Like any other business game development also have a market for outsourcing. Eventually, outsourcing begins with a self-assessment of a company’s core identity that forms its unique competitive advantage. For game developers, core competencies can be found in any part of the game development cycle which includes concept development, pre-production, production, testing or distribution.
Many independent studios in the country have an internal team say about five people maximum, who hire dozens of short-term contractors and engage outsourcing companies to make whatever is internally possible. The manpower required to produce games is varied and not trivial in amount, so outsourcing some part of work is always something game developers need to think about.
Mostly the game development businesses evolve under the foundation of a passionate gamer. Game development is that area of business where a developer needs talented and skilled professionals from designers, digital and graphic artists and programmers. India has now grown into one of the most leading countries for outsourcing game development. Adding to that, nowadays even Indian studios are also outsourcing their project for the ease of game development of workflow. SidKinG studio founder CEO Kishor Berde who owns the company single-handedly feels that it is pretty much easy nowadays to outsource work. In addition, he said “You can find good creative guys on social media. Harry makes music for my games. He is from the UK. I met him in a Facebook indie game developers group, the internet has made networking easy.”
Outsourcing of project is one of the most common practices in the business. The reason behind the rush of outsourcing of the project is that it is more economically friendly compared to hiring professionals’ full time. In India, you can find a lot of talented and skilled artists, low cost of production and delivering high-quality products which are some of the reasons that have made outsourcing more popular here. Many companies have started competing in this space and have great growth plans for the future. Street lamp studio founder Deepak Gurijala who has been recently bagged with ‘Best Mobile Game’ award for the game BOMBARIKA at Casual Connect Europe 2019. He said “We are planning to release multiple games in this year under our own banner and with other mega-publishers. We are looking forward to stabilizing our funds and finances.”
Many Indian studios which are specialised in game art outsourcing have worked with some of the top global game development companies in areas like 3D game art and so on and later started their own business. Taking example QYJO is an indie game development studio who are working full-time to get their first release Gamedev Beatdown out the door. The studio was started by Tejas Shirodkar after quitting his job at EA of over six years as a Technical Director to follow his passion as a game developer, accompanied by Vineeth Haridasan artist later who was also working with EA for over five years. “Both of us have about a decade of experience working in the industry and felt it was about time we worked on riskier and meatier games that we enjoyed playing ourselves. Our primary skills are in tech and art so we work with other collaborators for certain other areas of the game and had a designer working with us almost for six months full time until very recently. Essentially, we have a small core of competence and adapt our workflow with the needs of the game.”
Outsourcing is not a simple task always, as it has its own challenges be it working efficiently according to standards or to meet the right vendors. SM Multimedia founder and CEO Saurabh Misra said independent developers find difficulty “to access outsource work within the industry but if you have right contacts or approaches to people it will help you find work. If the client is happy and satisfied with your work he’ll himself promote you to other people and that’s how you form a chain of contacts and work. But the key ingredient in all this process is consistency and patience because all this can happen in a day or in months.”
As every coin has two different sides, likewise every opportunity depends on the favourable conditions, therefore, outsourcing of project can ease your business. However, to identify the right resources for outsourcing your project is what one have to look at. Till then keep us amazed, game developers.
