Talent winning out at Indian gaming cos as focus shifts to high-end titles
Roles such as experienced gameplay engineers, backend developers, principal animators, 3D artists and environment designers are in demand, according to industry executives and studio founders.
The industry now employs around 130,000 people, compared with 50,000 in 2022.
'The
Indian gaming industry
is hiring a combination of technical and creative skill sets,' said TeamLease Digital chief executive Neeti Sharma. Key roles in demand include
game developers
(especially with skills in Unity or Unreal platforms), backend engineers for multiplayer games, 3D artists, animators and game designers. Bengaluru-based gaming startup LightFury Games, which has a team of around 80, is hiring for roles across animation, game art, backend infrastructure and gameplay engineering, said cofounder Anurag Banerjee.
'We need to hire another 30-40 people at least… What we look for is talent that we can nurture and train to that degree that they can now start building
AAA titles
,' Banerjee told ET. In gaming parlance, an AAA rating refers to a classification given to big-budget, high-profile video games developed and published by major studios. It is not an official rating, but an industry term. AAA games often have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in development budgets.
Last year, the studio raised $8.5 million from Blume Ventures, Mixi and Gemba Capital, with Cred founder Kunal Shah and Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal also participating in the funding. It recently unveiled its first title, E-Cricket, a big-budget 'AAA' game being developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), slated for launch in 2026.
Pune-based SuperGaming, currently expanding its team for its flagship Indus Battle Royale game, said while developers can earn through casual games like Teen Patti or Ludo, the challenge lies in finding talent motivated to build high-quality, technically complex titles. 'A good gaming studio takes 10 years to be successful and to make a video game great, you have to assemble 20 different kinds of teams including engineering, narrators, art, music, servers, marketing. It is a task of complex coordination, and you can do it only with experience,' said founder and CEO Roby John.
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