Are you looking to break into the video game industry? Working on video games may be a dream job for gamers all over, but you’ll want to take note of the different jobs available within development studios. It can take a massive team to deliver big AAA video game titles into the market, so we’re going to highlight a few jobs that you may be interested in.
These are just a highlight of development studio jobs, but each is important in order for a video game to be crafted and released successfully into the market. We supplied a brief explanation of the job role in the studio and if possible, the educational background required courtesy of Study.com along with the average salary earned according to Glassdoor.com.
Animator
- Education: Computer graphics, art, animation & illustration
- Salary: $82,000
Animators are responsible for various movements within games. These are the developers who create the way characters, creatures and environments behave. Essentially they give life to your favorite characters. Likewise, they will work closely with programmers and those in charge of artwork in order to make movement flow seamlessly. Most often you’ll need to look into degrees that offer computer graphics, art, animation, and illustration.
Audio Engineer
- Education: Audio production bachelors
- Salary: $47,000
Audio Engineering is pretty self-explanatory. These are the creators behind the soundtrack and audio effects within games. You would be composing music and creating sounds which can range from environmental sounds, gunshots, among other noises you may hear from a scene or during gameplay.
Creative Director
You’re likely aware of creative directors. These are the individuals in development studios that oversees the major changes and production of a video game title. A creative director is in charge of determining how a game plays along with the visual style and sounds. Overall, this is basically the main person in charge of a video game production that’s not always present in all studios.
Depending on the studio, the creative director may be split into different key individuals such as a lead programmer, artist, designer, etc. As a result, you’ll find that this position will be highly dependent on experience from your video game development career.
DevOps Engineer
- Education: Programming & Computer Sciences
- Salary: $143,000
For quite some time now we’ve been enjoying video games online with more titles releasing into the market that has an online-only focus component. This is where DevOps Engineers come into play as these key individuals are vital in crafting up an infrastructure and keeping it stable.
This is a more technical career pathway in video games as you’ll be working with key network programming. As a result, you’ll want to take a course in programming along with computer sciences.
Game Designer
- Education: Video game design & computer science
- Salary: $81,000
Before assets and other components can be created, there needs to be a group to determine how this game will play out. This is where game designers come in and craft up a plan for everyone in order to put a game into production. They will determine the settings and visuals of the game along with how the game will perform.
Think of game designers as a person who determines everything about the gameplay, mechanics, and visuals who then delegates the work to be finely tuned and produced by other groups in the studio such as the animators and visual artists.
Game Programmer
- Education: Computer science & software engineering
- Salary: $89,000
Game Programmers are the developers who craft up the various codes needed to run the game. Oftentimes these developers will have to think and create codes to make specific features work as designed by the game designer. As a result, you’ll need plenty of programming knowledge in order to create the game as intended along with finding bugs to fix. Some of the areas game programmers work with is physics, AI, and interface systems.
Games Artists
- Education: Multimedia artwork & Animation
- Salary: $72,000
Another self-explanatory position within development studios is game artists. These creative developers are creating the visuals you’ll witness within the game. Not only do they design the characters of the game but also environments, textures, among other in-game objects such as vehicles and weaponry. Depending on the game, you may have titles that have fine details in regards to how an item looks or character replications.
Level Editor
- Education: Multimedia artwork & Animation
- Salary: $72,000
Similar to game artists and game designers, level editors are in charge with how a game visually looks. However, instead of fine details, level editors look more at the big picture of how a specific level is designed. Depending on the narrative story, a level may call of a specific landscape, buildings or even objects. With the help of level editors, developers can create a unique look and feel for the gameplay through the use of designing the general level layout and visuals.
Narrative Copywriter
- Education: English language degree & game design experience
- Salary: $69,000
Narrative copywriters work with the game designers and help create a story that will work along with the gameplay elements. This is an area that has a few different departments such as the overall narrative storyline and character dialogues. However, outside of developing a story, there are individuals that help out translating and interpreting the story to help with the game’s release around the world.
QA Tester
- Education: Game design
- Salary: $63,000
We’re sure you’re familiar with QA testers. These are groups of gamers that play a game in hopes to find broken areas. They are hunting down bugs and other issues that the development team can make note of in order to refine the game prior to its initial release. While some games end up being released into the market with bugs, QA testers are responsible so that minimal bugs or errors end up in the game before mass production begins.
