Over the past few decades, the video game industry has really come into its own—not only is it the fastest growing entertainment medium in terms of revenue, but has created (and continues to create) job disciplines that never existed previously.

What follows is a sampling of the main roles that go behind the creation of modern titles, each of which support thousands of jobs around the globe. We’ll be taking a look at what each role involves, as well as the salary expectations and career paths (and some of the pros and cons you can expect from the job once you land it.)

Ever wanted to score video game soundtracks for a living? How about engineering the actual consoles themselves? Scroll on as we unpack:

A Career in Gaming: 9 Major Roles

Game Animator

An essential role in just about any production, the game animator draws upon a large skillset of both 2D and 3D techniques to bring characters and models to life within the limits of the game’s framework (and production budget.)

Game Animator Career Path: While it is possible to self-teach animation for video games, the cinematic nature of modern games (particularly triple A titles) usually calls for qualified professionals. In addition, game design school can dramatically accelerate the learning process, since there’s now a huge amount of varying software that must be mastered in order to slot into any design crew seamlessly.

Pros: A lot of job satisfaction when you finally nail that character movement after hours of graft, and it’s a challenging mix of both creativity and technical understanding.

Cons: Nothing is achieved quickly in game animation, and it can sometimes feel like an overwhelming grind (especially in a professional environment when deadlines loom.)

Game Animator Salary Expectations: Once you’ve got between 3-6 years of experience you do expect to have above average salary and will continue increase once you take on a senior animation roles and when heading teams.

Game Audio Engineer

A game’s soundtrack, voice acting, and audio effects can easily make or break a game, and the craft of audio engineering has become far more complex in recent times with the advent of more open-ended gaming experiences.

Game Audio Engineer Career Path: Sound engineering degree preferable, but an audio engineer’s portfolio is everything when it comes to attracting paid work in the gaming industry. The ability to compose and perform scores will be highly attractive (since this will save the development studio on commissioning/copyright costs), and understanding of major audio suites such as Logic is essential.

Pros: More varied than one might expect, from organizing recording sessions with voiceover artists to soundtrack scoring or simply working out what a character splitting a zombie’s skull with a hatchet should sound like.

Cons: Sandwiched in between multiple departments and having to work within the (often complex) engine of the game can result in a lot of pressure.

Game Audio Engineer Salary: Video game audio is one of the fastest growing fields in music, and the competition is tough. This has forced down the pay for entry-level positions (a junior audio assistant is around $18 per hour, or $30,000 annually) but this rises to $70,500 for experienced professionals salaried to a studio.

Game Designer

Right at the bedrock of the production process is the game design itself, with one or more designers working tirelessly to devise concepts and bring them to life to form a playable experience.

Game Designer Career Path: Aside from the odd success story from indie hobbyists, most working in a professional capacity nowadays have graduated from game design school.

Pros: Pretty much the rock stars of the gaming industry. The public might not know the audio engineer of their favorite game by name, but the likes of Notch and John Romero are legendary.

Cons: Nobody can claim to know stress quite like that of a game designer spinning a thousand plates in the months leading up to release date.

Game Designer Salary: Anywhere between $45,000 to $120,000 and beyond. This huge variance is accounted for by a number of factors, including seniority and studio size.

Game Programmer

The designer dreams it up, and the programmer makes it happen… in theory, at least.

Game Programmer Career Path: Being able to code in C++ is essential, and other programming languages, a degree in computer science (or related), and a portfolio of work can all be hugely beneficial.

Pros: As with the rigors of animation, there can be a lot of satisfaction to be had from compiling a day’s worth of code and seeing it all just work.

Cons: Things rarely ‘just work.’

Game Programmer Salary: Not too bad at all  even with less than three years of experience, a salaried programmer in the game industry can expect an average of $72,000, and those with experience can command $95,000 (based on 2010 figures).

Creative Game Director

The chief in charge of shaping the artistic vision for the entire game, and one of the most senior positions on the development team in terms of responsibility for the overall quality of the game as a whole.

Creative Director Career Path: There isn’t one route in particular that will lead you to landing a role as creative director, though climbing the career ladder from more junior design and artistic roles is usually the way forward.

Pros: The “creative” part of the title really is just that; you’ll be calling the shots at the highest level.

Cons: Any substandard work from your team falls squarely on your shoulders, and it can be tough to marry all of the various departments and individuals together into a cohesive whole.

Creative Game Director Salary: Between around $54,000 to $81,000 per year. Some celebrity-level creative directors can double this.

