Game Design Careers
The cool thing about the game industry being on the cutting edge of technology is, with that new technology, sometimes a new job position is formed. Along with these new jobs there are certain careers in the game industry you can set your eyes on that are more commonplace. One of the most competitive positions in the industry right now would have to be a Character Artist, or Character Modeler. How else would a Master Chief or a Lara Croft be created if it wasn’t for this very important position? It is in this career, as a character artist that virtual life is born inside a game.
The next career in the game industry you can set your eyes on is an Environment Artist, or Environment Modeler. You need a world for your newly created characters right? As an Environment Artist, it is your responsibility to create these worlds. These worlds may be similar to real life or they may be something totally alien looking, it all depends on the art direction of the studio. A successful Environment Artist will create the terrain and buildings inside of a game and will add a special interactive touch to help breathe even more life into a game filled with unique characters. The magic happens when both environments and characters coincide and interact with each other.
One game design job that may take a bit more time to excel in is the Animator. An Animator is responsible for rigging a character and other objects in a game to act and respond as if it is real life. If you have a character in a game that walks too fast and makes 90 degree turns like a robot, chances are the animator is not a very good one. The game industry is looking for animators that can take a still, lifeless game model and bring it to life with realistic motion. Whether it be a walk cycle for a game character or the way a door opens and closes. This position is extremely important for the overall quality of the game. One glitch from an animation and you could end the players immersion in a game. Now days with the help of Motion Capture, animators have top of the line tools to create more realistic animations compared to when games first started being developed.
There are many more careers in the game industry that are notable. You can be a Prop Artist, designing all the small things that populate your game with bottles, trash cans, street lights or trees. You can be a Quality Assurance tester, spending hours and hours playing through a certain game level to make sure every nook and cranny in the game is bug and glitch free for the consumer to enjoy once the game is shipped. You can be the Art Director and take the initial idea agreed on with the Producers and decide how the game is to be played, from game controls, storyline, game mechanics, the art style, and the level design. You could also be the Level Designer who would be the one to make sure each level works properly, making it a seamless exit and entry from one level to the next. A Level Designer often decides when and where certain activities or cut scenes take place within the game to enhance the players experience.
We have just touched the surface of the amount of careers in the game industry. Remember, you don’t have to work at a game studio to be part of the game industry. Game Schools can lead you to many different positions at a game studio but may also take you on a different path to companies that do other work for game studios. It could be marketing, it could be sales it could be making 3D sculptures so artists can see what their game characters would really look like in their physical element. The game industry is huge and there are many opportunities for you other than the direct creation of a game. So if you feel like you don’t have what it takes to be an artist or designer for a game, please know that it is not the end of the road for your game career. Learning the skills taught at a game design school can be transferable to careers in other fields, like Architecture, Military, Film, Real Estate and Construction to name a few.