Transforming your love for games as a childhood hobby into a professional career creating games is nothing short of stuff that dreams are made of !
Diptoman Mukherjee, our next pathbreaker, Senior Technical Gameplay Designer at The Coalition (an Xbox Games Studio under Microsoft) in Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada), works as part of the Gameplay team – the team which builds core features.
Diptoman talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about his 7+ years of professional experience in AA/AAA games , alongside 17+ years of hobbyist experience (from 6th grade) working on a vast library of personal projects in many different genres.
For students, taking up a career in game development is a pretty risky path, but for those willing to take the gamble, the rewards are unparalleled !!
Diptoman, tell us about how your initial fascination for gaming took shape?
I was born in Kolkata, West Bengal. I spent a few years in Orissa after I was born, but we moved back after a couple years and I mostly grew up in Kolkata. Both my parents were managers in Life Insurance Corporation of India, which also meant they were occasionally transferred around.
I studied in the state government board till 12th grade, and was pretty good with my studies. I took up science after secondary (10th grade), with computer science as the focus.
I had a lot of interests. I painted regularly, loved math, had a keen interest in ornithology at one point, practiced swimming at a decent level, and read a lot of books (both fiction and history). I used to play “TV video games” (on the pirated consoles from back in the day), and then, once I got my first PC in 5th grade – started playing PC games. I started making games when I was in 6th grade (back in 2004), and that over time became my main hobby. As part of this – I taught myself programming, and a lot of game design. I just learnt from experimentation and by putting my work out there for people to criticize. I tried my hand with digital art and audio mixing as part of this as well – but didn’t pursue either in the end.
What did you do for graduation/post-graduation?
I went to the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur for my BE in Computer Science and Engineering. Back then, it was the Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur – it became a central institute while we were there. For my post-graduation, I moved to Canada and did a Masters in Digital Media Design from the Centre for Digital Media, which is an integrated course as part of 4 universities/institutes – the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr University of Art & Design, and British Columbia Institute of Technology. The MDM course is generalist and largely geared towards soft skills and production processes in the tech industry, so we had a combination of artists, designers, engineers, and project managers in it. The course is run by all four institutes through a common committee – so we got access to faculty and resources from all four, but we had a separate campus.
What were some of the drivers that influenced me to pursue such an offbeat, unconventional and cool career?
To talk about this, first I must talk about what made me choose this hobby – it is a collection of long-winded and random stories.
Back when I got my first PC, it couldn’t run a lot of games. My parents would buy me 3-4 games per year, for which I am very thankful. I would play those games a lot, and explore every bit of what they had to offer – analyzing them. I eventually stumbled across a software called “Game Maker”, created by Mark Overmars, in 2004 (nowadays it’s morphed into GameMaker: Studio 2) – that was pretty much THE engine back in the day for making a lot of these hobby games. Using this – I made my first game in 6th grade, which was a Pong clone – which I promptly followed up with a breakout game and a maze game. I started with the software’s visual interface, and taught myself the scripting language that was used there (GML) over time, by looking at source codes of other games, and online documentation. There are, of course, limitations to learning this way, and I had to unlearn a lot of bad habits I picked up later. I remember the first game I put out to the world – the very generically named Wizard Quest, back in 2007 (in 8th grade). I got all sorts of opinions on it, some very discouraging, but some very constructive and encouraging. I remember this one random internet stranger, who gave me very in-depth criticism and words of encouragement – and that helped a lot.
At that point in time, I also used to play a card game called Duel Masters online, on a software called Kaijudo Portal. I made many friends there, but one of those friends effectively changed my career trajectory – Pranjal Bisht, a guy from Dehradun. At that point, he liked to draw and was interested in art, and I talked to him about perhaps making some games together (and we continue to work together till this day on our personal projects). In 2010 (or 2011), we participated in our first game jam – which is like a hackathon for making games – make a game in 48/72 hours based on a theme. We were surprised by how much we achieved in a span of 72 hours, and how positive the reception was to that. We proceeded to do many, many game jams (over 30 till now) and continue to this day –won a few of those too. These projects, combined with my earlier personal projects – are mostly where my initial game dev skills formed, before my joining the industry professionally.
