Established by seasoned gaming professionals like Shailesh Watsa and Joshi Mark Premnath, who have been in the Game Industry from the early days of its advent in India, AIGA functions with aim of providing education which is at par with international benchmarks. Today as guest columnists the founders speak about the Indian gaming industry, its manpower requirements and the passion that drives them in their journey of achieving quality gaming education.

Love and passion for games is a sure advantage for youngsters aspiring to build a career in gaming. A point to note though:Game Development is serious business and requires people across multiple disciplines with specialized skills. Game studios world over are constantly looking for talented and qualified professionals who could add value to their teams.

Young professionals looking to acquire such skills and domain specific knowledge need authentic and quality education. Game education the world over is trying hard to cope with this progressive and fast evolving industry.

Looking at the Indian scenario, education especially with respect to gaming is nascent. Few institutions have made a conscious effort to contribute to this specialized field. In addition, game education sector in the past has had hardly any game professionals or involvement from the industry, leading to mis-matched curriculum and quality benchmarks that are far from what is expected at an international level.

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This can be evidently seen in the quality of applications received by game companies. If one were to talk to game entrepreneurs in India, most would agree that it has been a struggle when it comes to building good quality teams for Game Development. Through our own long tenure in the gaming industry, we have always faced client pressure for more work on one side and the dire scarcity of qualified professionals on the other.

While training tends to be more focused and short sighted, education is more holistic with long term vision and impact. Quality education is the key to strong and sustained build up of man power, though what India needs today is a blend of education and industry relevant training.

Speaking of industry relevant training, there is a mis-conception among many that training for Animation and Games is very similar. This is not true. While both forms exhibit art, creative skills and thinking and might possess further areas of overlap, they are two independent streams.

Education in animation at its core concentrates on utilizing 2D or 3D art as a tool for expression, visualization and story telling by developing a strong understanding of art, movement and timing.

On the other hand games are real time and focus on game play. Game development needs being multi-discipline, education in gaming could have multiple streams specializing in Game Design, Game Art or Game Programming.

By nature, games are more technically inclined and involve close interaction between various disciplines like art and programming, thus ushering the need for a developer to have a holistic understanding of various aspects that go into making a game in addition to the specialized domain specific skills needed.

We believe it is vital for educational institutions to employ industry professionals either on a full time or part time basis. It's more like the chicken-and-egg situation, the acute demand for qualified professionals has resulted in very minimal involvement from the industry at an individual or company level.

Qualified and experienced professionals from the industry need to take this up as an initiative. Their contribution to education can go a long way in shaping careers of young professionals and strengthen the industry.

Some suggestions have been to get people from the industry to train existing trainers. While this isn't the same as industry people training students directly, it might be a useful model to follow and has its advantages in terms of scale and reach.

Another option could be for studios to invite trainers from educational institutions to work with them for a short span of time, wherein they are exposed to industry work, quality standards and expectations.

Games, especially is a field that is constantly and rapidly evolving. It is heavily driven by technology improvements, be it in full fledged game consoles, PCs or mobile devices. Hence it is important for Game Education to be dynamic and adapt to these changes through its courseware, delivery, assessment and quality standards. Game studios can contribute hugely to this by sharing their expectations in terms of content and quality with qualified educational institutions on a regular basis.

The industry would benefit from players with long term vision, who are passionate about delivering quality education, as against short sighted monetary benefits. Overall in the past couple of years, the field of education in Games and Animation seems to be moving in a positive direction, and is showing rays of hope.

To conclude, we believe that if any task undertaken, is done with real passion, interest and genuine effort - be it in production or education - the results can be fruitful and gratifying.

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