So You Want to be a Game Designer?

By: Alexandra Dooley

BLUE BELL, PA--Few people have a chance to get their dream job.  One of the hardest and most sought-after fields is game design.  It may be difficult area to get into, but not impossible.

     In 2013, CNN made a list of the best jobs and on that list was that of video game designer, which made the fifteenth spot.  CNN said there were a total of 520,800 people were already employed in the game design industry in 2013 and the number is expected to rise by 27.6 percent in the next ten years. The average salary for a game designer is around 72,000 dollars.  Depending on where he or she is working, it could be more.  

     Game design is a wonderful job for creative and artistic people but it takes time, research, and money.  The job of a game designer is to create worlds to explore, tell stories, and set goals for players to reach.  A game designer has to sit at a desk and work on a computer many hours a day, working on codes, creating prototypes and deciding what kinds of actions players must take. This job that requires a keen eye for detail, patience and a tolerance for heated caffeinated beverages.   

     In the being of 2014, thirteen new games were released for the PlayStation alone, with six more to be released later in the year.  Independent game developers have released their own games, pooling their funding via Kickstarter.com, a crowd-sourcing website.  Some independently-developed games include “Hyper Light Drifter”, “ROUNDABOUT”, and “Gods Will Be Watching.”  

     The life of a game designer is a tough one at times but many enjoy their work so much that the good outweighs the bad.  Despite their hard work, some game designers’ work never makes it to market.  There have been many games that have been pulled from stores or never get finished due to lack of funding.  But as the game designer I interviewed put it, “It’s hard work but [it is] worth seeing people play what you worked so hard on.”