Meeting Reports
Launch Meeting of IGDA's Hyderabad Chapter.
IGDA's Hyderabad Chapter was formally launched on Thursday, 24th of November 2005, with 46 game developers in attendance. There was participation from all the major game development companies across the city. The Launch Meeting was hosted by Aurona Technologies and the people in attendance were some of the most accomplished game developers from across Hyderabad covering the entire gamut of game development related services - programmers, animators, game testers, mathematicians and also, computer science engineering students aspiring to join the game development industry soon.
Aurona Technologies, the company that has initiated the opening of this chapter, is a leading game development company headquartered in London with a development centre in Hyderabad. The other game development companies with significant participation were JAMDAT, FX Labs and Catalytic.
The launch event was a momentous one for the audience and for the city of Hyderabad, as it reinforces the fact that the city could soon become a hub of the game development industry, in the same manner as it has become a centre of excellence in the global software industry. This was a first-of-its-kind initiative taken to unify the game developers of the city as a community with the overall purpose of enhancing their skills and exposure, to ultimately serve the global industry better. The evening began with Amol Gurwara of Aurona Technologies giving a detailed presentation about IGDA and its objectives, the benefits it offers to the developer community and the various avenues for collaboration with internationally aclaimed game developers. He stressed on the need for greater interaction between game developers working across companies by using the forums provided by IGDA, which is through local chapters, special interest groups and online forums.
This was followed by a presentation by Sumit Mehra of Jamdat. Sumit's presentation began with some interesting classification of the types of games and went on to describe some of the essential elements that constitute a game and the broad categories games fit into. He concluded his presentation by explaining in detail, the various specialised positions that are available as career options for people wanting to be a part of the game development industry, encompassing games across all platforms - mobile, PC and console.
What followed next, was an interactive session, with views being exchanged on diverse topics ranging from "The role that Indian game studios are playing in the global landscape and how that is going to change in the near future" to "The pros and cons of being a specialist in an emerging industry". There were parallels drawn from the animation industry where the initial years saw companies taking up fee based projects from International animation studios and only then, venturing out into developing original content.
The formal session was brought to a close after a brief discussion regarding the agenda for subsequent meets and suggestions were taken from the members, about the technical topics that they would like guest lectures on. Over the dinner that followed, groups of developers had a chance to interact with each other and indulge in discussions of common interest.
Some of the photographs of the event:
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