How to get into the Gaming Industry – Detailed Career Guide

If you are curious to know how to get into the gaming industry? And is it possible to make a living out of this career option? (Or) just excited to know the video gaming career path. Then you are on the right page and Yes! You are right you can make a bright career in gaming and you can make living out of it.

For most people on the earth, it is like a dream comes true. Obviously, who does not like to play games? Almost all of us love to play games. Whether we are playing on a mobile phone or on a computer or on a PlayStation we can easily spend an hour playing games.

Therefore what would be better than this, we can also make a career in video gaming.

The person who works with their hobbies or interest, for those people the sky is the only limit to success. However, everyone wants to work with their interest but does not know where to start.

You do not have to worry anymore because finding career info will give every possible information on how to get started career in gaming.

You can enter into a career in gaming whether you are a college graduate or just pass your high school. In this dream industry, the only thing matter is your interest level in the games.

Note: Before starting our journey of knowing the career prospects in gaming. I want to clarify that playing a game and developing a game are two different things.

However, making a new game is exciting and after creating a game, playing our own game has a lot more fun.

I categorize gaming professionals into four categories based on their education, skills, and job responsibilities:

  1. Game Designer/ Artist
  2. Sound Designer
  3. Game Programmer
  4. Game Tester (also known as Quality Assurance Tester)

You can choose a career in the gaming industry from among the above options based on your interests and preferences.

In this article, we will explore the four career options listed above in detail, providing you with all the information you need to make an informed decision about your career in the gaming industry. By the end of this article, you should have a good sense of which path is the best fit for you and your goals.

Path 1: Game Designer and Artist

I include the game artist with the Game designer because both are related to visual designing. However, these two are separate designations.

Game Artist: A game artist is responsible for creating sketches of characters, weapons, tools, scenery, and many other objects for the game. That means it gives the first structure of any object in the games.

Game Designer: As a game designer, you are responsible for the complete design of environments in a game. The game designer decides what the storyline and gameplay style will be like in the games. Decide which features are suited more and give an attractive look.

The game’s levels and themes also decide by a game designer. A game designer has a significant role in gaming studios because everything we see on the screen is visual.

If the visual of the game is not good then who will buy your game?

If you are a person, who is not playing games. Then sorry friend you are on the wrong page. Because you should have to be creative, and what do you think where the creativity comes from?

Of course! it comes from the games because there you can find the errors and deficiencies. So if you are not playing games then how can you able to know?

Gaming Industry Prerequisite

If you are not playing games then start playing lots of games and analyse them. This is the only prerequisite to starting a career in gaming.

Education required to become a Game Designer

Education 1 (Mandatory): You must have completed your high school in any subjects [Arts/Commerce/Science] to move further on the game designer career path.

Education 2 (Mandatory): Diploma or an Associate degree in game designing, graphics, art designing, or animation.

Education 3 (Optional): Bachelor’s Degree in any stream

However, after completing Education 3; you will get more opportunities than a diploma. But, after or during your Bachelor’s degree you must know about visual design.

So you must have to build the required skills to become a game designer. Therefore you must have to go for either of one option… or maybe both; according to need and interest.

  • Option 1: Join a well-known visual designing (animation) institute.
  • Option 2: Go for the internship during your college days

Game Designer Skills Sets

  • Fine art
  • High visualization
  • Understanding of shapes
  • Identify and fix bad features in Games
  • Logical and Creative
  • Math Basics

Tools used by a Game Designer

  • Notebook
  • Sketch Tablets
  • Paint tool
  • Adobe Photoshop, illustrator
  • Spine 2D
  • 3-D modeling software: Maya, MilkShape, 3ds Max, SketchUp
  • Game Engines:  Construct 2, GameMaker Studio, Unit, Unreal Engine

Now you probably think what is the game engine? This is a very helpful tool for game developers.

Using a game engine you can make a game without any prior knowledge of programming languages.

Click Here to know the list of the top 10 game engines used by game developers.

I would highly recommend you read about game engines. It will help you a lot in your starting gaming career as well as throughout your whole career. Ok, let’s come back to the track of game designing.

Game Designer Job Description

  • Design and define game mechanics and core elements in games.
  • Creates graphics, animation, and visual effects for the games.
  • Creating new Characters, storylines, text, and dialogue.
  • Design the 2D and 3D models of the object.
  • Write the complete instruction design manual for how to build the game. Make possible changes in the manual throughout the course of the development cycle.
  • Define the impact of objects like how much damage should this attack do, if the character uses this weapon.

Note: Creating a new game is awesome but it is not a piece of cake, therefore you must have lots of creativity in your pocket.

 

Path 2: Sound Designer/ Engineer

Have you imagined games without any audio? No one wants to play a high-end video game without audio because this will be quite boring.

Sound Engineer provides high-quality sound to the game, which is an appropriate fit with the visual.

Education required to become Sound Engineer

No degree is required. You can do a Diploma or training related to sound and audio. Many colleges and institutes provide training for audio and sound engineering.

