#17
by Morlich
The games industry can be quite a tricky and opaque industry to try and get into. Firstly, as it is quite a niche job, and secondly as we tend to be quite reserved to the public in how we go around making games (as opposed to TV & Film how they will frequently publicly talk about their process).
When looking at “where to start”, it is best to break down what the roles in the industry are. So, looking at the “core dev team”:
Design:
This is quite a range of tasks and job capabilities, which roughly fall under the umbrella “Designer”, this then splits into selection of sub specialisations. A level designer might look at the movement, obstacles, layout and flow of a stage or mission. While gameplay designers will focus on aspects such as “combat” or “balance”. Feature designers will consider logic for a feature as well as what User Interface implications it will have. This role can vary from studio to studio, and with smaller and more agile indie and mobile teams, designers are expected to jump between speciation’s day to day. While not role critical, designers are expected to have a basic understanding of programming and art as they will work closely with programmers and artists.
Programmers/Coder/Engineers:
The masters of making things work. Programmers will work alongside designers to implement new features or game mechanics. Other times they can find themselves working with art to improve the pipeline of getting art into the game. Programmers on some multiplayer games might specialise in creating and running servers & net code. Other programmers might specialise in “tool creation”, making applications for designers to use to create objects & units for the game. While programming in general shares the same roots and building blocks, we require some game specific specialisations which programmers constantly improve on.
Art:
They make everything you “See”. Art, like design, is quite an umbrella term. And more so than other disciplines have career specialisations. For example, you have 3D artists who model characters and objects, 2d artists might look at traditional 2d art or textures. Animators can work with 3 models and bring them to life, or look at frame by frame 2d animations in sprite based games. An often-overlooked discipline (and vital in mobile) are User Interface artists. Elsewhere an artist might look ad particle effects, livening up the animations. In smaller teams you will find more “art generalists” who can work with multiple disciplines, but in a team, we will always work to everyone’s strengths and time scales.
These roles are very specialised, and do require a fair bit of knowledge of the games production process before joining the industry (even at a junior role). Most people will come from university, and these days will have come from very games specific courses. But that’s not to say everyone will have to come from a “game degree”, some of the most senior Designers in the industry have come from architecture courses or migrated from programming. Of course, there are other roles, vital to games, such as production, community, support and audio. But for now I hope this overview helps.
This industry is very obscure to most, and require a lot of dedication and talent to be able to make it into your first job. Every project you work on is a labour of love and takes a lot of effort and problem solving to come to fruition. But if you are really keen on making it, I think the first step would be consider higher education and see what is available as your first steps towards the industry.