I continued making games while I was in university – I took up Computer Science so I could learn coding properly. Even then, I honestly never gave much of a thought to game dev as a career (or if there even was an Indian game industry) – we did it for fun. In 2013, I found out about the NASSCOM Game Developers’ Conference (NGDC, the pre-cursor to IGDC – the India Game Developers’ Conference), and that year they started their Awards (NGF Awards) for video games. My game, Chaos Theory, was shortlisted as a finalist under the Student Game Of The Year category, and that got me a ticket to the conference, and a space to showcase the game. This was my first time going to a conference like this, and I ended up meeting a lot of interesting people, creating many contacts, and in general – my whole idea about the Indian games industry formed there. I also ended up winning that award and the monetary prize, so that was a bonus.
I was also working on another bigger game project over the summer vacation that same year (2013) – Meanwhile In A Parallel Universe. I mainly worked with Pranjal, and another guy I also met while playing in Kaijudo Portal – Rahul Salim Narayanan. We made it for a couple of international competitions (by Microsoft, Intel, Samsung etc.) and it came top 3 in those, with hefty prize amounts. By this point, I had also worked on some 20+ personal projects (incl. game jams). One of them, Sushido, even went somewhat viral – with YouTubers like Pewdiepie and Markiplier playing them. With all these relative successes – both monetary and just by the value they added to my portfolio – I started considering that maybe I am good at this, and I should consider it as a career option. My parents also started changing their minds regarding this at that point in time – and they have supported me ever since.
A combination of many of the things here made me finally decide to pick this career. But in the end – I wanted to create meaningful experiences for other people, the way I have gotten many such experiences from many different video games while growing up. How I eventually got here, like I talked about, was making a bunch of games for fun, a lot of luck, and accidentally being in the right places at the right times.
How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Or how did you make a transition to a new career? Tell us about your career path.
In 2014 (my 3rd year at university), we were given the opportunity by NASSCOM to go to Casual Connect Singapore 2014 to give a talk, and to showcase our games. This was my first time out of the country, and the first time I interacted with international game devs (mostly based out of Asia). I learnt a great deal from everyone there, and further made a lot of contacts. That same year, I applied for a game design internship at Zynga Bangalore (of FarmVille fame, they are one of the biggest employers in the Indian games industry) and I got it – which was my first foray into professional game design. I had the pleasure of working under Bob Bates while I was there. I learnt a lot from him. I worked on pitching mission ideas for Mafia Wars, a popular Facebook game at the time, and got my first insight into the production processes employed at a bigger company.
After my time in Zynga, I decided to chart a plan. I did participate in university placements and though I got engineering jobs, I was not at all keen to take those up. I decided I had to upskill and get experience working in bigger teams and pipelines for PC/Console games, which is where my interests lay at that time – but India didn’t have an industry for such a career in 2014 – most of the demand in the industry was focused on mobile (or as supporting studios).
I applied to a couple of programs abroad – since that is where the big PC/console companies are, and ended up picking the Masters in Digital Media program in Vancouver, Canada, purely because I was provided with the Tom Calvert Software Engineering Award scholarship (and fully paid housing). This, in combination with my past competition earnings, funded a lot of my Masters degree there. I’d say normally, this stuff is reserved for only the very privileged people – this is a very expensive degree otherwise (if I hadn’t gotten the scholarship). I left for Canada in 2015. My backup plan was to just get into the nascent Indian games industry in an engineering position, if I couldn’t find a design role.
I continued to improve my portfolio during my Masters degree, and the degree helped a bit with my communication skills. By the end of it, we were looking for jobs in the industry – and I found out just how hard it was to break through with little networking skills and connections that I had, particularly in game design.
