12 Career Opportunities in the Video Game Industry

There are a plethora of career options in the mushrooming video game industry that donates to great game production quality. From overseeing the making of triple-A (AAA) titles to developing concepts, various gaming industry jobs might be perfect for you.

Video gaming is a really competitive zone where professionals are needed to have a solid balance of fun, creativity, and technology. However, the most vital skills needed in this sector are passion and creativity.

Individuals can also pursue their career in Gaming once they complete their bachelor’s degree in computer engineering as a Video Game developer. Individuals who are great in programming languages can also apply for video gaming jobs.

Well, if you ever wanted to be a part of the video gaming industry, you can look for the following jobs in the industry:

1. Game Designer

Video game designers are the ones who design games for several formats like wireless applications, consoles, mobile phones, and the internet. They choose the purpose and overall design for the game. Nonetheless, many video game designers only specialize in just one genre, for example, characters of the layout, storyline, etc. The job role of a video game designer includes:

1. Developing unique gaming ideas.
2. Experimenting with various gaming themes and genres.
3. Developing storylines, characters, and plots.
4. They are responsible for the improvement of existing video games.

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2. Game Programmer / Developer

A game developer or a programmer is a term utilized for computer engineers who work especially on computer games. Individuals usually trained in the languages of computer programming are programmers and curate games that come to life. These developers specialize in areas such as graphics, coding, AI, scripting, sound, user interface, tools, porting, network, etc.

Powerful knowledge of coding and various other platforms is essential for becoming a Game Programmer. The developer is an essential part of the development group who takes the technical resources throughout the production process to ensure that all the gaming functions run smoothly and effectively.

3. Animator

Video game animators are animators and multimedia artists who specialize in video games. Gaming animators blend technology and art together to create reciprocal animated environments and images for video games. Video game animators are highly responsible for the representation of behavior and movement within a game. This specific position needs you to undertake a great amount of responsibility and ownership. You would be only responsible for bringing your passion and developed animation skills together and contributing to the project.

4. Artist

Every video game requires talented artists to bring the creative ideas of designers to existence by making environments and vivid characters solely from scratch. Gaming artists should also be able to animate their creations in a lively manner if they want their audience to indulge in the world that they’ve created. Saddling your creative talents to make video game characters can pay you around $50,000 yearly, which is huge. The responsibilities of a gaming artist are applying textures to the visual elements, adding light and shading effects, and researching references and other resources to produce the realistic characters of the video game.

5. Audio Engineer

The audio game engineer is entitled for adding practicality to the video gaming world with sound effects. Every game has its own identity and reality, and the audio engineer should have the capability to understand and abbreviate the game’s soul in the audio they create. These engineers use various kinds of equipment and machinery to record, mix, synchronize and reproduce voices, music, and sound effects. They primarily work on the creation of live shows, music recordings, and movies or video games. They can also be called “sound engineering technicians”.

6. Writer

Another important job role in the video gaming industry is that of a writer. Writing for video games has become super complicated throughout the years. Currently, video game scripts can be as long as hundreds and thousands of pages. And, the lines aren’t conventional. Video game writers need to curate energetic characters that react in an eccentric way in various situations while sticking to the essence of their character. They are also in charge of the entire authentication that comes along with the game, like in-game menus and instruction manuals. The top-notch video game scriptwriters can earn up to $200,000 salary if their ideas and creativity end up being successful in the market.

7. Translator & Interpreter

Well, interpreters and translators are responsible to convert the character’s dialogues into various other languages. They change the documentation and other instructions from the original language to other dialects. Their main work is to observe what allows firms to market games in an international market. These translators change a game’s characters, the story, and the dialogue from one language to another. They also circumscribe the content that comes along with them like marketplace descriptions and websites.

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8. Game Tester

The job of a game tester is to go through the games and find abnormalities and defects, if any, and then report them to the game developer for solving the issues. They plan and test the video games in various and unexpected manners and see if there aren’t any glitches or bugs in the game. They are responsible for testing video games during their starting stage, i.e. the development stage. Their work I’d to detect the issues present in the game. For this, they need to finish all the stages of the game, while exploring all the levels of the game. The responsibilities of a game tester include:

1. Observing and making a note of all the issues and other glitches present in the game.
2. Playing all the levels of the game and completing it.
3. Communicating the issues to the game designers.
4. Playing the game with various characters.
5. After completion, rating the game in terms of difficulty and enjoyment is essential.

9. Producer

The job of the video game producer is to supervise and oversee the entire development of the project, ensuring that each and every department is finishing and delivering quality work on time. Video game producers are more likely to deal with the logistics of their game production rather than the creative aspects of the game. To become a good producer you should be able to manage the whole team. You should be able to re-invent and improve the quality of the game and your motto should be to stay ahead in the race.

The skills needed to become a video game producer are:

1. Passion for video games along with a creative mind.
2. Strong and analytical mind.
3. Proficiency in programming languages such as C# and C++.
4. Should be patient enough to work in a team.

10. Project Manager

As project managers, individuals are entitled to observe the overall launch and development of a new line of the game. They need to manage and observe the game life cycle. Project managers can generally be found in the development group only. They often team up and work well with scheduling, tasking, milestones, and budget to get the game completed, while delivering the best quality. The project manager plays a major role in executing, planning, controlling, and monitoring the projects – new and closing. They are responsible for the scope of the entire project, whether it’s a failure or a success. Note that open vacancies for freelance project managers can be viewed on the site Jooble.

11. Marketing Manager

A marketing manager in the gaming industry is a person who is entitled to manage the promotion of video games through several marketing actions on the B2C platforms. This is one of the most important job roles in the entire gaming industry as it’s linked with customer retention and acquisition. The marketer is responsible to let everyone know how to get more game downloads along with more usage. He or she should select the best mediums to improve the game’s overall performance based on monthly or yearly budgets. Other responsibilities include the implementation of marketing campaigns that would drive engagement and bring out the best results. Building the greatest hype that can increase user retention and acquisition.

12. Professional Gamer

A professional gamer is someone who is highly paid to play video games. It’s a great career as a permanent job in this field. The majority of professional players are generally paid by their sponsors or teams to compete in the most renowned e-sports tournament around the globe. Professional gamers should have the capability to remain calm and patient. They are required to practice regularly. These professional gamers should also have great coordination between hands and eyes, good reflexes, and great decision-making skills.

Professional gamers are also fit for the game testing job we have mentioned above. There are many gaming-minded companies like Sony, BoostCarry, or Ubisoft that hire professional gamers with great parks.

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Final Words

The future is great for the video gaming industry. Today, we see more and more individuals wanting to get into creating and playing video games and make a great career out of it. Video games are super lucrative and a fascinating domain to get into. There is a lot of emerging video game trends that would highly change the overall situation of the video game industry. There have been a lot of new advancements in the gaming industry which is mushrooming at a high pace and we can see great growth in this industry in the years to come. People who love video games should continue playing as the video gaming industry is expected to raise more.

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