Poornima Seetharaman becomes the 1st Indian Game Designer to enter The Global Hall of Fame

Game Design might be a new discipline in India, but it is one of the most exciting, and fast-growing one. As the gaming industry is booming across the world, the number of aspiring game designers in the country are burgeoning. The latest high-quality games such as Apex Legends and PUBG have skyrocketed every youth's interest in the industry.

Poornima Seetharaman is one of the first and few game designers in India paving way for the youth. A few weeks ago, she became the first Indian game designer to achieve global acclaim, when she was inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame. Read on to know more.

Read | Fortnite introduces their new game mode called Rally Royale: Know more about this new mode

Who is Poornima Seetharaman?

Poornima Seetharaman has had a career full of some extremely exhilarating highs and some crushing lows. According to a report on Vice, her career as a game designer has spanned over 14 years and she has spent many of these years, working on some of the worlds best-known game franchises, ranging from FarmVille to BioShock.Bengaluru based Poornima is one of the veterans in India’s game design industry. She has been there since the early days of design and has faced several heartbreaks of cancelled passion projects and failed businesses.

Read | What counts as ghost event in Phasmophobia? Learn more about multiplayer horror game

Appearing in Women in Games Hall of Fame has indeed been one of the most glorious moments of her career. The Games Hall of Fame is an award, which opened up for the first time globally this year. The authorities behind this prestigious award made commendable efforts this year to provide the much-deserved recognition to female game designers.

The past female winners of this award include Rhianna Pratchett (Heavenly Sword, Tomb Raider), Shioban Reddy (Little Big Planet) and Debbie Bestwick (Worms series). This achievement is especially staggering considering that India is still barely on the map when it comes to world-class game design.

Some other notable figures in this year’s list of achievers for Games Hall of Fame were Brenda Romero, the creator of the venerated Wizardry games, and Audrey Leprince of The Game Bakers, makers of the console hit Furi.

Read | Is Among Us On Xbox One? Will It Arrive On The Xbox Gaming Console?

What does Poornima feel about this achievement?

In an interview with vice.com, Poornima revealed that she is finding it hard to believe that she had been inducted in Global Hall of Fame. She revealed that when the nominations opened up many of her friends including IGDA founder Ernest W. Adams had encouraged her to enter.

Poornima revealed that there were 61 entries, and when the global jury picked her as one of the 12 nominees. The video game designer was beyond thrilled to be listed along with such talented women like Brenda, Kate and Audrey. The ceremony was a virtual one and soon many congratulations started pouring in.

Read | How to get free pets in Among Us? Know more about this social deduction game

Poornima Seetharaman’s beginnings as a game designer

Poornima revealed in her interview that it all started in college. She had created a campaign for Age of Empires and her friends would often play them, give feedback. It took her long enough to figure out, what she was doing was actually game design. Poornima’s AoE campaigns impressed a friend so much, that he recommended her for a game design role at a Korean game studio. Even with no prior experience, Poornima got the job. She dove in headfirst into the Dungeons & Dragon’s manuals as research for the project and instantly fell in love with game design.

Image Source: Poornima Seetharaman (Instagram)