Global Locations
The leading countries for most global services are India, China and Russia. Each location offers different benefits and risks. India is regarded as the leader in animation. It also carries the stereotype of being better at following processes than in entrepreneurialship, innovation or adaptability and traits that are highly beneficial to the creative process. Russian engineers are more expensive, on an average, but are more closely trained in Western modes of problem solving and better at finding solutions rather than following processes. neoIT research also indicates the following perspectives on the leading countries.
- India, with its higher level of services maturity, is evolving into a low-cost destination with rapidly developing skills for game development and increasing ability to scale up for large projects
- Russia has the highest level of game development skills and experienced labor. It also has the highest rates among these leading outsourcing destinations
- China emerges as a front-runner in terms of capabilities vis-à-vis cost, although it is also the country with the greatest security risk and least protection for Intellectual Property (IP) protection.
Emerging countries also rank, but need further development and maturity before game developers can actively enter into these countries. While the existing skill sets are limited in these countries, developers can enter into the country and be the “employer of choice” by creating facilities in smaller markets
- Vietnam has the lowest labor rates of all countries, but is constrained in the quantity of trained individuals to support current projects or to scale up to future requirements
- Romania has similar capabilities to Russia at lower labor rates. It lacks the trained resources to scale beyond small projects
- Ukraine is emerging as an alternative location to Russia. It has labor rates that are slightly more favorable than Russia’s and is a source of secondary talent for Russian companies.
Developers should evaluate which risk the company can best tolerate. For example, a company that is pre-eminently concerned with IP protection will find greater value in working in India rather than China. Similarly, a company requiring extensive gaming knowledge will find deeper resources in Russia than in India.
Distribution of work
by job functions |
| Job Function |
Percentage |
| Artist |
25 |
| Modeler |
19 |
| Texturing Artist |
15 |
| Animator |
15 |
| Programmer |
10 |
| Tester |
5 |
| Porting Exec. |
5 |
| Technical Director |
3 |
| Project Manager |
3 |
Source: neoIT
