Can You Turn Your Love for Video Games into A Career?
Ever participated in a knife fight, got chased by monsters, killed enemies, rescued your damsel in distress, all while getting killed a few times in the process? Well, definitely not in real life.
While sitting with a gaming console in your hand, with a natural ‘high’ as you overcome one difficult challenge after the other, you must’ve wondered if you could build your life around gaming, and even though it sounds too good to be true, there are many avenues you can explore to have a career in gaming.
This industry has found an audience all over the world, among all age groups, and has created numerous jobs for people who find themselves fascinated by the process. Do what you love and love what you do, right? Let’s take a look at some jobs in this industry.
Game Designers: Their job includes planning and defining all the elements of a game, starting from its visuals, rules, levels to its characters, story flow etc. They’re basically the architects of the game, they’re expected to visualize the whole game, which is then developed with the help of programmers, animators, producers, and audio engineers.
Programmers: They’re the ones who create technical codes which make the game concept run. They work in liaison with the designers, artists, producers, and sound technicians. They are responsible for making sure that the coding is in sync with the game design, and that it does justice to the designer’s vision for the game.
Game Animator: Visual artists and animators are the ones who give a physical structure to the elements in the game, like its environment, objects, characters, and sceneries. Their work includes creating the personality of the characters through facial and body movements. Along with this, they’re in-charge of detailing, for instance, defining the shadows with respect to the light source, or the watery texture on the road when it rains. There are many roles in the art department, each with a different set of responsibilities, like Concept Artists, 3D modelers, etc.
Sound Designer: Those working as sound designers are responsible for adding realism to the game through sound-effects, and music to it, starting from sounds like gun shots, cars’ vroom to those as basic as birds chirping, or crowd noises. Different games have a wide variety of settings, and it is the job of a sound engineer to develop audio in harmony with it.
Testers: It is every gamer’s dream to be playing games all day long, and even earn money, while doing it. This is the job of a tester. They’re the people who play-test a game in a systematic manner, so that they can analyze it, identify bugs, and suggest changes that might enhance the quality of the game before it is released.
As the gaming industry continue to grow, there is a rising demand for professionals, from artists to programmers, to designers, to audio engineers. This field promises many exciting job roles, not just about playing the games, but also creating them.
