Game Design · Live Ops · Workshops & Mentoring

First-principles, no-bullshit game design consulting.

Many design problems can be solved by copying whatever's top of the charts this month. For that, you don't need me.

I work on the other kind: hard design problems that need deep experience, genuine creativity and innovation, or fundamental design thinking. Economies that quietly broke, retention that plateaued for reasons nobody can name, live ops that's grinding the team down, mechanics that have to be invented because no reference game exists.

I bring the battle scars and wisdom that come with twenty-plus years making games, twenty-plus shipped titles, and the good fortune to be trained by bona fide industry legends. I've led design on one of the world's most successful cricket strategy games, and ran live ops on some of the biggest social games ever made. I've also made really fun games that sank without a trace. Success. Failure. I've had my fair share of both.

I bring old-school fundamentals and genuinely cutting-edge AI-assisted workflows together to solve hard game-design problems. That means integrating AI into every stage of the design process: research, rapid prototyping, player insight, living documentation, and production, without sacrificing creative judgment. I share some of the practical lessons in my talks below.

If any of this sounds like what your project needs, get in touch.

Book a Conversation View Consulting Services

Experience across

Consulting for founders, studio heads, and product leaders

I take a few engagements at a time and work directly with whoever owns the outcome: founders, studio heads, design and product leaders. Every engagement starts from your game's actual situation, not a framework I apply to everyone.

Deep Design & Product Audit

A senior teardown of your game from both a design and business lens. I play it properly, dig into the numbers, examine the competitive landscape, and show the working.

What you get:

A written teardown of what's working, what's broken, and why
Core loop, FTUE, progression, economy, monetization, PvP, meta, live ops, and retention analysis
Competitor and genre benchmarking, with relevant design and market trends
Recommendations ranked by impact and effort, not a list of best practices
Product-positioning and design implications for go-to-market
A working session with your leads to pressure-test the findings

High leverage for small teams

AI-Assisted Design Workflows

I help designers and small teams decide where AI genuinely improves the work, and where it gets in the way. This is practical adoption, not a formal transformation programme.

Personal workflows for research, ideation, and design exploration
Faster specifications, UX flows, and prototypes
Economy modelling, content development, and player-feedback analysis
Choosing the right tools for different design problems
Review methods that preserve quality, originality, and human judgment
Lightweight team adoption without unnecessary process overhead

Game Design and Creative Direction

Hands-on design work from concept through launch, delivered as a focused project engagement or ongoing fractional creative leadership.

Feature, systems, and core-loop design
Progression, meta, and live-ops design
Economy, balancing, and monetization
Onboarding, UX flows, and player communication
Narrative and systems integration
End-to-end design direction from concept through launch
Design reviews, mentoring, and capability building
Ongoing fractional creative leadership

Discuss Your Game

Selected work

Games built, rebuilt, and grown

The role I played, the problem we tackled, and what changed, from original 0→1 products to live games operating at enormous scale.

Head of Design · Hitwicket

Hitwicket Cricket

Reworking core mechanics, retention, and monetization without sanding away the strategic depth that made the game distinctive.

Defined the strategic shift from single-player to PvP, transforming monetization and long-term retention.
Improved D1 retention by over 40% and D30 retention by over 30%, reaching strong industry-benchmark levels.
Increased average daily engagement to well above category benchmarks.
Established Hitwicket as India's best-monetized cricket game, generating a disproportionately high share of category revenue relative to its download share.

Play Store ↗

Consultant Game Design Director

World Cricket Championship 3

Evolving the flagship title in one of the world's largest mobile cricket franchises.

Provided game-design direction across an established cricket franchise with 500M+ downloads.
Led innovation in live-ops events and content designed to drive repeat engagement.
Mentored and trained internal game-design and product teams, strengthening principles, process, and craft.

Play Store ↗

Hidden Shadows, Hidden Chronicles, Mafia Wars, and YoVille

Senior Game Designer · Zynga

Zynga Social Games

Keeping enormous social-game communities engaged while shipping new features, content, and original IP from India.

Worked across Mafia Wars, YoVille, Hidden Chronicles, and Hidden Shadows.
Led design on Hidden Shadows, Zynga's first new IP designed and launched from India.
The portfolio reached tens of millions of players and generated millions of dollars in revenue.

Co-founder & CEO · BigFatPhoenix Interactive

Fairside Stories

Could a role-playing game help children rehearse the messy social and emotional decisions they face in real life?

Created a one-of-a-kind kids narrative RPG for social-emotional learning.
Made life skills playable through consequential choices, relationships, and interactive stories.
Built the original product and multidisciplinary team from the ground up.

Creative Director · BYJU'S

Disney · BYJU'S Early Learn

Creating a new kind of learning product for young children, with no established blueprint to copy.

Designed and built the product from scratch with a 50+ person creative team.
Combined curriculum, storytelling, interaction, and game design in one K–3 experience.
Helped shape the product and creative foundation for the Disney partnership.

Dadi vs Jellies, Smash Racing, Cricket Rockstar, and Bollywood Ka Baap

Director of Design · Hike Messenger

Hike Messenger Games

Inventing a mobile social-games portfolio for an Indian audience rather than importing familiar formats unchanged.

Led the design and launch of more than 20 original titles.
The games channel doubled the time players spent in the app.
Dadi vs Jellies won Game of the Year at the India Game Developer Conference.

Consultant Game Design Director

Sing One Song

An AI-driven, game-based singing app that turns practice into play, helping people learn one song at a time.

Created first-of-its-kind game mechanics controlled entirely by the player's voice, providing game-design and creative direction from concept through execution.
Designed onboarding and UX for an unfamiliar interaction model with no established reference product.
Guided and mentored the internal team in game-design principles and development processes.

