Degrees For Gamers Now Available Online!
Your favorite video game, whether it's something as simple as Bejeweled or as elaborate as Call of Duty, is all the work of a team of designers, programmers, animators, technicians and testers. Overseeing all these people though is one person, the game developer.
A game developer is basically the first step into video game management. He or she is more or less the one who has to ride this team until the final product is available through the Internet or to your favorite game store. It not only involves a solid general knowledge of what everyone on his or her team does, particularly programming, but also its share of marketing, management and communications savvy.
One would be hard pressed to find a game developer who doesn't love his or her job. After all, their job is about creating fun and their kind of fun is big business. At the same time, it's a highly demanding job involving everything from hunting the next hot license to make a game out of to sitting with manufacturing and marketing types about final packaging and distribution.
If anything, creative marketing is becoming a bigger and bigger component of the job. The developer who designs a truly original game is an incredibly valuable asset to his company. That's because instead of having to pay a sports league or entertainment company for the licensing rights to a game, the publisher can now charge everything from movie studios to action figure manufacturers licensing fees for spin-offs.
Some of the challenges a developer meets aren't just limited to marketing either. These days they include some knowledge of advanced physics, artificial intelligence, 3D graphics, digitized sound and game theory. It should also include what platform the game will be played on, whether it's a Playstation or Xbox, or over the Web or on a social network.
Most software publishers prefer to hire future developers with a minimum 4-year degree in some form of computer or software science, with some management or other business courses as minors. Because of all the factors now involved, many young employees are now adding subscriptions to online schools to their continued education. They do so to not only stay up to date, but to learn things they just didn't have time to learn during their undergraduate years. Some online schools are even adding Masters programs these days.
While it seems like what it takes to be a game developer is not a lot of fun, the profession is rewarded quite well for it. The average developer makes in the area of $100,000 annually, with such perks as an expense account, insurance, retirement programs and profit sharing as part of the total deal.
In the meantime, video gaming's future looks quite rosy. The industry was valued at over $20 million last year, even if gross revenues were down thanks to current economic conditions. There is the constant introduction of new platforms like the smart phone and the iPad to exploit. With such innovations through online school offerings and distance learning universities, it looks like being a game developer will be a lot of fun for the immediate future.
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