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EXCLUSIVES
Aesthetics and End User Focus Key to Game Development Success

Harish Sivaramakrishnan is a computer scientist and a platform evangelist at Adobe Systems with over 10 years of experience working on the Adobe Flash platform. Harish is immensely passionate about anything pertaining to Adobe Flash, Flex and other platform technologies. He is a hardcore UI/UX enthusiast and strongly believes that building great user experiences is key to the success of any application. Previously he worked in the Flex engineering team Macromedia, Adobe for the Flex 2.0-Flex 3.0 release and the Adobe Media Player team.
Saltmarch Media caught up with Harish for an informal chat on the sidelines of the India Game Developer Summit 2010. We began by asking him as to how a chemical engineer from BITS Pilani transformed into a ‘Flexgeek’. "I began by dabbling with some basic programming during my years in college for automating some of the chemical processes and my transition to the IT sector was very natural for my time. A 5 digit salary certainly helped me take the plunge," says Harish.
After the introductions, we dive right into the area that interests Harish the most – the Adobe Flash platform. "The popularity of the Adobe Flash platform for developing mobile and web based games is because of its simplicity of usage as well as the wide range of tools that it provides a developer in terms of design and functionality. And the fact that Adobe Flash is installed on almost every other computer and across all operating systems allows a developer to deliver games and applications to a wide user base," says Harish. He relates the popularity of the Flash platform to the close relations that Adobe shares with the developer community. This allows Adobe to continuously implement the feedback they receive from their users into the newer versions so that developers get exactly what they are looking for.
Harish recommends that game development companies need to select development platforms and game engines based purely on their requirements and only if it fits perfectly with the game design they have in mind. He firmly believes that game developers need to always have their focus fixed on their end users. A lot of mileage can be generated by developing games that will introduce their users to something that has not been done before. At the end of it all, he says, a game also needs to look good and this can only be achieved by spending more time on developing game aesthetics.
When asked about what he hopes from the Indian game development community in the future, Harish says that it is time India moves beyond the safe haven of the mobile gaming sector and delve into the higher end console and PC gaming sector in a big way. It is understood that this move will require bigger capital investments; but such risks need to be taken for the community to evolve into a bigger player in the global game development network.
Harish is confident Adobe will continue to stay in touch with the requirements of the game developer and provide the best possible facilities to the community through its Flash platform to enable the delivery of higher quality games.
Watch the exclusive interview with Harish Sivaramakrishnan here.
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