Just Dance, Skylanders, Angry Birds, Lego Batman or
Kinectimals?
Whatever your favourite game is, somewhere in the world there is
a team of talented and creative people who designed it for you to
play!
With the help of BigAmbition and some real
games developers we've put together a guide to how YOU could one
day be involved in creating great games.
BigAmbition is a website for people interested in working with
digital technology, from smartphones to supercomputers. They've got
article about all sorts of jobs, and today we are going to look at
the world of gaming.
What does a video game designer do?
Well, that might sound like a daft question, but there are loads
of different people who are involved in designing computer games.
You can click on the links and watch the videos to find out
more:
- Designers - Working on how the games look and what they are
like to play. They can work on the artistic
design, or on the programming side.
- Visual Effects - Making things that aren't alive move in a
realistic way, from snow and water to smoke and explosions.
Read about Eugenie's job
here.
- Developers - They have
to see the whole picture, from coming up with the ideas and designs
for games, helping to build them and working with the rest of the
team to solve problems and give advice.
- Games Testers
- The job everyone wants! Testers play the games first to make sure
they work and find any problems. Sally talks about her job as QA
Tester in this video:
- Programmers - Writing the
code that builds the game and bringing it all to life. Click here to read more about
the job.
- Animators -
Making the characters jump, sing, dance run and everything else
that they do. Find out more here.
- Bug tester -
clearing up glitches, problems and cheats in games
- 3D
Modellers - Turning the designs for characters and scenery into
a real-looking three-dimensional world.
What should you study at school?
Although you might think that ICT and computing are the only
things you need work in computer games, but you actually need loads
of different things:
- Maths
- English
- Art and design
- ICT & Computing
- Science
and also...
- Creativity
- Imagination
- Teamwork
- and lots more besides!
People who work in the gaming industry have studied everything
from Computer Science to Architecture, as well as Computer
Programming and Video Games Design.
If you want to work in the design side of things you might study
Fine Art or Animation, or even Physics to work on visual
effects.
But more importantly...
If you want to work in the world of video games you are going to
need enthusiasm - lots of it! You need to be really passionate and
be prepared to work hard.
It can be tough to end up doing a job that you love, but if you
are prepared to put the effort in, you can do it! And
websites like BigAmbition are here to
offer advice as you go through school.
You also need to love video games and spend a lot of time
playing them, but don't tell your parents or teachers that we said
that!
Huge thanks to BigAmbition for letting us information from their
website to create this article - visit their site here: http://www.bigambition.co.uk/