectives and target audience.”

How difficult is it to play the game?

“At TeaPOT Games, we make hardcore games accessible to the mid-core mobile audience while sacrificing as little as possible on realism or attention to detail. This was the reason behind the success of our game, Avion Flight Simulator.

Enemy Waters is fairly easy to start, but as you progress and come to manage and lead a fleet of warships and submarines, you will compete with an even bigger enemy fleet. You will have to come up with your own tactics as the game slowly ramps up its level of difficulty. This is the challenge, and a big one in fact.”

Is it a multiplayer game? How do you get the best experience playing this game?

“We are working on the multiplayer part of the game at the moment. You can’t pay, buy stuff and win. Instead, you have to use the warships or submarines from the campaign. But unlike the single-player version of the game, you can only control one vessel(warship or submarine) in a 4 vs. 4 or 3 vs. 3 team battle.”

What challenges did you face? How did you overcome and what did you learn?

“One of the main challenges was optimising the game given that the game is both CPU and GPU-intensive. One of our major objectives was to have scalable graphics making the game look absolutely gorgeous on high-end devices and also be suitable for mid to low-end devices. This was not an easy task. We sank 2 months of work into optimising the game and found many unknown optimisation tricks in Unity 3D. We optimised the game to such an extent that it will run smoothly even on a 6-year-old flagship device. This is a major learning for us, something that we will certainly use in our upcoming games.”

Can you tell us about the monetisation aspects of this game?

“The game has two in-game currencies: oil and money. Both of these resources can be earned either by completing missions or by controlling oil wells and seaports. The player can purchase oil using real money and exchange the oil for money in a market that is inspired by the market system in AOE 2. In other words, the more you sell the less you will get for that particular resource. Every mission in the game requires a certain amount of oil to play, and the money is used to purchase new ships or perform repairs on the damaged vessels.”

Enemy Waters has been shortlisted for Indie Prize Showcase by Casual Connect USA 2017.

Check out the game play trailer and the game links on both Android and iOS.

Backstage Pass Institute of Gaming & Technology

Six Reasons to Invest in Your Education at Backstage Pass

 

1.    Collaboration with JNAFAU

Backstage Pass is the first college in India to collaborate with the Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFAU), a University Grants Commission (UGC) recognised State University.

At Backstage Pass, you can earn a bachelor degree of four-year duration in

B.Tech (Computer Science and Game Development) or

B.F.A (Game Design and Game Art).

2.    Faculty and Mentors

At Backstage Pass, you will not only learn game design, game art, and game development, from the experts, entrepreneurs, and practising game developers, but you will also learn how to market and monetise games.

 

Backstage Pass counts several entrepreneurs among its mentors. Click on the links to know their stories and their contributions in the gaming world.

Asar Dhandala, Sushil George, Rahul Sehgal, Jay Dev

 3.    Internships with Game Studios

Backstage Pass collaborates with game studios such as Purple Talk, Yes Gnome, GLU Games, Timuz, Plazio, and so on.

The students of Backstage Pass can take part in workshops, seminars, game-jam competitions, lectures, and company tours of game development studios. These studios also provide internship opportunities to the third year students every year.

Game Development Studios recruit interns and employees from Backstage Pass.

4.    Backstage Pass Gaming Forum

Backstage Pass Gaming Forum is an online discussion forum open only to students, alumni, faculty and mentors of Backstage Pass. This discussion forum serves as a platform where students can connect, ask questions, and seek feedback. It also acts as a job board where you can apply for employment and internships.

The alumni of Backstage Pass are working in some of the top gaming studios in the world. A section of the alumni are entrepreneurs creating games, while some of them are pursuing their masters in the well-known universities abroad.

Backstage Pass Gaming Forum builds an invaluable network of personal and professional connections from around the world.

 5.    Placements

The best game companies in the world like Ubisoft, EA Sports, Purple Talk, and so on seek to recruit the students of Backstage Pass.

