Khyati Shodhan, P.E.’s Post

Meet Shalin Shodhan — an industry veteran who has worked with legends like Will Wright at EA, Pixar, and more in the USA. #HumansOfGaming Currently, he is working at Masala Games — the studio he set up in Gujarat. But why did Shalin come back to India from the USA? It all started back when Shalin was in the USA. Shalin had developed Word Mess as his project but couldn’t publish it because one can’t run a business while on an H1B visa. He had to come back to India if he wanted to start his company and publish his game. After a couple of years, Shalin did just that — and there was another reason. He wanted to raise his kids in India. But he didn’t quit his high-paying job in the San Francisco to come back to India — he restructured the project that helped both the company he was working for, Lumos Labs (Lumosity), and his brainchild, Masala Games. Let’s rewind a bit to get a better idea of Shalin’s love for game dev and building his project. After completing his degree in India, Shalin moved to the US for his graduate studies. He joined CMU back in 2003; he is one of my seniors. At CMU, he was working on a prototyping project for video games with batchmates who later went on to build big games like World of Goo and The Last of Us. While at university, a recruiter from Electronic Arts (EA) was visiting. Shalin chatted with her and they were stumped to offer a position after checking out the terraforming stuff he had worked as an intern in ISRO. Right after graduating in 2005, he joined EA and worked on all core graphics elements of Spore. After Spore was completed, Shalin jumped to Pixar Animation Studios to join the film aspect of 3D development. He spent almost five years in CA, working on films like Toy Story 3, Brave, and Inside Out. Shalin’s next project was at Lumos. He was looking to get back into games and Lumosity was advertising on the radio one day while he was driving to work. He applied and got in. Around 2014, he came to back to India. He continued working for Lumos remotely. But a while later, they gave the contract to Masala Games as a company. Shalin works with Lumos to date. Masala is currently working on video games and client projects. Some of the games Shalin has made include Word Mess and Text Mess. Currently, he is working on Detective Dotson. It is a detective thriller set in India. The game has already been revealed, and it looks sharp! It encompasses the story of Dotson, who wants to be a Bollywood star but must maintain his day job as a detective. But Shalin didn’t work in game dev exclusively — he was involved with a music company a.live and an edtech company Teal Labs. Despite his primary interest in game dev, he explored other verticals as well. I hope Shalin’s journey shed some light on what you could follow in your foray into the game dev scene. #games #gamedev #gaming #gamedevelopment #gamedesign