My first job there was as a Software Engineer in a Chinese game company that was expanding into Canada with its VR division, which I got into as part of my program’s placement drive. I saw this mostly as a stop-gap while I applied to game design roles. I worked on UI and gameplay programming while I was there. I was applying pretty much everywhere, and got many rejections at that point – till the turning point came from Piranha Games (the creators of the new MechWarrior games), who offered me a Technical Designer position, which I promptly took up. Technical Designers are usually designers with a technical background, who are more involved in in-engine implementation of designs and building systems that enable other designers to do their best work, which was perfect for me – since I also enjoy coding a lot.
Most of my foundational professional skills were built at Piranha Games working on MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, and I had a great mentor there – Dr. David Forsey. We were a small team of 6-7 designers, which was great – because I had a lot of autonomy and ownership over many different systems, and I learnt while building those systems. I built the mission-generation system in the game (which was all procedurally generated) and the tools that level designers needed to build scripted content, while Dave built the foundational layer before that – the terrain generation system. I was responsible for 3 out of the 5 initial mission types (Defence, Demolition, WarZone). I also worked on structural destructibility in the game (how structures were destroyed) alongside another designer and the engineers, and helped create many of the difficulty tuning systems for procedural generation in the game. These were all different problems and large-scale systems, so getting the experience designing, implementing, and iterating on such vast systems so early was very helpful for me – I would recommend smaller teams to actually learn quickly, since you have to wear many hats.
I’ve moved around since then – and even the job of “technical design” is malleable – some companies emphasize the technical part, and some companies emphasize the design part. Design, by nature of its malleability – also means that you can switch from one game design discipline to another (except maybe traditional “level design” since those are usually a different skillset).
I went on to join Blackbird Interactive as a Game Designer on their Worlds team, for Minecraft Legends, which was a unique 3rd person open world RTS-lite game. My experience with designing for procedural generation helped me get this job. I switched teams internally, and by the end, I was a Senior Technical Designer for the Campaign and Meta-Game teams, and a design product owner of their villages and village invasion systems (how villages – the defensive hubs – worked in the game, designing the tower-defence like gameplay around village defences). I enjoy working with very different systems, which is why I enjoy moving around feature teams – I get to work on wider, more interesting things, and not get pigeonholed into one specific thing. I helped create and set standards for encounter scripting (and I did the scripting for one of the enemy factions), encounter generation, open world meta-game scripting (how the global events happened in-game), alongside designing and implementing the defensive sections of the game. I learnt how to align designs with the pillars/vision of the game, and pitching those ideas – all helpful skills as a designer. Those designs went through many, many iterations.
I currently work as a Senior Technical Gameplay Designer at The Coalition (an Xbox Games Studio, under Microsoft), working on an unannounced title.
How did you get your first break?
As I mentioned earlier, I was applying pretty much everywhere, and got many rejections – till the turning point came from Piranha Games (the creators of the new MechWarrior games), who offered me a Technical Designer position. My 1st job in Canada was through a placement drive.
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?
I’ve talked about some of these before too. But a main challenge for anyone trying to get into game design is that there are a lot of people who want to get into game design, so you need to either stand out with a portfolio, work it out with networking, or make your way into design from another department. Networking has never been my strong suit, so I focused on the other two. I honestly wasn’t even sure about getting a game design job back then, a lot of jobs seemed gated behind references – but I applied anywhere and everywhere (for both engineering and design roles), and I was confident in and kept building my portfolio (http://diptoman.com). It is a matter of persevering.
As for challenges in the actual work – video games are big and complex pieces of software, where design decisions have ripple effects in every other discipline. For designers, it is important to walk a fine line between rigidity (for stability) and flexibility (for creative experimentation) – and be always communicating with concerned stakeholders of every discipline. As an example, imagine a simple case where you decide a speed for your character in an action game. This will dictate how that character is animated by animators. Changes to this later may incur animation costs. So it is important how you arrive at that decision for an ideal “speed” – through experimentation, extensive playtesting on “greyboxed” designs etc., and have the intent be communicated at all times to the artists and engineers working on the same feature as you. Game design is always going to be a series of these challenges. Learning to address them will come from experience.
