If your profession is not highly specialized – you are not an astrophysicist, a butcher, a microbiologist, an analyst, a designer, a marketer or a project manager – you can study the features of the game sphere, structure your existing knowledge, identify and eliminate weaknesses and try yourself in GameDesign.
For example, for a game-designer position people without special education are usually hired, as this profession is pretty rare. So if you have strong logical thinking, if you understand how to design levels in games, create game worlds and mechanics, which techniques can captivate the player, take an online course in game design and break into a new sphere.
And there are a lot of journalists, editors and TV scriptwriters among game writers. To write game scripts it is important to know the basics of drama, storytelling and conflict resolution, to be able to create a compelling story and develop it within the main idea, to give out creative ideas and adequately perceive criticism.
Game analyst is another profession that allows you to get into gamedev without a technical background. It is a profession that exists at the intersection of game design and product analytics. Game analysts know how to work with the most unusual metrics – the joy of playing a game, reactions to mechanics, behavioral patterns. They collect analytics and allow developers to make decisions based on accurate data without relying on intuition.
Pros and cons of working in gamemaking
Like all fields of work, working in gamedev has its pros and cons.
The pros and cons of working in gamedev:
- Most gamedev companies allow employees to work remotely or partially remotely, so you become mobile and can travel or work from anywhere you are comfortable.
- Interesting projects (especially if you’re a gaming fan).
- Comfortable offices and standard perks of IT industry like insurance, meal compensation, corporate discounts to the gym (not all, but many companies have them).
- Interesting team (in game software mostly creative people, with whom you are unlikely to get bored).
- The level of wages. Programmer salary in game mode depends on the scale of the company, his education, experience and knowledge of English. If we are talking about professions that are not directly related to the development (editors, screenwriters), as a rule, after the transition to gamedev, their salaries increase significantly.
Cons of working in gamedev:
- Like any other job, there are deadlines. And sometimes they are very strict in game mode.
- High level of competition. The fashion for learning programming has caused dozens and hundreds of candidates to apply for some positions, especially when it comes to the capital.