My name is Vijay Narasimhan. I'm an IT Infrastructure professional with 13 years of experience in the video games industry.
I've spent my career building IT departments from the ground up inside game studios. Network architecture, cloud infrastructure, identity management, disaster recovery, data center design. The kind of work that doesn't make the credits but keeps everything else from falling apart. My current focus is cloud infrastructure on AWS and GCP, and I manage the full infrastructure stack at an active mobile game studio.
Outside of work, I write. This blog collects both sides of that.
On the technical side, I publish the State of IT series, a running analysis of where IT teams are headed and what it actually takes to keep up. I also write from experience, covering real scenarios from studio migrations, security posture management, and infrastructure decisions that don't have clean answers.
On the creative side, I write dark fantasy. Twin Fists is my current serialized fiction, published here in chapters. It follows two fighters bound to a god neither of them chose, in a world where magic and consequence are the same thing. I have been building the world behind it for years.
The blog is called 5AM Drafts because that is when I write. Three hours, before the studio day begins. It is the only time that belongs entirely to the brain waves to solidify.
If you found your way here through one of my posts or letters, welcome. Feel free to look around. If something resonates or you have thoughts to share, I would love to hear from you at mail@vijay.gg.