Where do you work now?
I currently work as a Senior Technical Gameplay Designer at The Coalition (an Xbox Games Studio, under Microsoft), working on an unannounced title. I work in the Gameplay team – the team which builds core features, that level designers use to build the game with. Currently, I help with modularizing gameplay systems and game AI (in-game unit behaviours, not to be confused with the more machine-learning driven AI used in broader tech) with our internal tools, to enable other designers and help build things faster and in a cleaner way.
What’s a typical day like?
A typical day for me will involve a couple of meetings to get everyone aligned on certain features. I will be involved in identifying issues in the design and design workflow – for example, let’s say we have decided two distinct enemy AI are going to share a certain similar behaviour. Can I turn those behaviours into a common behaviour that can be reused? I’d build that, and test that. Then add those behaviours in those units, see if they work as intended, and whether that intent is good and aligned with the game’s “pillars” (the “ideals” a game project is built on). I might have to talk to engineering about any missing components I might need to build this, or check if the building process is optimized etc. I might have to talk to animators about how they want to set up their animation here – providing metrics needed to animate (eg. warp distance). I might have to talk to other designers multiple times during this process, to keep them updated, or see if they have thoughts/opinions on this and how they want something implemented. In the same example, what if level and narrative designers want to use this “behaviour” in a certain way and they want to tune that? We’d have to build it in such a way that gives them the ability to create the experience they envisioned.
A typical day might also involve spending time working on the design of a feature I’m the owner of – either written in a Game Design Document (for communication), or building it in “greybox”, and presenting results to a wider group.
I also spend time reviewing and helping other designers with their implementation work.
How does your work benefit society?
A game designer’s job is wide and varied. What I love about all of this is the creative energy behind it all. At the end of the day, I go to work, and help bring gameplay and systems that the player will interact with – come to life. All of these systems come together to create grand stories and experiences, and when they click – it is a feeling like no other.
As they say – “Life depends on science but the arts make it worth living”.
I see it this way – if the effects of my work have positively impacted even one person – my work has made the world a better place. Games (even when heavily commercialized) are a means to entertain, to tell stories, share worldviews, and put creativity in the hands of the player – like no other medium can.
I’m sharing a comment someone wrote on one of my personal projects, Sushido:
“I once downloaded this years ago and had the folder on my desktop for ages, playing it whenever I felt like it. I lost it due to a disk wipe a while ago and couldn’t remember the name of the game for a while – until I found it here again! Thanks so much for years of fun and more to come.”
Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!
One memorable piece of work I did was the encounter/AI design work for the Horde of The Hunt in Minecraft Legends – taking it through its many iterations. This horde was the “fast, swarmy” horde – with speedy units that swarmed the player’s positions and buildings. For them, “offence was the best defence”. Initially, with limited toolset, the units could only “react” to events (player attacked something, built something, enemy units entered something etc.). We did our first iteration on encounter scripting with something we built and named “The Rallyman” system. Typically, if a player plays a faction in a RTS (Real Time Strategy game), they would rally units in groups before using them to do something – we wanted to recreate this behaviour for AI. So we built and iterated on a system which would create these “rally groups” for the Horde. We’d have outer groups that patrolled, groups that focused on attacking player structures, and depending on the nature of the encounter – “inner groups” with heavier units that focused more on defence. Over time, we added a heatmap based system on top of this, so instead of being purely reactive, the groups could be proactive and do things wherever heat was generated. Heat was generated by many things – the player position and actions, player’s units and their actions etc. One issue we found with all of this was that this faction was prone to getting “rushed”. Since the units rarely cared about defence – it enabled players to just rush to the important central structure and destroy it quicker. So we had to come up with other ways as well to mitigate this – we added hazards to this encounter, with bigger lava moats, or paths that slowed the player down (so the encounters themselves became more “maze” like – adding to the combat puzzle). This is just an example of the fluidity and iterative nature of game design, and I was proud of how it turned out in the end – we tried a lot of things to get there.