Tips: You can gain some practical exposure to sound at music events or in the recording studio.

Sound Engineer Skills Set

  • Sound Equipment and devices.
  • Creativity to produce sound from the scratch
  • Good hearing, for distinguishing sounds.
  • Basic Electrical and acoustics knowledge

Tools used by a Sound Engineer

  • Audacity
  • Logic Pro
  • Reaper

Tips: Freesound provides different types of audio for free. Therefore, you can practice with those sounds. It will help you a lot. Click Here to download free audio

What actually does a Sound Engineer do?

  • Record the different types of sounds.
  • Mix and edit the audio as per the game requirements.
  • Reproduce and manipulate the actual sound using the equipment.

 

Path 3: Video Game Programmer

A game programmer is the part of the development team who is making the game actually run.

In simple words a programmer act as a mechanic of the car. A game programmer executes all the imagination of the game designer and bringing the virtual game world to the life.

Education required to become a Game Programmer

Education 1 (Mandatory): You must have completed your high school [subjects must have: Mathematics, Computer Science] to continue the journey of a game programmer.

Education 2 (Mandatory): Bachelor’s degree in computer science is the most preferable.

However, if you have good command over the programming languages then it does not matter which degree you have. You can be the next game programmer.

Game Programmer Skills Set

  • Logics
  • Algorithms
  • Mathematics
  • 2D/3D Graphics
  • Physics
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • API (Application Programming Interfaces)
  • Programming Languages: C++, C# (C Sharp), C, Java, JavaScript, HTML

I only mentioned the popular programming languages used to develop games.

Note: C sharp is the most used programming language by game developers. C Sharp is very much similar to java.

So if you know Java, this will help you to learn C#. In case you don’t know java then no need to concern, you can directly learn C#.

Also Read: How to Start a Career in Artificial Intelligence – Step-by-Step Guide

Tools used by Game Programmers

If you want to create a game engine, then you must require so many tools and libraries such as Visual Studio, OpenGL, SFML, and many more.

Why am I not mentioning the tools to develop a game engine?

Because my motive is to guide you, on how you can start your career in gaming. By the way, building a game engine is not an easy task. So you can start your career using game engines as others do.

You can create one of the best game engines. But first, you need to get some experience in the gaming industry. Learn more about the Game Engines.

Tips: You don’t have to learn all the programming languages.

Choose your game engine first and accordingly decide which language is supported by this game engine. For example, if you opt Unity game engine then you should have to learn C# because Unity supports C sharp.

If you want to start your career in gaming. Then you must have to start creating some basic games.

Game Programmer Job Description

  • Provide the motion to the game characters.
  • Map the correct action moved to the game character from the player input devices.
  • Provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) features for other game characters.
  • Integrate the right audio with the visual graphics.

 

Path 4: Game Tester

A game tester performs an essential role to make a game successful. Because they check every possible aspect of the games.

They play the same level multiple times to analyse the bugs, error, and glitches and report it to the game developers. After the developer fixes the reported issues, you have to test them again. So the cycle goes on and on….on.

Education and Skill

You Absolutely! Don’t need any degree to become a video game tester. A high school or a diploma is sufficient to get into the gaming industry.

The only required skill is that you have to Play lots of games and analyse those games.

Game Tester Job Responsibilities

  • Identifying the problems and suggesting improvements to the game developers.
  • You could be testing the same area of the game for a month.
  • Test the game features work according to design documentation.
  • Make sure games run smoothly.

Note: Most of the gaming studios hire a Quality Assurance person on a contract basis.

Playing games all day for a living might sound like a dream job. But what if you have to play the same stage of the game multiple times? It sounds a bit stressful. Playing and testing a game are two different things.

You have to play the same game stage with the same character until the bug is not fixed. And because of this process, it might be possible sometimes you will get frustrated.

You can watch this interview on Youtube to get some more ideas about the game tester life.

So, if you really want to become a game tester. Then you should have to consider all the above issues.

Career Scope in Gaming

Gaming is one of the hottest trending careers on the planet.

The popularity of video games increases day by day and the size of the gaming industry has grown enormous in size.

Gaming industries share a big space in the entertainment industries. That means above all the mentioned gaming career paths have a lot more opportunities to grab and make a successful career in gaming.

 

The Popular Games Development Studios

  • Rockstar Games
  • SEGA
  • Nintendo
  • Electronic Arts
  • Bungie
  • Blizzard Entertainment
  • Activision
  • KONAMI
  • Ubisoft
  • Zynga

If you want to get a job in the gaming industry follow these two pro tips

  • Tips 1: Start making games if you really want to get into this industry. Because practical exposure gives you preference over others.
  • Tips 2: Make sure to put effort into curating a high-quality portfolio to showcase your skills and talents. Having an impressive portfolio of your design work can greatly increase your chances of securing a job in the industry, regardless of your education level.

In this article, hope I am able to shine a bit of light on your query about how to get into the gaming industry.
So you can make the right choice for your career.

Let me know what you think about career options in gaming. Share your opinions and experiences in the comments below!

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