SoC graduate Orientation Day

Hi, how's first week of class? As the new semester has arrived, our campus is filled with energy and noise again. In orientation week, we have welcomed new SoC post-graduates by a series of events, including games, campus tour, talks and of course, nice food. Here are some photographs of the event:

Campus tour @ YIH

Campus tour @ Central Library

One of the highlight in campus tour is the chance to interview Prof Mohan. We have asked number of questions, from calligraphy in Prof Mohan's office to research and course related. Prof Mohan has shared with us his research experience and view on the quality needed (which all of them can be acquired from our program :) ).

Interviewing Prof. Mohan

Current students are joining us for tea and dinner. Nice sharing :P

Life in Monsoon

Going to office in Monsoon season is just like amazing race. I have seen couple of water logging, sudden traffic jam due to accident or flooding in subway. I think pictures tell more than words in this case.

Besides traffic, I also suffer from slight food poisoning. It is time to remind myself "bottle water only". Though heavy rain brings a lot of inconvenience to us, it reliefs water shortage that some area have limited supply of water last month. But now, no one needs to worry about that, no wonder kids and adults are dancing for the 1st rain.

Working in an outsourcing team

In the past, I had couple of chances working with outsourcing teams in China and Taiwan. But now, I am working on projects from clients in US and other part of India. So I start to taste the life of working in an outsourcing team. Before revealing my life, let’s have a quick look on Game Outsourcing industry.

Why outsourcing

Similar to other business, outsourcing aims at giving higher flexibility and better cost saving. One aspect of outsourcing in game industry is on artwork as huge amount of content and artwork are needed in next gen games. Artwork outsourcing gives flexibility in volume by handling spark of short term demands. One presentation in GDC shows that Vituos Games, an outsourcing studio, helped “Test Drive Unlimited” to produce 100 cars in 6 months. In addition, outsourcing helps bringing different skills, like cinematic, localization into projects adding flexibility and dynamics to small core team.

Who outsource

It is seen that outsourcing can be found across the industry, from large studio to individual who want to build a game on his/her own idea. Due to different level of experience, there are a wide variety of requirement and deliverable. Well established game studios can provide a set of structured documents and tools, while individual may start everything from scratch.

What can be outsource

From the directory of outsourcing.org, game outsourcing industry seems cover most of the areas, including, game design, illustration, graphic design, level design, music and sound effects, game development, testing and localization.

Where can we find outsourcing team

Extracted from http://gamedevmap.com/, you can see game studios are all over the globe and outsourcing teams can be found from US to China and different regions have their whole strengths and weaknesses. Lewis Peterson, President & CEO, 7 Studios, listed 4 regions including, Eastern Europe, India, China and Taiwan and commented that China and Taiwan are relatively more all-rounded, while Eastern Europe and India have strength in art.

Risk

Though outsourcing is a common practice, not all the cases are successful. Companies/individuals consider outsourcing part of their work may need to consider, i) hidden cost, ii) communication, iii) resource integration, iv) asset management, v) deadline and scope management and vi) resource control, like team composition. It is necessary to have a check, like visiting, due diligence, small trial run and continuous communication before committing fully.

Best Practice?

Rajesh Rao, from Dhruva, a Bangalore based game outsourcing studio listed Top 5 what went right

#1 Long Term vision and co-operation

#2 Adaptive to change

#3 Good Client involvement, including provision of dev kits and game builds

#4 Clear Guidelines

#5 Client visit for project preparation

These only cover a bit of the game outsourcing industry. I want to end this blog by sharing life and learning working in an outsourcing team

i) Fighting time zone - Eastern Time (US and Canada) is GMT -5:00, while IST is GMT +5:30, i.e. 10.5 hours in between. In a simple put, their 9:00 is our 19:30, so we have quite late meeting starting from 19:30 till 22:00+ or early morning meeting.

ii) Adapt to different culture – Honestly, I am quite happy with that as the team is very multinational and we can learn from different cultures. Back to business, it tends to be less rubber and rely more on documents and written confirmation.

iii) Working with multiple projects and clients at the same time – As mentioned, outsourcing give flexibility but on the other hand, for outsourcing company to be profitable, they need to have multiple projects and keep everyone busy. So most of the staff are multitasked and it imposes challenges to project management.

I hope you enjoy that. I will be in Pune this weekend. See you~

Experiencing India - Bangalore

Pictures of Bangalore and NOC India workshop kept popping up when I received the appreciation dinner invitation from NOC. Though it was just one week, from the very first day, I started to feel the uniqueness of this city. After an hour ride from airport to ECC, the hostel that we stayed, I had a strong doubt if I was in the right place, the Silicon Valley of India, as high-rise or modern office buildings were hardly found…

(ITPB)

The answer was revealed after visiting various Tech parks where MNC like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, GE are located. These Tech parks, like International Tech Park, Bangalore, managed by Ascendas, have world class facilities, including, office space, communication infrastructure, power generators, water tanks and some even with shopping malls, hotel and garden. However, these Tech Parks are scattered in different areas of the city, mostly in developing region. We even saw cow and road side store selling coconuts just next to Tech Park, giving an interesting reflection of the development of the city.

(@ Infosys)

From a series of company visit, including TCS and Infosys, it gave me a better concept of the evolution of IT industry from body shopping to BPO to business consultancy in which every step consolidated their position and opened up new opportunity. In IIM (Indian Institute of Management), we met energetic entrepreneurs developing product for local market. They target on the growth of India and upcoming need on infrastructure, consumer products, entertainment...

(@ IIM)

Before the workshop, I learnt that India is very successful in BPO due to i) a large population of English speaker, ii) good higher education, especially for engineering and scientific research in Bangalore, iii) young (~ 25 years old) and cheap work force. After that, I am convinced that they extend their advantage into next level and will innovate new products for the unique internal demands.

Lastly, there are still a lot of barriers on the path. The one most obvious is traffic…. Traffic jam is horrible and vehicles can hardly move. I cannot imagine a 20 min ride finally take us an hour. Now, I have moved to Mumbai for my summer intern in Kreeda, a MMOG operator and developer. See you next week.