70-80% of the students are placed every year with the rest opting out for higher education or entrepreneurship.

Backstage Pass students get placed as game developers, software testers, programmers, game programmers, game artists, and so on.

 6.    Incubator

Level2 is the Backstage Pass’ incubator for game development. It provides mentoring, infrastructure, marketing, and publishing support to the students and alumni of Backstage Pass. The first game at Level2 developed by students of Backstage Pass is ready for the release.

Backstage Pass incubator Level2 is located in the Backstage Pass college campus. It  is a creative space which has the facilities such as high-end computers, software, infrastructure, and mentors.

At Level2, mentors from the industry support the students in making games and launching entrepreneurial ventures. The incubation of a game takes about three to six months from inception to launch. The ventures are also eligible to get venture capital funding from Backstage Pass.

Check out this space for more on the first game made at Level2…

What are you waiting for?

Enroll Now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Reasons to be Excited About Backstage Pass Gaming Forum

 

The aim of Backstage Pass Gaming Forum is to build a network of students, mentors, and alumni of BSP. The students look for answers to questions, need feedback on solutions, and a sense of connectedness. The discussion forum is born to address these needs.

Backstage Pass Gaming Forum’ Benefits

Backstage Pass Gaming Forum intends to create a community to support passionate gamers. Some of the first order benefits are here:

Networking

The forum serves as a networking platform for all things gaming for Backstage Pass students. The students can interact with their peers and alumni of Backstage Pass on a variety of topics that interest them.

Knowledge Sharing

The Backstage Pass Gaming Forum is intended to act as a knowledge base. The discussions and answers to questions can bring out knowledge which otherwise remains personal. The students get exposure to mentors and alumni who have developed and marketed games and built indie game companies. The seniors and alumni share knowledge and best practices that will help the junior students excel.

Problem Solving

The students of Backstage Pass can post their specific queries and seek answers from alumni who have industry experience. This will help them manoeuvre difficult situations such as game architecture and design challenges.

Job Board

Backstage Pass Gaming Forum serves as a job board where the alumni, faculty, and Backstage Pass students can post job openings and internship opportunities. In this forum, students and alumni network and improve their career prospects by manifold.

Participation Rights

The students, faculty, and alumni of Backstage Pass alone can participate, network and contribute to the community.

We look forward to the Backstage Pass Gaming Forum evolving into a thriving destination like Facebook in due course.

 

Here is an info-graphic talking about the features of Backstage Pass Forum.

Five Reasons to be Excited About Backstage Pass Gaming Forum

 

Backstage Pass Institute

The Making of a Game | Backstage Pass Institute of Gaming and Technology

 

Work like it is a game. This is what die-hard gamers always wanted to do. The journey of two young game developers, Anand Dhavle and Anmol Nikam is no different.

Both Anmol and Anand were students of Backstage Pass. They work in game development companies and make games that they like to play.

IMG_20151110_160638

Our conversation began with the usual round of introduction. They spoke about the games they make, with each one filling in where the other left. The camaraderie they shared was ubiquitous. On the whole, it was inspiring to peep into their world and understand game development from their perspective.

 

Team Name: Digital Cartridge

No of team members: Two

Education: Anand studied B.Tech (Gaming) and Anmol studied B.F.A (Game Design). Alumni of Backstage Pass,

Important events: Participated in a game jam competition held at NGDC 2015 (Nasscom Game Development Corporation). They made a prototype of their game.

Games developed: Reverie, Rock It, and Blind Boy Project

Play Reverie by clicking here

They love to play games.

 

The Beginning

“It all started when we made a prototype of a game when participating in a game jam held at NGDC (Nasscom Game Development Conference) 2015 at Pune. We got a lot of positive feedback. And we decided to flesh it out further.”.

