Gamers and Gaming experts galore! Biggest event for the Gaming Community Date:   Thursday , June 09, 2011 Bangalore: Gaming Conference India-2011 organized by SiliconIndia in Bangalore was a convergence of creative minds. It highlighted the vast opportunities that abound in the field of gaming. The speakers who showed up were some of the prime movers in the gaming arena. Held on the 7th of May 2011, the Gaming conference represented a platform for exchange of insights and expertise on gaming and its trends among the local experts in the field, coupled with raw talent waiting to be tapped. ‘Gaming is the hottest growing industry in the Media & Entertainment sector’ said Biren Ghose, Country head, Technicolor India who was present to officially launch the Gaming Conference. This conference focused on two key areas, Game Development and Designing and the Smart phone and Tablet games. Speaking on Rapid Prototyping with Unreal Development Kit (UDK), Chaitanya Munjuluri, Game Architect, Sierra Atlantic said, “UDK is the leading professional game development frameworks. UDK offers everyone the same power and flexibility of Unreal Engine 3 that made games Like Gears of War and Magnacarta 2 possible.” Ashish Kumar, Product Manager from Alienware-Dell gave the curious audience a sneak peek into the exciting range of merchandise Alienware-Dell had to offer. Alienware-Dell manufactures the world's best high-performance gaming peripherals, the latest being Alienware M17x R3 Laptop with Graphics pop off the screen. Taking the session ahead was Preetham Venkky, Business Head, KRDS India who said ‘Games are slowly becoming platform-agnostic. When developers work on a game, it shouldn't be just about graphics, or realness’. Building fortune along with having fun, “Fun is combination of amazement and bewilderment which every player should experience. Introducing something new at appropriate intervals will let the player be inquisitive,” said Laxmi Desai Khanolkar, Director-Game Development from Apar Games. Speaking on Flash game development, Saagar Dhoke, Founder and CEO, Fun Element expressed that the flash developers should look forward for the commercial release of Molehill which will equip them with the much needed 3D game development in Flash and create more realistic physics games. Robin Alter, CEO, Kreeda games discussed the opportunities for social games in India and the details of how to make them. He describe many of the pieces that go into the social game mechanics, what uniquely would work in India, how to design for different platforms and how to take an idea through to a final, fun online social game. Kasturi Rangan, Site Head & Senior Manager - Operations, e4e Interactive Entertainment Services while speaking on Fun & the Art of Game Testing gave thoughtful and brilliant insights into Game Test Methodologies, an overlay of the test processes, challenges that testers overcome while testing games and the future of game testing and the opportunities for game testers globally and in India. SriSatish Mavuri, Lead Game Developer from Emantras, addressed the audience on ‘Games: Touching the World on the Other Side of the Glass’ and said that mobile Learning truly arrives with iPad, iPad games are here to stay and is the most preferred way of Learning for kids. Impressive session by Arjun Gupte, Art Director on Art Direction for XBox Title had the audience enthralled. Bruce Brodie, Director Games from SourceBits who spoke on Player retention, Gameplay and Expansion in video games said the conference was an excellent platform and an opportunity to meet industry professionals, discuss new technologies and the games industry here in India. “Games should support maximum handsets including various platforms like J2ME, Android, Blackberry, Windows, IOS,” said Vijayprakash Rangappa, Founder & CEO, Mobi2Fun who gave a talk on Mobile game distribution and publishing trends. “I believe with 3G and dependence on service carrier provider reducing via app stores. It is the best time till date to be a mobile game developer,” said Himanshu Pant, Co-founder from Mactabilis Arts. This exciting event was sponsored by Alienware –Dell and Razer. The exhibitors for this event were DSK SupInfocom and E4E Interactive Entertainment Services. Gaming Xpress served as the media partner.