Eight Careers for Video Gamers

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The video game industry has been around for a long time and until much recently it wasn’t taken as a serious form of entertainment. We’ve come a long way from trying to defend gaming as a hobby to our parents. Esports have changed the minds of millions of people, solidifying gaming as a real industry. The video game industry is also one of the most profitable entertainment mediums in the entire world, thanks to the huge growth of gaming.

While some people moved on to other hobbies, thousands never lost their passion for the industry and seek to pursue jobs related to game development. For those who still have that dream, you can start your career in the video game industry through these 8 professions:

Here are Eight Careers for Video Gamers: 

• Video Game Artist

Being an artist always pays off, as it’s a broad field that allows you to get into many different fields. Video game development is one of them. No matter what genre a video game falls into, it always needs artists who can bring the game designer’s vision to life.

Depending on the game, you’d have to draw sprites, render models, and animate their creations in a way that it feels fluid and full of life. Given that you’re successful in landing a good job as a video game artist, you can earn around $50,000 or more yearly as a video game artist.

• Audio Programmer

The iconic sounds of a game have existed as early as the days of Pong. The profession of being an audio programmer for video games means that you will take care of its background music, sound effects, and any voice overs. The bigger the scale of the game is – the more complicated the job will be.

Since being an audio programmer can be very technical, a well-settled person in this field can earn $100,000 per year.

• Writer

Don’t have any particular knowledge in technical fields such as programming, editing, or animating? No problem. Writers in the video game industry are in demand, since most major AAA games need a story and dialogue. It’s certainly not an easy task, as video game scripts for a story-heavy game can require thousands of pages of original content.

You’ll be responsible for not only the story and dialogue of a game, but also its progression and in-game information. With so much work involved, you can unsurprisingly earn up to $100,000 per year in this field.

• Game Programmer

One of the most important aspects of a video game is the gameplay and that's why programming is so high on the list of  the eight careers for Video Gamers, and programmers are the magicians who bring that aspect to life. You will have to learn how to use engines that can create video games and then use your coding knowledge to form a functional experience. You will be controlling everything from the protagonist’s movement to the enemy’s AI, making sure that everything is completely functional and entertaining to play.

If you manage to get a good job in this field, you will be earning something around or above $100,000 per year.

• Game Designer

A game designer is similar to a movie director in the sense that you don’t have to be directly involved in the act of creating things. For example, you won’t have to draw things like an artist, nor will you have to program the game’s functionalities behind a computer screen. Instead, your job is to design the game’s concept and blueprints, in which you will describe the characters, gameplay, environment, and point of the game.

You will be the person with the vision, while the team is led by you will bring it all to life. You will generally require a college education in the field if you wish to be hired as a game designer since it’s the least technical job in the industry, and your yearly salary will be roughly around $90,000.

• Game Producer

A video game producer takes care of making sure that the game is being developed properly and gets the deserving spotlight within the public and the eyes of video game publications. It’s filled with office work since you will have to allocate budgets and manage teams. They also ensure that the game is being given the right kind of attention in its advertisement campaigns.

The yearly salary for this field matters entirely on your experience and the scale of the game that you’re working on, which ranges from $50,000 to $100,000.

• Game Tester

People who work on a game know exactly how to play it and what things to avoid – which makes it difficult to truly assess what problems could arise in the game from a technical standpoint. You will be testing out video games before the public catches a hint of them, and your job will be to track down bugs and tell the team what you think of the game’s difficulty.

There is nothing complicated about this job and it really is exactly what it sounds like – you play games and let the developers know what you think. Unfortunately, you won’t be making any fixed figures in this field and the money you do make might not be enough for this to be your primary day job – but it’s still a nice way to remain involved in the industry that you’re passionate about.

• Professional Gamer

This is the field that no one would have taken seriously two decades ago – but it surely exists and it’s becoming as relevant as physical sports. Playing video games for a living was always a dream for many, and now that dream can be a reality.  There are two major ways of being a professional gamer: participating in Esports or becoming a viral video game streamer.

The former, of course, requires years of training and possible sponsorship to be able to participate in tournaments. The latter is all about chance, as not every streamer makes it big. However, if you do get discovered for video game streaming, even doing something as simple as a Fortnite match could earn you thousands of dollars every week.

There you have Eight Careers for Video Gamers