Gaming is a highly competitive field, where professionals are needed who have a good balance of creativity, technology, and fun. It has vast capabilities to steer through the ups and downs of the market. You can choose your career in various genres of gaming such as video gaming, console gaming, wireless gaming, PC gaming, and multiplayer gaming. The growth of the Indian games industry has provided immense job opportunities for skilled professional ones.
Here comes the main question…how to get into this creative sector?
- Relevant educational qualification in the fields of animation, game designing, graphic designing, and technology, etc. is necessary for securing an excellent career in the gaming industry.
- Those who interested in pursuing a career in this industry should focus on gaining knowledge with computer programming in an object-oriented language such as C++ or Java, from their student level, so that they can build a bright future for themselves.
- Several certificates and diploma programs in game designing are offered by various institutions to pursue.
- For becoming a Game Programmer, one should have B.E/ B.Tech or its equivalent degree in computer engineering.
- Many online courses are also available in game design and animation.
- One with an innate desire to learn gaming and excellent technical skills can excel in this field.
Steps to be followed:
- Develop High-Level Math Skills
- Get a Bachelor's Degree
- Develop and practice your technical skills
- Build an Effective Portfolio
- Write your technical resume
- Find an Entry Level Position as an intern
- Get enough experience to face stiff competition
Skills Needed for Game Development Careers:
To succeed you need to develop and master a host of skills, which is essential. They are technical or hard skills and interpersonal or soft skills.
Technical Skills :
- Game engine: You need to become proficient in at least one game engine. Unity is one of the most popular development platforms for creating multi-platform and interactive games. Game Developers need to know how to use a game engine to create, deploy, update, and maintain a game.
- Programming language: You need to master at least one programming language. The most popular languages for platform games is C#, java, python, and lua.
- 2D/3D modeling: You should be able to model and manage 2D/3D assets using tools like Unity, Blender, Maya, and RealFlow.
- Prototyping and testing: You should be able to produce prototypes of gameplay ideas and features, which include low-fidelity and high-fidelity versions. You should also be able to write test cases and test plans as well as execute a game test adequately.
Soft Skills:
- Teamwork: As a Professional, you will most likely work in a team, so you must feel comfortable while working with others. You will be expected to lend a hand to your teammates if they need your help.
- Creativity: Making games itself a very creative endeavor. You need to find creative solutions to difficult programming problems, such as designing the assets of a game, and figuring out how the player interacts with the product.
- Problem-solving: All positions that involve programming require a good knowledge of problem-solving. You must be able to think critically and break down problems into smaller components that can be tackled individually.
Tasks and duties involved in this sector:
- Using computer hardware and software to write and modify programming code to create a game framework and individual elements.
- Utilizing your creative thoughts to design new elements or products.
- Modifying and documenting the program code to correct errors and faults.
- Testing specific elements or products.
- Implementing improvements in existed ones.
- Solving problems using logical testing methodologies.
Typical Job roles:
The video game industry is in boom over the past few decades and there are many types of jobs in the game industry for you to choose from!
- Creative Game Director: The chief in charge of shaping the artistic vision for the entire game, and one of the most senior positions on the game development team in terms of responsibility for the overall quality of the game. There isn’t one route in particular that will lead you to land on a role as creative director, though climbing the career ladder from junior designer and artistic roles is usually the way forward.
- Game Designer: Right at the beginning of the production process is the game design itself, with one or more designers working tirelessly to devise concepts and bring them to life to form a playable experience for the end-user.
- Game Programmer: In general, the designer dreams it up, and the programmer makes it happen. They should able code and as with the rigors of animation, there can be a lot of satisfaction to be had from compiling a day’s worth of code and seeing it all just work.
- Game Animator: This role draws upon a large skillset of both 2D and 3D techniques to bring characters and models to life within the limits of the game’s framework and production budget.
- Game Audio Engineer: A game’s soundtrack, voice acting, and audio effects can easily make or break a game, and the craft of audio engineering has become far more complex in recent times with the advent of more open-ended gaming experiences.
- Game Artist: Working directly under the creative game director, the hierarchy of artists (mainly comprised of a lead game artist, character artist, environment artist, asset artist, and technical artist) collaborate with the designers, programmers, and animators to create the visual elements in style variances and techniques of the game.
- Game Marketer/PR: The hard work of all the professionals on this page would come to nothing if nobody ever hears about the game, and that’s when the PR and marketing staff come into play. Getting the word out there, motivating people to purchase the title, and managing the online reputation of both the studio and the game is all part of their job.
- Quality Assurance Technician or Game Tester: If there’s a single bug or way to break a game, you can swear the paying public will discover it. So it’s the job of the testing team to find such software glitches and identify areas for improvement before release. The majority of quality assurance testers work on a freelance, per project basis.
- Video Game System Designer: Everything above covers the creation of video games themselves, but who is responsible for making the machines on which they are played? That comes down to the system designer(also comprises level designer). Video Game System designers these days almost always hail from computer-related engineering and industrial design backgrounds.
Salary:
The gaming industry rewards young and creative professionals with high salary packages. The pay scale and growth in this industry depends on how well one can conceptualize and develop the game program. As a trainee, one is generally paid around Rs.10,000/- per month. Within a short span of time, depending on the working organization and your skills, it may vary from anywhere between Rs.30,000/- to 70,000/- per month. The remuneration of those who are working as freelancers depends on whom you work for and can earn a good amount for a project.