Jithin Rao

And finally, here’s the public announcement of my marriage engagement with Ms Roma Reghu.
I did the Digital Invitation Card myself.

Getting tensed a bit, hope everything just goes good. Everyone’s wishes and blessings appreciated.
Have a lot of shopping to do.

CHEERS

It’s one major factor that I take into consideration when thinking about a game now a days. Designing an audience.

As usual the question is Why? Game Developers design the game why the audience. Well, what the game developers are excited about can’t be always the case for the audience. At times its like that most excited feature for the developer is least one for the gamer.

Why wouldn’t I want to just always make all of my players happy all the time? The short answer is that’s exactly what I do want. The longer answer is that if you end up with too many different groups of players who want opposing things out of your game, you’ll eventually reach at a situation where any decision you make will anger one of the player camps. So its very important rather than what entertains you, its important that the target audience reaction to your creativity is decided on the first. And there hence designing your audience is a must to do, must to do if you want the game to be sold .

Apart from bugs in the game, the biggest cause clash between the developers and players  are not agreeing on what the game is supposed to be:
For eg: Players thought it was an RPG with FPS elements, developers shipped an FPS with RPG elements. These are very small differences in opinion that don’t matter at all, until they matter more than anything and all your players have quit.

With a industry with so much of genres, the gamers tend to stick with the game genres they love. As developers we need to stick to the basics of what the genres defined till date has been following. Making a new revolution is a gamble. Probabilities can be either it was taken the way it was visualized or more by the gamers else no link at all (majority of the time its the later one).

4 mantras I keep in mind :

1. Be sure to know what game you are making and for whom
   • You need to have a clear cut idea of what your game is. It helps us in trying to find out what are the basics that has to be followed for this genre of game lovers.
   • For whom (the age group) is a real need to know. That’s how when we integrate a new feature we can anticipate whether they would notice/like/love/hate it.
2. Be sure to have the Design focussed on the basics
   • Designer have various ideas of wanted to be integrated, only a strict border drawing can bring your product on to follow and keep the audience anticipated reactions in tact with your design.
   • You should be very clear what you are not making and which is not your audience too. Plain words don’t try to target everyone.
   • Where? Through out! From start till end, its the audience and their basic foundational knowledge that are to be consistent.
   • May be you can design complex designs but then the learning curve should be rational enough for the new player.
3. Be Honest with the Target Audience
   • Not as easy as it says, being frank with your audience on what you are trying to sell.
   • Clear idea of what your product is all about and how is it better than the current market competitors (NO COMPARISONS, you will have to identify your pluses and negatives with the current market)
   • Never give them false hopes, we may lose them forever.
4. Be ready to OPEN up
   • Open up to any suggestions from anyone. If the concept you have is a already an inspired from marketed game or of a game genre that already exists, search for the suggestions for those games, you will find something interesting that can make your better.

Just like every other aspect of the game, your players must be carefully decided, designed and crafted. I have been only on my 2nd creation and that’s a lot of things I noticed in a New IP creation. May be I am wrong, well I am still learning.

CHEERS

Well well, its quite sometime that the event took place, but I have been super busy with my next project and the shifting to rented flat (a 1 BHK) that I couldn’t put up the feelings behind the FICCI function. FICCI BAF Awards is a division on the FICCI (Indian Chamber of Commerce) dedicated for the appreciation of achievements by the VFX, Animation and Gaming Industry around 32 countries. For the time being, as I have seen, most of it was Indian, but there were a couple of entries from outside India too.

It was me and my core team including Jitesh, Luell and Ankit who went for the event at Hotel Renaissance Powai, Mumbai. We started from pune at around soon after noon. The function was scheduled to start by 6:30 pm. We didn’t want to miss or late for the function so we made sure we have necessary time to reach.

At the function we did see a couple of bollywood stars who happened to come for the FICCI FRAMES function. After a lot of roaming around in the premises for, sight seeing , actually we were looking at the exhibitors and found that Intel and nVidia were exhibiting the 3D PCs. It was a different experience. But I still prefer it the 2D way for now.

It was a good opportunity to see a couple of familiar faces as well as new contacts on that occasion when Ubisoft Pune’s First in-house project was appreciated with a “Special Jury Award” in the Console Games category. Standing on the stage after receiving the award, yet again I hear it, the anchor spelt Ubisoft as U-B-I Soft! I was like errr, its Ubisoft! But again doesn’t affect much, the anchor’s words of appreciation did the soothing soon after it. BTW, I did tell the jury and the audience that we, as in UBISOFT PUNE, will be back next year too. Soon after the function it was a 3-4 hours drive back home with the heavy trophy of appreciation and a satisfaction of the hard work done by the team for “100 All Time Favorites”.

HAIL TEAM 100 ALL TIME FAVORITES! Another feather to the cap!