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NASSCOM looks East with an exclusive gaming council

With the advent of the gaming industry in the country, more and more curiosity is building with a lot of people, especially students wanting to make a career here. Be it programmers, designers, story-tellers or simply being part of the e-sport community. NASSCOM has recently set-up a community for the same in the eastern parts of India so that the community can know each other better and pull in resources and educate people on problems one faces either when they are entering the industry or have been part of the industry.

The council members are Rajat Agarwalla who is chairing the council along with Satyajit Chakraborty, Diptoman Mukherjee and Souvik Mukherjee. We at AnimationXpress.com recently spoke to Rajat about the council, “One thing we would like to ensure with the council is that everyone in this industry in the eastern region gets together and based on that feedback we would like to have some events that are of value to these people and that is how we are looking at it at this moment.”

NASSCOM council member Diptoman Mukherjee states that the Eastern Council is in line with other product councils it conducts in various parts of the country. “This is similarly in line with those, particularly because Eastern India is lagging in terms of a game development scene compared to the other regions,” he says.

The council has created a forum where the interested people from the region will be able to post what kind of event they want to see in the region. “We have created a Trello board website that will serve as a place where one can post feedback as to what kind of an event does one want to see in this region for gaming. We have opened up a two way channel of communication between the council and its members and there has been some activity already going on, considering it has only been a few weeks for the council formation. While this will take some more time to kick off, I see there is a lot of interest in this.”

The council wants to gather all the people in the industry and also those who are curious under one roof and get to know each other so that people in the region are aware. “We are starting out in Kolkata and the first thing is to get a forum, to get to know everyone in the industry in this region. This is something I think and other members of the council too agree – that there are people working in this industry but do not get an opportunity to interact with others in the industry from the region. There are a lot of indie developers here and also people who have left larger companies and come back here to start freelance work.
“There are lot of students who are interested in the industry, but do not know which companies to go to for recruitment. So at a NASSCOM tech conclave in Siligudi a couple of days back, I was giving a talk about the recruitment opportunities in the gaming industry and I got to see that people were interested in the industry and were curious how to make games or what are the skills required to create them.”

Diptoman adds that the council is focused on interacting with the government, other institutions, entrepreneurs, developers and gamers to set up an environment for expansion of the industry, and try to help developers with other issues.

The council is currently looking at regular meet-ups in the region and is already gearing up with its first one in Kolkata called ‘Nasscom Gaming Forum: Women in Game Dev’ on 21 March. The meet-up will address the issues of women in the gaming industry and gaming culture and welcomes women game developers, or would be developers to it.

“If there is more participation, there is nothing stopping us from having multiple events. The brain-storming sessions, during the meet-ups, will not only help with what one should do, but also understand from other’s experience as to what should not be done,” ends Rajat.

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