Visit site ↗

Consultant Game Director

Makkalin Mudhalvar

Using play to help young people engage with responsible citizenship, leadership, and Tamil Nadu politics.

Built the first original game developed entirely in Tamil for a Tamil audience.
Designed from the ground up around Tamil culture and the Dravidian model of governance.
Launched in collaboration with Populus Empowerment Network.

Have a game that needs this level of intervention?

Bring Me the Problem

About

I fell in love with videogames in 1979, when I was five. Forty-five years later, I'm grateful to still be making them, which means I haven't had to work a single day.

I believe it's a privilege to make games. We're building entertainment that brings people joy in what might otherwise be difficult lives, and I take that seriously. Respecting the player's time, effort, and intelligence isn't just a design principle. It's a conviction.

The most important thing I ever learned about this craft: if you don't have fun making your game, your players won't have fun playing it. I've tried to live by that every day. Happy teams make great games, so I work hard to keep people motivated, high-spirited, and genuinely excited to be building something together.

I've had the privilege — and occasionally the dumb luck — to work with genuine legends of this industry, many of whom are friends to this day. I've also worked alongside some of the most talented developers in India, and we've grown into veterans together. That's the part of this career I'm most grateful for: the people, and how much you learn from them if you stay curious and stay humble.

Away from games, I've been a widely published author and columnist: VICE, The Indian Express, India Today, Forbes Life India, and The Hindu, along with children's books for Scholastic and a Disney-published graphic novel. Storytelling and design have always fed each other in my work.

I've shipped massive hits that made millions. I've also shipped tiny games that came and went without a trace. Across all of it, large or small, the same things always matter: love for the craft, attention to detail, trust in your teammates, and an undying commitment to make things better for the player. That's what I bring to every studio I work with.

Mentoring, Workshops & Teaching

Great designers never stop learning. I've spent my career learning from exceptional people, testing those lessons in the real world, and passing on what works to the next generation. I work with individual designers, professional teams, and educational institutions at the depth and in the format each needs. I've taught workshops and multi-week modules at premier institutions including NID, Srishti, and SRM, among others.

Anand Ramachandran leading an interactive game design workshop

1:1 Mentoring

For working designers and design leads who want to sharpen their craft or step into leadership.

Design craft and systems thinking
First principles as a daily practice
Portfolio and career direction
Making the jump from designer to design leader

Team Workshops

Hands-on sessions built around your team's actual game and actual problems, not off-the-shelf training.

First-principles game design
Systems, economy, and progression thinking
Live ops design and cadence
AI-assisted design workflows

Game Design Teaching

For colleges, universities, and educational institutions looking for industry-led game-design teaching, from focused workshops to multi-week modules.

Game-design fundamentals and first principles
Systems, mechanics, and player experience
Practical assignments, critiques, and project feedback
Custom workshops and multi-week curricula

From designers I've mentored

"Anand was devoted to the growth and development of a solid design craft within the company. His steadfast and frank leadership gave rise to an entire generation of designers, myself among them, who have delivered great and successful games across the industry."

Yashas Bharadwaj, Design Director, Blizzard Entertainment

"I learnt a lot during my time at Zynga from Anand especially how to create social design constructs, how to be more empathetic to your player and most importantly what's the best way to setup a collaborative culture in a team."

Mayur Bhimjiyani, Associate Director, Krafton India

"Anand was the mentor I needed at that point in my career. When I was still trying to find my footing as a game designer, he brought the right mix of guidance, patience, and challenge that helped me grow with confidence and clarity. The way he taught and mentored me didn't just help me improve in the moment, it fundamentally shaped how I think about design even today. He had a unique ability to see potential in me that I hadn't fully recognized myself, and he pushed me in the right ways by helping me discover answers on my own rather than simply giving them. Some of the core principles and ways of thinking he instilled back then have become second nature to me now, and I still find myself going back to those learnings in my day-to-day work. Beyond design skills, Anand also instilled a strong sense of ownership and clarity in communication, which has stayed with me throughout my career. Any aspiring game designer would benefit immensely from his guidance, especially in navigating the early stages of their journey."

Rahul Pradhan, Director of Design, Electronic Arts

Looking for senior game-design teaching or hands-on team development?

Discuss a Workshop or Module

Talks & Speaking

I speak at conferences, industry events, and educational institutions on game design, creative leadership, live ops, and AI-assisted workflows. Available for keynotes, panels, and invited talks.

How AI Shapes Player Insights & Game Design

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IGDC 2025

How AI Shapes Player Insights & Game Design: Real Lessons From a Top Cricket Title

How We Used AI to Accelerate Game Production

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IGDC Developer Day 2024

How We Used AI to Accelerate Game Production

Life in Game Development: Corporate vs Indie

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IndiaGDC

Life in Game Development: Corporate vs Indie — Which One Do I Choose?

Comics and Gaming: Where Storytelling Meets Play

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Ziro Literary Festival 2024

Comics & Gaming: Where Storytelling Meets Play

Beating the Bad Habits That Kill Creativity

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IndiaGDC

Beating the Bad Habits That Kill Creativity

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IndiaGDC

Surviving the Indian Game Industry

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IndiaGDC

My Biggest Game Design Mistake

For speaking enquiries, get in touch.

Let's talk

If you're staring at a design problem with no obvious answer, or you need a senior design brain your team can't hire full-time, let's talk. The hard problem is the fun part.

The first conversation is free: thirty minutes on your hardest problem. If it isn't useful, don't hire me.

Prefer LinkedIn? Connect with me there.