Game development's a great career now: Zynga

The production value and budgets of video games now rival Hollywood blockbusters. The cost of Grand Theft Auto 6, a hotly anticipated game, is said to be in the billions. The number of gamers too is rapidly rising.

This industry needs talent, and big global gaming companies – including Take Two Interactive, the maker of the Grand Theft Auto series, and EA – have set up large talent hubs in India.

Kishore Kichili, country head of India and SVP at Zynga, the maker of well-known games like Farmville and which is owned by Take Two, says theyhave around 600 employees in their Bengaluru office and that Zynga India is a microcosm of the overall company – almost every team globally has a representation in India.
Kichili says considering the surge in gamers in India, future games will have to be made for Indian audiences as well. That can only happen if more Indians take up gaming as a career.

Those with an interest in gaming, he says, should first identify their strengths, and narrow the area of game development they want to focus on. “Game development requires a range of skills – design, art, sound, production, product management, programming. It also requires strong problem-solving and analytical skills, creativity, and a passion for gaming,” he says.

So, if your dream is to be a game programmer, you need to be proficient in programming languages, while a game artist should have expertise in 3D modelling and animation softwares. Product managers should possess skills in game building to identify opportunities, perform competitive analysis, and be responsible for the game direction, which is informed by insights from deep analytics.

Techies with an artistic bent, though rare, are heavily sought after. Kichili says there is a role called technical artist, which is a blend of art and engineering skills, which are extremely rare to find in one person. “So we normally look at artists who are tech savvy and train them so that their art can be integrated into games,” he says.

More than anything though, Kichili says, he prizes the right mindset in new hires, as opposed to having a lot of gaming experience. “How do you go about finding solutions to address problems? That’s what’s important. ”

Game development, he says, requires constant experimentation. It’s normal for teams at Zynga, he says, to be working on over a dozen projects, but very few of them will end up as fully developed games.