7 years ago programming wiz Manvendra Shukul created India’s first Game engine complete with level editors, particle system, physics and AI engine. Today Shukul’s game development studio based in Delhi, Lakshya Digital, is working on developing the Game Art for the latest Next-Gen PC and Console titles. Shukul’s programming team has also developed SWAT, a comprehensive games ERP which is a complete production workflow management software.
New Delhi based game art development studio Lakshya Digital has recently delivered game art for a high-end PC / Console game being created around one of the top rated US TV series.
Speaking to Animation Xpress.com, Lakshya Digital CEO Manvendra Shukul shared “working on a game based on a high profile TV series like this has been a very exciting project for our team. Creating real-life characters, and animating them, is one of the most complicated part of the Game DLC. Creating real-life characters and ensuring that they look and feel the same as their real-life counterparts requires creative skills of the highest order. Having delivered that successfully, I think we have proved to the global games industry that India has what it takes to be a reliable partner in creation of the most successful games”
Over the past couple of years Lakshya has worked on developing game art for more than 10 big titles including Tradewinds Legends, Kingdome of Drakker and Infected. “The game art of Tradewinds got an International rating of 5 out of 5” shared Shukul. “For Kingdome of Drakker we re-created the entire art for this oldest and one of the most popular online games” he added.
The studio which has been going great guns currently boasts of a 60 member strong team and is looking to ramp up. “Our aim is to be at least 120 artists by March 07″ shares Shukul.
The Lakshya Digital CEO was the creator of one of the first game engines to be developed in the country. He believes that Constant Technological Innovation and R&D is the hallmark of every good game development studio. ” I started off as a programmer 21 years ago” he shared. “Around 7 years ago I created India’s first game engine complete with level editors, particle system, Physics and AI Engine. Currently even as we keep delivering high quality game art for next-gen PC and Console titles at Lakshya, we are equally involved in R&D. In fact a team of 12 programmers has been working for the past 18 months at Lakshya to develop an indigenous and effective Games ERP called SWAT which not only helps in bringing efficiency within our internal development pipeline, but also provides our clients real-time online access to their projects that are being developed at Lakshya studios in India. When we started our development studio, we were very clear about our organizational goals:
Provide our team an efficient & streamlined production environment, where they do not have to worry about anything other than what they are supposed to work on. Currently the entire process of project assignment till completion of the task, including work assignment, data storage/archive, reviews, rework, etc is all auto managed by SWAT.
Globally the games industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the entertainment industry. But, the industry is at the crossroads where, to continue their growth rates, they have to come out with games for the new next-gen consoles like Xbox and PS III. But, doing that would mean that their development costs are going to hit the roof since developing for the next-gen consoles means development teams 3-4 times larger than existing. Already development cost of 1 game has gone up from 1-2 million dollars 2-3 years ago, to approx. 8-10 million dollars today. So now, to survive, the industry has no other option but to outsource.
Indian games industry, though still at a very nascent stage is poised for a big leap. The abundance of creative talent and process orientation lessons / best practices from the BPO industry will ensure that India becomes a partner of choice for the global games industry.
The “surprise element” and “creative control” has kept the Games industry from outsourcing in a big way. SWAT will go a long way to remove these worrying elements and facilitate the entire process of Game Art outsourcing.