A job for me?
The games industry has pretty much exploded over the past decade. Exciting developments in the ever-changing world of tech have made games more advanced than ever before. What's more, a rise in mobile gaming is creating a whole load of new and exciting jobs that didn’t even exist five years ago.
Whether you’re a Candy Crush queen, a COD fanatic, or you always find yourself thinking up new worlds, fantasy lands and characters, Radio 1’s gaming experts Dan and Phil are here to delve into the industry and help you explore whether there’s a job in there for you.
Final Fact-asy
The video games industry in facts (statistics true as of 2015).
Emo goose?
Gaming gurus Dan and Phil are hyped about the range of careers in the gaming industry right now. Especially for an emo goose…
Are gaming jobs just for coders?
Dan and Phil interview
Dan: I think the most exciting thing about the gaming industry right now is how it is exploding ingrowth because of mobile phones. Literally everyone is gamer! On Facebook, on their phones, on their computers, for every single object there’s probably a way to game it. You think ‘Oh I like gaming but I don’t know what I’d do’ - there’s SO many things to do.
Phil: There are so many jobs!
Dan: There’s art, there’s programming, there’s general manager and design…
Phil: Monster creator! That’s a good one.
Dan: I’d say that comes under design, and programming, and art.
Phil: You don’t even have to be a computer programmer because they have creative aspects. Like some people just draw and design the monsters; it’s about using the artistic talent rather than the computer talent.
Dan: The gaming industry has never been larger and more desperate for people to come in with ideas.
Phil: We’ve got a friend that went looking for a job and he loves computer and he’s ended up as a computer console Twitter guy who just tweets about games all day so it’s just like a dream.
Dan: Dream life!
Phil: I did a voice of an emo goose in an iPhone app…
[Phil does impression of emo goose]
Dan: Voice acting! Got an acting talent, you can be an emo goose!
[Phil does impression of emo goose]
Dan: We also have a friend who just really loved games and he started running a blog and then it turned into a review site where he reviewed Xbox games and then he got hired by official Xbox Magazine.
Phil: My advice for getting into the gaming industry, first of all is to play lots of games.
Dan: Think of the games that you love the most, look at those credits, see what all the different jobs are. Think about what your skillsets. What do you enjoy doing the most in school? Are you a computing kind of person? Are you a talking kind of person? Then think, ‘Hey, I want to do that for my favourite video game!’ Start doing it as a hobby, look up the people that have done it on the internet. And never stop dreaming!
Phil: That was a bit cheesy at the end there Dan.
Career click
Click or tap on the icons below to find out more about lesser known jobs in the ever-expanding gaming industry.
Learn more about this topic:
Is code the language that really runs the world? document
Computers have changed our world beyond recognition. In this interactive article Lauren Laverne uncovers the language they have used to do this – computer code.
Computer Science: Problem Solved. collection
In this series of short films Dev Griffin looks at the use of technology and computational thinking in daily life and how it might be applied in the future.
How to think like a computer. collection
Explore the principles of computing and computational thinking in these short films for secondary schools.
