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Yadu Rajiv is a game designer, developer, a curator and evangelist for independent games.
In 2011, he co-founded Hashstash (now MyyHashstash), where he designed and developed multiple award winning games. After Hashstash, Yadu worked as a Senior User Experience Designer at RedBus for a short period. Later he moved on to teach user experience design, web design, game design and game development at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology for 5 years after which he joined BYJU’S as a Lead Game Designer in 2020. After his tenure creating games for the Osmo platform for young children, he returned to focus on building free to play games with PlaySimple Games as a Lead Game Designer in 2021.
He has been building and supporting game-design and development communities since 2008 and is currently working on gamedev.in. Yadu has more than 15 years of experience in Game Development, Teaching and User Experience Design. He writes about game design, game UX and development on Twitter under his handle, @yadurajiv as well as on his blog.
Yadu is the author of Developing Turn-Based Multiplayer Games with GameMaker Studio 2 and NodeJS which was published by Apress. He has donned multiple hats, as an organiser, a speaker and a panellist on multiple occasions at the India Game Developers Conference since 2013. He has been a Keynote Speaker at the Jam Jam Festival organised by the Finnish Game Jam held in Helsinki. Yadu was also selected to be one of the IGDA Foundation’s Next Gen Leaders of 2020. He was recently selected as one of @GIbiz’s Top100 Game Changers of 2020 as well. He also serves as a member of the Executive Committee for Global Game Jam since 2021.
Games
- PlaySimple – Jigsaw (2022 – present)
- Play Simple – ZenConnect (2022 – present)
- Play Simple – Destination Solitaire (2021 – present)
- Lost and Found at the Mall (2021)
- Social Media Massacre (2020)
- Wyverndell Express (2020)
- Gone to Pieces (2017)
- Rhizome (2017)
- Badass (2017)
- The Rhizome, an interactive installation at the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2016)
- Wayfarer (2016)
- Circulets (2013)
Publications by
- Developing Turn-Based Multiplayer Games with GameMaker Studio 2 and NodeJS – Apress, 2018
- How to Learn Flixel – tutsplus.com, Mar 2013
- 5 Tools to Develop AAA Games – Linux For You, Feb 2010.
- Moonrise by Savithri Rajeevan, Translated from Malayalam, 2010.
- Getting Started with Game Development – Linux For You, Dec 2009.
- Video Game by Savithri Rajeevan, Indian Literature Vol. 47, No. 3 (215) (May-June, 2003), pp. 76-78 Translated from Malayalam, 2003.
Publications/Interviews with
- First Person Encounters #9: Yadu Rajiv, DiGRA India Podcast, Nov 2021
- Making Space to Make Games, with Yadu Rajiv, Everybody’s Talking At Once Podcast, Episode109, May 2021
- Gamescapes: Art in The World of Video Game Design – STIR delves into the elements that make video games a form of art, a medium that engages the audience in immersive experiences through visually exceptional storytelling. Gamescapes: Are video games contemporary art, too? – The first in the series of eight stories examines video games as a formal media in the purview of contemporary art. Interview/Conversations, STIR, 2020
- Yadu Rajiv, Kinshuk Sunil, Co-founders, Hashstash Studios, NGDC, 2013
Conferences and Awards
- 🗣️ Learn by Doing – Empowering yourself to be Independent, Design Track, Speaker, IGDC 2022 (extended slides)
- 🎮 Xbox Discovery Day (XDD), Speaker, Bangalore, 16th Sept 2022
- 💝 Featured in POC in Play #SAHMGames100 list as part of South Asian Heritage Month, 2021
- 🤼 Putting India On The Global Map – IGX Creators Summit, Moderator, 2021
- 🗣️ Hand-made Game Scenes – The Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA) symposium, Speaker, 2021 | (Video)
- 💝 Games Industry Biz Top 100 Game Changers, 2020 | (GI 100 List)
- 💝 IGDA Next Gen Leaders 2020, GDC 2020
- 🗣️ Jam Jam Festival, Keynote Speaker, Helsinki 2019
- 🤼 Game Design Education, Panel, NGDC 2017
- 🗣️ Tales from Game Designers: Things we learned the hard way, Panel Moderator, NGDC 2017
- 🗣️ Evil Game Design Challenge, Speaker, NGDC 2016
- 🎪 Caveman Game Design Challenge, Workshop, NGDC 2016
- 🎪 Entanglement, a play of Art and Science for Science Gallery Bengaluru, at ITBIZ and Serendipity Art Festival (2016)
- 🤼 Reality Check: Ground Realities of Being Indie, Panel, NGDC 2013
- 🗣️ Using Open Source for Game Development, Speaker, India Game Developer Summit 2010
Professional Associations
- Gamedev.in, Founder, Volunteer, 2009 – Present
- Runs the BYOG, Discord, Podcast, Blog, Steam Curator, People’s page, Directory and more
- Global Game Jam, Executive Committee Member, 2021 – Present
- IndiaGDC, Council Member, 2022 – Present
- NID R & D Campus Bangalore, Visiting faculty, Mentor and Jury Member, 2016 – Present
- Global Game Jam Bangalore, Organiser, 2013 – Present
- NASSCOM/IGDC, Volunteer, 2011 – Present
- Build Your Own Game, Game jam with Gamedev.in/NGDC/IGDC – BYOG – Founder, Organiser, 2010 – Present
- IGDC – Student Game of the Year, Jury Member, 2022
- Indie Game Shindig – https://indiegameshindig.com/ – India’s first Independent games festival with Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology, Organiser, 2015
- IGDA Bangalore Chapter, Founder, Volunteer, 2011 – 2018
- Game Jams with Swissnex India
- OSSCamp with OSSCube
Education
- Master of Design (M.Des) in Design for Digital Experience, National Institute of Design (NID)
- BA in English Language and Literature, St Alberts College, Kochi, Kerala
Resume