Summary
·The video game market is booming in India
·There are lots of opportunities for young professionals to enter the gaming industry
Analysis
Making games isn't for everyone. You need to be:
·a self-starter
·someone that doesn't need to be told every minute what to do,
·someone that can look at a job and figure out for yourself all of the subtasks you need to do
·a problem solver
·someone who figures out where to go to find the solution
·someone that likes to keep learning
·someone that sets goals and accomplishes them; our industry has little patience for people who don't finish what they start
·someone that is passionate about games
Career Options
Now while it may seem obvious, to become a game programmer you need to know how to program - preferably in C++, by far the most widely used language in the game industry.
If you enjoyed art classes and ever dabbled at doing art on your computer, you might be interested in doing art for games. The game industry needs a variety of artists to create 2d menus and title screens, 3d models, 2d textures for those models, and so on. We also need storyboard artists to help us conceptualize what a game might look like before we make it.
The game industry also needs talented musicians and audio technicians.
Bottom Line
The money is good but there's lots of hard work. The latest salary survey, available in the Career section of this site, shows that a starting game programmer can make between $50K and $60K/year, and after a few years and a couple of completed project can earn almost double that much.
Of course, if you're like me, when you're done and working in the industry, you wouldn't want to trade careers with anyone. My real "payday" is going to stores and seeing my games on sale and talking to people that remember the enjoyment of playing them.
Breaking In
I'm not so convinced that the game industry is that hard to break into for the right people. Games are getting more and more complex. Development teams are getting larger and larger. A generation of consumers raised on video games has pushed the game industry ahead of both the movie and recorded music industries, some even say added together!
Learning Your Trade
Video game education programs didn't exist when I was in college - neither did video games for that matter.A lot of us early pioneers were self-taught or learned at the hands of other more experienced people.
Quite a few years ago, I took some students to visit Shinny (the creators of Earthworm Jim) and we asked one of their lead programmers, "How important is a degree?" He held up his hand and touched his forefinger to his thumb, making a zero. "We throw resumes in the trash.If you don't send us a demo game that shows what you can do, we don't care where you went to school."
With more and more schools around the country preparing students for careers in the game industry, game companies can choose from a well-qualified applicant pool. Those with computer science degrees and no specific game training are probably at a disadvantage to other students that have both.
Your First Job
Don't assume your first job will be in your home town or state. There are certain areas of the country where game companies have seemed to concentrate. Southern California (where I grew up) is a major area, as is Northern California and around Seattle. Since I've been in Texas the last 4 years, I've come to appreciate the thriving game industry in both Dallas and Austin. There are some companies scattered around the rest of the country as well. Some large publishers have studios located all over the country, as well as some overseas.
