The Coolest Jobs In Gaming
Nothing quite beats the carefree pastime of gaming. Part of the reason gaming is so great is that it doesn’t work! Your brain doesn’t need to be firmly focused on anything by the stimulating story, strategy or developing battle in front of you. Work implies that you need to be consciously and purposefully thinking. Gaming does not.
But working scratches a different itch. By focusing our attention on a task at hand, we can unleash our powers of creations and make something new, something beautiful — something that contributes to the world more than finishing the single-player campaign in Call of Duty. Ideally, we should be able to combine these two things. Any serious gamer has thought of it, and these are the coolest jobs a gamer could get himself into.
Game tester
This the cream of the crop, the dream of any gamer. True it’s hard to build much of a career or a future on the typical salary of a game tester, but you basically get paid for playing games. The only twist is that rather than completely giving your attention to enjoying the game, you need to make sure that you’re testing the game in every way possible, and catching lots of bugs.
This is better than your average job in quality assurance since you get to work from home and play… a lot.
Digital architect
These guys get to create entire worlds for gamers to explore. They are usually in high demand since it takes so many man-hours to construct accurate and realistic depictions of the extensive worlds of today’s games. If you’ve got the artistic creative spirit in you and you can work as part of a team, a digital architect might be the way to go.
Game designers
At the top of the gaming, the hierarchy is the game designer. Like the founding CEOs of a game, game designers are responsible for coming up with concepts, developing characters and a storyline and overseeing the development of the entire game. Want to build that perfect game you always dreamed of playing yourself? As a game designer, you’d have free reign to make your visions a reality.
Marketing
Anything in game marketing. This may not sound appealing on the surface of things, but marketing a game means that you get to interact with the gaming community like never before — with authority. You’ve got the inside scoops and you get to see all the constructive criticism and praise that gets heaped on your efforts.
Animators
For the most artistically inclined among us, you can become a gaming animator, drawing the characters and the environments that draw us into a game and make us feel that it has come to life. You probably won’t get much recognition besides a spot in the credits but gamers will see the quality of your work and being a gaming animator could easily lead yours into film and other projects in the future.
So, what job would you like to have in the gaming industry? Or perhaps you prefer to stay in front of the screen, allowing yourself to indulge completely in the pure gaming experience. That’s ok. The gaming industry needs gamers too.
