Video Game Design Careers
In the early years of video game history, there weren’t a lot of options in terms of video game design careers. In those old days, video game designers used to do all the work in the game production. They usually used to design the concepts, compose audio, write the plot, create all the artworks. And of course program the game, all as a one person. Basically all the work except publishing.
As video game technologies evolve throughout the years, video games also evolved and have become more complex. Too complex to be made by one single game designer most of the time. Hence, different aspects of the video game design separated as different video game design careers. Also, the numbers of platforms to design games increased in recent years as well. Multiple major video game consoles, handheld game devices, smartphones, and computers created more specialized needs.
Video Game Design Careers Today
Today, video games are made by a group of designers, artists, writers, and programmers. Each one of these categories have different video game design careers for them. So, you can choose the right career for your skills rather than spending your time learning all the skills necessary for making a game as in the old times.
Let’s say, you are a good programmer, but don’t know how to do make models, graphics, or write decent stories. It is ok, you can have one of the video game design careers: You can be a programmer in a game design studio.
Or if you are a good illustrator, but don’t know how to do programming, you can create the artwork for games in a game design studio. And have a video game design career in that particular line of work.
Major Video Game Design Careers
Although the number of career possibilities in today’s video game design world is almost limitless, we can list the most common options for video game design careers here;
1- Video Game Designer
2- Video Game Producer
3- Video Game Developer
4- Video Game Programmer
5- Video Game Systems Designer
6- Video Game Visual Effect Designer
7- Video Game 2D Illustration Artist
8- Video Game 3D Model Artist
9- Video Game Texture Artist
10- Video Game Animator
11- Video Game Writer
12- Video Game Storyboard Designer
13- Video Game Cinematic Artist
14- Video Game Sound Designer
15- Video Game Level Designer
16- Video Game Quality Assurance Leader
17- Video Game Tester
These are just the most common video game design careers in the business. There are many technical specialties that can be included in this list. And new technologies will always create even more video game design careers to choose from. For example, the development in Virtual Reality technologies already added many job titles to the business such as Immersion designers, VR artists and Motion Sickness Experts.
Plus: Indie Game Designers
Of course, we should also talk about those indie game designers who do all the work by themselves. Contrary to the typical separation among video game design careers, some independent game designers still make games by creating all the art, sound, and codes by themselves just like the old days. Most of the time this is because of their financial limitations.
This type of video game design career, became possible again mostly thanks to the new technologies in the game design world. Also, the affordable game design software options such as Unity or Unreal Engine, and the indie game friendly publishing platforms like Steam or Epic Store. However, it is still an extremely challenging task to make a profit with this way in the video game business where massive game design studios frequently fail to succeed.
With that said, there are many incredible well made and successful examples of video games made by one single designer too. However, we cannot recommend chasing a video game design career like that because you also have to be lucky for it.
Choose Your Animation Career
Ultimately, what you need to do first is deciding what it is that you enjoy doing the most. Then you should pursue a decent education in a proper video game design school to learn about the world of game design and obtain new skills. Finally, you can improve upon your best skills and become a professional in that line of work. From that point, you can choose to make video game design career yourself either by establishing your own game studio or joining an existing one. If you don’t have enough funding to start your own studio, don’t forget that the latter option is how most of the biggest names in the game design world started their video game design careers.
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