Jitin Rao (Producer) Ubisoft (Pune) Session At Id-----------Part I

Mr Jithin Rao, Producer with Ubisoft,Pune held an in depth daylong session on Game Development & Game design process at Id. Ubisoft as you all know is the third largest developer & Publisher of games in the world. Some of the games that we Indian know well are Prince of Persia & Assassins creed, but other than that Ubisoft has

the topics was specific to game development in general & not limited to Game Design only. The interaction which lasted the entire day was divided into 2 parts. The pre Lunch session consisted the introduction of the game development process followed at Ubisoft. It was here that most of the students came to understand the connect between what they are learning at Id & what happens in the video game development company like Ubisoft.

The session covered the stages of game development, starting with the game idea, the no of iterations, the approval process, the initial concept design, pitching of the idea, the prototype and then the final go for further development with the approval from the research team , the marketing team and the project in-charge.
The role of the individual talents in the entire game development team was also a revelation to the students. Jithin himself a producer, who had just shipped “100 all time favourite board games” for the DS console took the students thru each role in detail. The job profiles of an Art Director & Concept artist, the difference between Game Play Designer & A Game Play Programmer, the job of a technical artist and the various jobs under the 2d & 3d talents were discussed in detail.

The students got to listen to information which only a studio can know.
Post Lunch was the Q & a session, This is where the students who were well prepared threw all their knowledge at a company who have made games like Prince of Persia & Assassins creed. A lot of the questions were in relation to the game play of the games these students played, touching upon the art, techniques and the engineering of these game.

Mr Jithin, unlike lots of techies has a knack for clear & interesting conversation, thus every question was answered in detail with a lot of examples from the very games. Some of the engineering students had queries on AI, Game Mechanics, Physics & effects in games and each was able to learn more .
Some of the questions & their answers along with a brief review will be posted in the next post.