As most of you know, we traveled to Pune last week to attend Reliance Game’s Game Hack. As I’ve said before this is an interesting initiative by Reliance Games to encourage indie mobile game developers by providing them with the opportunity to showcase their game to a much larger audience and to gain recognition as a developer.
An Indie Game of The Day award of Rupees 10,000 was given to one of the developers, while the runner up received Rupees 5,000. A panel chat was also held where in reputed names like Matt Powers, Patrice Crespy, Sundeep Shetty and Anuj Tandon were giving their insights and knowledge on topics that young developers had. More than the competition, I felt an event such as this gives developers a chance to interact with some of the leading individuals in the industry and also to get to know other developers and maybe make collaborations.
So we flew in a day early to set things up for the event and had a chance to go to the Reliance Games Studio there in Pune. I have to say the Reliance office isn’t your typical work place, the first thing that I noticed when I walked in was how everyone’s cubicle was set up, each had its own look and identity. The people were quite friendly and easy to talk to. Immediately we were taken around the office to meet various people, some of whom have had 20+ years in the gaming industry and it was an utter joy to be able to hear their stories and get their views on how the gaming industry has evolved.
The first day we got to meet with executive producer, Rob Sandberg who has been in the industry close to about 20 years or so. He was on his way to Canada but we managed to get him for a quick interview. Just before our interview with him, I got to know he too was a drummer so we both immediately hit it off. So while we had the cameras ready to roll, Rob and I were talking about Mark Knopfler’s style of playing guitar. Needles to say it was a joy to be able to speak with him and was a great person to get to know.
The second day we got to interview a whole bunch of people like Matt Powers, Roopak Nair, Sandeep Shetty and a few more who gave us their views on the mobile gaming industry specific to the Indian market. After which I took a tour of the office just capturing people doing what they do at office. From the pictures you might get an idea of what sort of people work at the studio. There seemed to be an ease with which everyone spoke to each other. But soon after they found out I was a photographer they started “maraoing” full on poses in front of the camera. It was evident that the workers had a rapport and were very well settled in that sort of a work environment.
Pune is a great place and I had an amazing time there. Great food (A shout out to Cafe 1730), good weather, auto rickshaws running on meters and roads full of Enfields. I owe Mayin one for taking me around, whooping my ass at Uno(6-3 lest we forget) and helping me get closer to finishing that EnSci lab.
Already planning my next trip there.
