It is well-known that people who aspire to pursue a game developer career must hold skills which include gaming passion, creativity, knowledge of trends in gaming, team-work ability, an analytical frame of mind, and most crucially the expertise in programming languages as C++ and C#. These skills are all crucial to a person who desires to excel and make his mark in the industry easily. The gaming industry is a new business that world has become acquainted to and is often observed as one with limited choices in career. It is a misconception and an awareness about what career path a developer can take on in gaming industry can remove it for good. People have come across and become interested in the gaming development industry recently due to a halt in their outdoor activities as a result of COVID. Game developers are now exploring career paths in the field of gaming for developers to ease their burden off by taking over all the complexes work they put in development of a game. They are more inclusive now for both the developers and non-developer to work in different areas in game development. Some of the career paths that game developers can work in include the following discussed.
- Voice over
Game developers can pursue the voice over as a career path. It involves the voice acting of characters in a game play. As a game-developers are well acquainted to the atmosphere and the essence of the game. It comes natural to them to understand what their characters are supposed to feel and articulate it at what time. The voice acting is recorded and then inserted in video games files. Then the voice acting is activated by certain actions such as when characters interact or when a cut-scene appears.
The voice over can be regarded as adding a human voice to video games in the form of dramatic acting. To pursue this career path, a developer must have some talent like they must be able to voice over for more than one character in a single game. Actors are most certainly interested in this field. Some actors like Nolan North has voiced for Nathan Drake in Uncharted, Dead pool in the few games for that Marvel franchise, and even Desmond Miles from Assassin’s Creed. It is a promising career for both developers and even the non-developers. It is a demanding career path because of the consumers who are tired of old robotic voices and favor realistic and familiar voices from of the actors they love. The game developers also higher actors as a result of this demand and that makes is an interesting path to pursue.
- Project Manager
Game developer can also continue to work as project managers in a game studio. It is a promising career path for expert in project management and the game developers who have an experience in it. These need to create new gaming projects to work on keeping in view potential risks, resources, budget and the time constraints. They have to meet targets and deadline for multiple gaming projects and manage day to day projects ultimately fulfilling the objectives.
Their actual work is to design plans to meet goals and to ensure the quality of work by introducing processes. To manage these elements in the gaming industry knowledge and experience will be of great benefit and game developers can pursue project management as they are well informed as to what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. Expert project managers can also opt for this career in game development but they must have a good knowledge of the gaming for that.
Communication, leadership, skill to negotiate come in handy to get most of the people in their team for both the developers and non-developer who wish to pursue this career. Project managers also need handle pressure with calm. Being pragmatic and logical are some crucial traits to this career as well.
- Game programmer
Game developers can also continue to track the career of programmers who build a video game from the ground up with the supervision of the development team. The programmers need to make use of different types of coding depending on what platform is on, and they need to do. It is one of a promising career for programmers who want to continue working in their same domain.
The game developers include different kinds of programmers in development of a video game which comprise lead programmer, network programmer, physics programmer, artificial intelligence programmer user interface programmer, graphics programmer, and tools programmer.
These people comprise the programming team and are assigned work in developed schedules by lead programmer. These programmers although are well-versed with codes but spend more time in roles like management and supervisory. During the development process the programming team find solutions to issues by making discussions and meeting up with other departments.
- Game Artist
The first impression that a game make is via the game art and visuals. The main selling point and arguably as important as the game play for many games is the game art. Aesthetic to a game is the key and game art bring it makes it different from any text-based or traditional DOS games. Therefore, an artistic skill set to realize architecture or level design in a game play is inevitable. This makes game artist crucial to process of creating games.
Their work is to create 2D or 3D art for visual elements in the video games. Characters, colors, objects, lighting, textures and the environment are the components games artists work on. Most recently digital art is the skill that field highly relies on but traditional sketching is still applied for many tasks. How the game will appear is visualized and imaged by them. They create variation in components to attract and interest gamers and players. They also work on promotion of game via new websites and material to develop interest of players.
Therefore, an artist that has professional specialization will be preferred by large gaming studio. Game developers can also try their luck in this promising career as the modern games have an ever-increasing demand for advanced art in video games.
- Game Designer
A designer in gaming imagines everything about the video game. These aspects includes plot, visual designs, characters and layout. These designers make a cohesive vision as they meet different teams. They collab with artist and programmers to ensure that the design in a video game is followed, various concepts are tested and errors are identified and corrected. They also check for other issues that may arise. They make sure that all technical aspects regarding coding are correctly executed. They make use of focus groups to work out with bugs and ensure a flawless running of game before it is realised to gamers. The game designer is a promising career path that can also be followed by a game developer.
- Quality Assurance Tester
Game developers can also work as quality assurance testers. It is another career that rewards the developers and players alike. But is not as promising as some other careers mentioned earlier. Some other name for this path include QA game tester, QA tester and QA technician.
The game testers have to play the game all day and test specific aspects of a video game. They find and report specific detail on bugs in a game and then re-test it after they have been fixed by development team. They also report audio or graphic glitches, spelling mistakes, and even the issues of copyright. Tester follow a production schedule and they work to meet deadlines in documenting findings about the game accurately by application of a quality management software. They need to learn to use it properly to serve their purpose. They must have patient as their work can turn boring because they have to play some part of a game repeatedly to document clearly what exactly the actual experience of playing that game is along with finding bugs and other glitches in it.
- Audio Engineer
It is a demanding career in game development. It is another career path for game developers. It is not an easy work even when audio engineer and sound designers avail the first opportunity they get to work on a video game. In production of video games, sound design is often an overlooked aspect yet it is vivacious to overall experience in gameplay. The audio engineer ability serve to enrich and complete the overall feel that a gameplay bears.
In the game world the sound adds realism and identity and audio engineer who understands that can realize it. The work of an audio engineer involve blending of dynamic sound effects with ambient sounds and background music to bring life to the game’s world. His work is crucial because sound effects are stimulated in such a way that they support the games actions. The audio engineer for games might also run auditions for voice actors and then facilitate the voice over recording and editing to get the right energy, style, and tone out of the actors. The voice over work is complete and the sound effects are in place, the audio engineer goes to work to edit, mix, and master all the different elements to make a seamless soundtrack, and ultimately help create the atmosphere and immersion desired by the studio or game producer.
- Game Publisher
Game developers can also work as game publishers in the gaming industry. The career of a publisher involves the responsibility of distributing a game either produced internally or externally and then marketing it to drive profit from it. Tencent Holdings (League of Legends), Electronic Arts (Apex Legends) and many others are some major publishers. So, a game developer can take the gaining role and job of a publisher who takes the responsibility of promotion and distribution that will leads to monetization of a video game and thus generate profit from it.
These are some of the suggestions can help game developers pursue a promising career path in their own domain.
