About Me

Hey, I am Gaurav Kumar, hailing from Varanasi, a city in Uttar Pradesh state of India. Since my childhood, I have been playing video games and sports. My whole family used to play video games with me. When I was in 3rd grade, I used to play Super Contra, Tank, and Pooyan with my family, but I didn't like that someone had to wait to play the game with me. I always wanted to enjoy it with everyone together.

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As I reached my 5th grade, I started thinking if there could be any way that I could increase the number of players in the game—more specifically, the Bomberman game. My inclination toward the game industry grew much stronger, and I wanted to create something that could be enjoyed with everyone together. I tried to find resources on that, and when I first got my computer, I had already reached the end of my 9th grade.

I started searching for how to make NES games. I studied about them and learned 6502 assembly too, but soon came to know that a cartridge is required for this to run, and I could not test it. So, I had to look for something else. I came to know about Valve Hammer Editor and also made Counter-Strike 1.6 maps for aim practice. I also made a few specific maps that could be used by my CS 1.6 team for practice.
I always loved taking charge, making strategies, and calling out action plans—whether it was sports like football and cricket or online in CS. I have been a natural selection for leadership and led the football team in school too.
When I started learning how to make games, I also learned more about the game industry and the different roles it holds. I love to lead, create rules, and hold a vision for games—generating ideas and solving problems. But before I could do any of that, I had to make a few games myself.

When I reached college, my focus shifted from making maps and mods for Counter-Strike to making 2D and 3D projects. During my first year, I made a hyper-casual platformer game from scratch in Unity (C#) while also making the assets for it in Photoshop and Illustrator. I published it on Google Play Store and itch.io. I focused on designing the game system that would keep the player engaged with different types of platforms but also with the threat of getting killed from the spikes above.

During my 2nd year in college, I got into GetMega as a game tester. I was responsible for testing their live real-money gaming app, where I had to playtest and find bugs, monitor and report traffic peak hours, and catch potential foul play or unethical ways of winning. I used to write daily small reports on the number of users encountered and suggest how to improve user engagement. After working there for 3 months, I had to leave the company as I got COVID twice in the following years.
During my last year in college, I worked a lot on an FPP horror game made from scratch. I had a vision that I wanted to implement and learn in-depth about Unity tools. Since this was my last year, I also wanted to enhance and improve my project management skills, so I started with LinkedIn courses. I completed the LinkedIn Learning path on project and product management and joined Gamemano as a Unity game developer.

It is a startup that works in casino games like slots and fish games. iGaming was a new domain for me, and I started learning thoroughly about it. When I joined the company, there were not that many people, and I had to do a lot of research work on how to implement and make slot games. I learned a lot and started with the hiring for the team members. Along with my project manager, I was promoted to development team lead and was also doing a lot of work as a game producer too.

My company was not doing great with Agile, and having learned everything freshly, I started working closely with my project manager to improve things in the company while also learning a lot about management. I stayed as development team lead for 2 months when my project manager left the company. As I was very curious and tried to help him as much as I could, I learned a lot and was managing both projects while also handling the team—working with artists, animators, game mathematicians, the sound team, and QA.
I was promoted to Game Producer role as I knew everything about the project and was managing alongside the PM—sprints, etc.—while also working on the deliverables, taking requirements from the CTO, and finalizing everything with the game designer. Since then, I have made an effective Agile team and cross-collaborative environment, making pipelines for better flow of work, smoothing out the collaboration process, and increasing the impact of the teams while decreasing the margin of error in deliverables.
I worked closely with the game designer to finalize the game features and bring them to the respective teams to start working on them. I own the product backlogs, making the user stories, and managing and tracking project changes. Since then, I have been working continuously for the improvement of my teams and also myself as an individual.

I have recently cleared my CAPM certificate from PMI and am looking forward to PMP now, learning from great individuals to keep moving forward.

I believe in making game experiences that bring people together and stay in their memory, and I am always on the lookout for something better and new. You can catch me playing my favorite games with my friends or playing lovely soccer or cricket in my free time. I also have experience using Google Analytics (in my portfolio), and I know you have been here—so thank you so much!
Some of the Games I love to play these days are Valorant, Apex Legends, Rust, Schedule 1, Counter Strike 2