IMG_20151109_134740

 

What Was The Game About

“The game was called “Reverie” which means getting lost in thoughts, something similar to daydreaming. It is a gesture-based 2D platformer for the Android platform. You get to draw shapes to create objects, defeat enemies, and solve puzzles to help the little girl to get out of the world she is trapped in”.

IMG_20160303_211321

 

The Making

“It was a great learning experience. We underestimated the effort we need to put in to make a full-fledged game. Initially, we got our friends to play the game and tell us how they felt. Then, we improved the art-style, animation, added new graphics, changed the controls a number of times to get it right. We created unique mechanics which made our game fun to play. Lastly, we released it on platforms like Itch.io. Within five days, our game crossed 2000 downloads. We released the code into the public domain so that anyone can edit and enjoy the game. Here’s the link to the full source code”.

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What Was Your Motivation For Making This Game

“We wanted to present our ideas and make a game that we wanted to play. And we hoped that others will enjoy playing as well”.

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How Did You Choose To Work With Each Other

Anand said, “ Choosing the team member is very important. I would look for team players who can complement”. Anmol added, “Each team member should contribute and fill gaps in the process. Their ideas should be in sync though. We should play the same type of games and be aware of the type of game play that our target audience enjoy.”

 

What Did You Learn While Making The Game

They both echoed that a lot of patience, hard work and perseverance is required to complete a game like any other creative pursuit.

 

What Is Your Motivation to Play Games

“I enjoy playing games as we can break free from the routine and it relieves stress. I also like to play games as it is interactive and we can see our actions changing the outcome,” says Anand. “Playing games promotes skill building for sure. Also, it disconnects us from reality”, adds Anmol.

 

What is Your Advice For a Person Who Wants to Try Their Hand at Gaming

IMG_20170128_003842_020

“If you are sceptical about starting just like we were, start small and participate in a lot of small projects and game jam competitions. Being hands on will build your confidence and you will learn a lot in the process.”

“Learn to program, use a game engine, play a lot of games, start small, find a partner who can support you, enter competitions like game jam, and do projects.”, they said.

 

Here Are Some Valuable Thoughts to Ponder Over

“Try to make something different and be proficient in different art-styles, animations, graphics, controls. More than anything else, enjoy the entire process”.

The Backstage Pass Incubator for Game Development

Level2 – The Backstage Pass Incubator for Game Development

 

Level2, the Backstage Pass incubator, is a creative space with the all the facilities to support developing games through launching entrepreneurial ventures of our students.

An incubator acts like a seedbed. It provides mentoring, infrastructure, marketing and publishing support.Level2 is briskly putting together all these and more.

The Mentors

Experienced mentors from the industry guide our young entrepreneurs. Our mentors come from different fields of game making such as game art, game design, game publishing, and so on. Also, the mentors are either entrepreneurs themselves or are senior professionals from the various leading game development companies. Consequently, the mentoring quality is of the highest order.

The Process

Backstage Pass provides the infrastructure including the software, systems, and offices.The development of each game will take about 3 to 6 months from inception to launch.

The first phase of the incubation involves the market fit of the game. Once themarket fit is found, we move on to game design. Game design is followed up by game development, testing, a soft launch, a marketing phase and then, finally, launching the game.

The incubator is currently open only to the students and alumni of Backstage Pass.

The Selection Process

The selection process is simple:

  • Teams with 3-4 student members are selected.
  • These teams will develop the games.
  • Backstage Pass owns the games and the IP.
  • Teams that create winning games will be sent to international competitions such as the Microsoft Imagine Cup, Casual Connect, and so on.

Benefits

Students will have extensive connections with industry experts, develop games, learn to work as a team, and handlethe ups and downs of developing and taking a game to the market. In this process, they also learn from the experiences of mentors as well as fellow team members.

Marketing a game is both an art and science. While a small part of it could be learned, mostof it experiential. Student teams gain expertise in this area as well.

They know how to deal with failures, either collective or individual.

 

Looking Forward

Backstage Pass is eagerly looking forward to becoming the “go to”space for student game startups.