How it took me 15 years to make a game!

Hello Everyone!

The above mentioned headline is not literal but encapsulates my journey in the gaming industry.  People, especially from the gaming industry please don’t get misled into taking me as a daft!

The adage, “life is a game”, holds so true when I think of myself and my trysts in the gaming industry.

Way back in 2001 (I was in the 11^th standard then), I had read an article in The Telegraph that a team of five youngsters from Bangalore made a game prototype which was acquired by Microsoft for $5000.  That time, I didn’t even know the dollar exchange rate but I knew who Microsoft was. It was that particular day when I decided that I want to make games for a living.

I loved gaming from a very early age, from outdoor to the 18 bit cartridge games, from Playstation/PC games and now to mobile gaming, summing it up in one line, let me just say that I was always game!

I soon figured it out that there are mainly two sectors which make a game happen – Game Art & Game Programming.  Programming involved lot of math and science where I wasn’t that confident, so I decided to pursue game art and make it my entry point into the gaming industry. I got enrolled myself into an institution which offered similar courses along with my graduation. While my friends and cousins were pursuing lucrative MBA and Engineering degrees from the IIMs and IITs, I was editing images in Photoshop but needless to say I was having FUN!  And most importantly my family supported my decision which made me more determined. A time came where I had to concentrate either on my graduation or something which I always wanted to pursue. I followed my heart over my head, I chose the second option, and naturally the consequence was my flunking in the final year of my graduation. But, I DON’T regret it.  

After completing my course it took me some time to get into a job, not into the gaming industry but something related animation/VFX and design. My idea of getting into the industry was very simple; get in there as a manager or as a janitor and then subsequently work your way up. The gaming and animation industry in India is like an egg, it’s difficult to break the shell but once you are in you can float and make it to the core, the yolk. Very soon, from a technical artist I became a techo – commercial guy and then a business development manager. Being a true blue Sindhi, I kind of enjoyed the role of business manager because money matters come naturally  to me, but one thing was for sure I had be into the gaming industry.

In 2014, after being rejected by most of the gaming companies in India, my first break into gaming was at Games2Win India Pvt Ltd. I joined as Business/Product Manager for online games. Within a week at G2W, I realized that games are no longer a product, it’s a service to your consumers, and to retain your consumers you need to upgrade your service at a rapid pace and keep innovating.  As a Product Manager, games to me was not art and programming anymore it involved analytics, numbers, data, digits, decimals, bing – bing, dot – dot and what not. However, my stint at Games2win was not long enough (but it was a solid one); I was there for just six months.  But it was my passion and interest of 14.6 years and my experience of 0.5 years (total of 15 years) which gave me the confidence of making my first game.

The Development – While traveling on local trains and buses, my eyes kept rolling towards people who were playing games on their smart phones. Most of them, I saw, were playing simple and casual games. I kept noticing and analyzed, at times I even asked my fellow commuters why  weren’t they playing a FIFA or a Modern Combat or Asphalt, some of them responded, most of them didn’t know what I was talking about. But one thing was evident, as I mentioned earlier, most of the users were playing simple and casual games while travelling. So we decided to make a simple ball balance game which users can play with one hand with minimal controls. The initial game prototype looked something like this. 

The whole idea of the game was, to balance a ball falling from a defined position by controlling it on seesaw platforms by tilting the device left or right, making sure that the ball doesn’t fall outside the screen area. We were quite happy with the concept, but wanted to add something more graphical. So we decided to make different kind of balls (characters) with unique features. Image below.

We were literally ready to set the ball rolling. But I felt something was still amiss. Why would the users relate to a metal or a clown ball and after sometime wouldn’t even the seesaw platforms become too monotonous? We came up with the idea of having characters (balls) with superhero features and changed the entire theme of the game. We added more elements to the game and made it more challenging and fast paced.

(Actual Game Screens.)

So this is what we ended up creating, 14 different superhero balls each having their own unique powers to overcome different obstacles. We are live on Android and will be very soon on iOS also.

So go ahead and have a ball !

Kindly play and share your reviews.

Download Link 

Thanks for reading,

Hitesh Ramchandani

@hitesh8424