Your advice to students based on your experience?
My first advice, before even considering how to get into this field – is to think long and hard about whether you even want to be in this field. I see this often when I’m asked the same question by hopeful juniors – playing games and making games are entirely different beasts. Just because you love playing them, does not mean you will love making them. Try making a couple of games in your free time, see if you like it and enjoy the process.
On top of that, more so in developing countries (and even in developed ones) – this is a pretty risky career path – and it entails a certain amount of privilege. The industry is volatile, jobs are often lost, work conditions aren’t the best and plenty of people move to other industries after burnout. The reason I bring up privilege, is that for people from less privileged backgrounds, those conditions are a hard sell. And this is reflected in the general background of designers (usually coming from privilege), and the kind of stories that are most often told through games. People from privileged backgrounds can navigate around job volatility much more easily than those who aren’t.
Having said that, I do not want to scare anyone away – just want to create a realistic expectation. I want more representation in games – better diversity equals more diverse stories and mechanics. If you are really good at your craft and you enjoy doing this – like with any creative industry, you will find a way.
Now, game designers (even technical designers) come from a wide range of backgrounds, there is no restriction there. Some have game design degrees, some have worked their way up from QA (Quality Assurance), some used to be artists before jumping into game design, some used to be in engineering, some in economics or psychology or literature, and many have unrelated backgrounds as well. This means there is no surefire way to a game design job, and no wrong way either.
As a student, if you have steadfastly decided that this is something you want to pursue – my advice would be to start making games. Sure, read design theory, watch videos, but do not forget to make games and share them around for feedback. Making games nowadays is a lot more democratic, with a lot more tools available for everyone. I’m a believer of the “less talk, more work” philosophy, and personally think your portfolio should reflect that. There is no excuse nowadays, if you really want to be in this industry, to not have a portfolio before your first attempt at a job.
Making things isn’t enough of course, you still have to be able to articulate why you want to make something (“intent”), and communicate that effectively. And that is the crux of most design disciplines. This is where theory is helpful (but never be rigid in theory), and this is also why you must work on communication skills. Especially in larger studios – communication is key to handling all stakeholders – artists, programmers, production, and the design team. I would also recommend design theory books like “The Design Of Everyday Things” or “Designing Games: A Guide To Engineering Experiences” or “The Art Of Game Design” as supplementary reading, alongside decent analytical YouTube channels like “Game Maker’s Toolkit”. There are fantastic videos from other developers on the GDC (Game Developers Conference) YouTube channel and the GDC Vault on particular game systems.
When you’re playing games – analyze them. This might take some of the fun away, but this is important. Ask yourself about the tiniest things – How did they do that? Why did they do that?
Finally, while I am not the biggest fan of game design degrees and diplomas, and generally I think a broader degree (such as computer science) is usually more helpful to keep career paths open – some of these GD degrees/diplomas, in addition to helping build a portfolio, help by getting you contacts in the industry, who you can learn from and who can help get you your first job. When picking one of these degrees/diplomas – apart from the cost and all that – research about who is teaching, how qualified they are, and how connected the program is with the industry.
Future plans?
My immediate future plan is continuing to upskill, experiment and try out designs in different game genres (both professionally and as part of my personal projects). Longer term, I want to contribute to the budding Indian games industry. More so than ever, I believe the best games are yet to be built, new genres yet to be explored, new stories yet to be told (particularly of different cultures and of the working class – something that is largely absent from games) – and this will happen with more representation and further democratization of the development process. I want to be a part of that, helping push this medium forward. Hopefully some of the folks reading this will also want to be a part of that!