Game Artist

Working directly under the creative director, the hierarchy of artists (mainly comprised of a lead game artist and those working beneath him or her) collaborate with the designers, programmers, and animators to create the visual elements of the game.

Game Artist Career Path: Qualifications from a graphic design school are common amongst those working within the field, and a strong portfolio demonstrating a variance of styles and techniques (from 3D modeling to texture design) is highly favorable. Starting off as a game artist before working up to a lead artist and then creative director is a common career path.

Pros: A great role for anyone looking to flex their creative muscle, and it’s very rare for any two projects to be the same.

Cons: You’re likely to spend a lot of time out of hours updating your skillset to stay ahead of the competition… and there’s a lot of it out there.

Game Artist Salary: Not bad, but the increased availability of talent has pushed salaries down over the years for game artists. The average starting salary used to be around $79,000 (adjusted for inflation) fifteen years ago, but is now around $45,000. Of course, this does improve with experience.

Game Marketer/PR

The hard work of all the professionals on this page would come to naught if nobody ever hears of the game, and that’s when the PR and marketing staff come into play. Getting the word out there, inspiring people to purchase the title and managing online reputation of both the studio and game are all part of the job, which can be easier said than done on some projects.

Game Marketer Career Path: A related degree in either marketing or communications (or both) is all but essential, with qualified individuals then going on to either work for a third party marketing agency or in some cases salaried directly by the game design studio itself.

Pros: Video game marketing is in high demand right now, so there’s no shortage of work and also the possibility to jump to other entertainment media with relative ease. PR staff members also get a lot of perks including traveling around to wine and dine others in the industry.

Cons: At some point in their career, a video game marketer will inevitably be tasked with promoting something that’s totally un-promotable, and a PR professional will have to quash a negative media firestorm. That said, for some, this is the thrill of the job.

Game Marketer Salary: Once again, a huge amount of variance here given that game marketing is filled with numerous sub-roles and levels of seniority. The average for all marketing jobs in the gaming industry is around $56,000, but megabucks are on the table for those who work their way up to management.

QA Game Tester

If there’s a single bug or way to ‘break’ a game, you can guarantee the paying public will discover it so it’s the job of the testing team to find such glitches and identify areas for improvement before release. Widely considered to be the bottom rung of the production ladder despite the essential service they provide to the team.

Game Tester Career Path: Testers—or Quality Assurance Technicians—aren’t often required to have qualifications, though any programming knowledge or game design school experience will make the candidate more attractive. The majority of testers work on a freelance, per-project basis.

Pros: A good entry-point to a further career in programming or game design.

Cons: The job is nowhere near as fun as the general public assumes. You won’t get to “play games for a living;” it’s more a case of repetitiveness testing a single part of the game to the point of monotony and rigorously logging all observations into a spreadsheet.

Game Tester Salary: Very low—between $19,000 to $22,000—with little job security, but again, it’s a good springboard for a more established career in gaming.

Video Game System Designer

Everything above covers the creation of video games themselves, but who’s responsible for making the machines on which they’re played? That comes down to the system designer…

System Designer Career Path: Given the already advanced nature of modern consoles (and the lightning fast rate at which they continue to advance), system designers these days almost always hail from a computer-related engineering and industrial design backgrounds.

Pros: If you dream in circuitry and have no qualms about spending hours reading up on semiconductor theory just to get 0.1 extra teraflops out of your GPU, this is the job for you (especially since the pay isn’t too bad, either.)

Cons: Having to explain the limitations of what’s achievable to your non-tech savvy peers and superiors on a near daily basis.

System Designer Salary: A cool $80,000 as an average but $100k and up isn’t unheard of at the top console companies.

It only takes one look at the most popular games in recent years to see that story has become very important to us. Sure, some of 2015’s biggest surprise hits have been multiplayer games, such as Rocket League and Splatoon. That being said, almost all of the biggest 2015 games had one thing in common: a story-driven single player experience.

The Growth of Story

Games like Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain have so far blown us away with captivating characters, stories, and worlds wrapped around excellent gameplay. Even highly anticipated titles like Uncharted 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Halo 5: Guardians will be purchased by fans anxious to experience the next chapter of each game’s iconic protagonists.

In short, there’s no better time to be a gamer than today for those who love games with a strong narrative (not to mention those who love to write those video game narratives). There’s no shortage of titles with excellent gameplay matched with a worthwhile story for just about any genre; role-playing, real-time strategy, action-adventure, first-person shooter—you name it.

Then there’s the meteoric rise to popularity of episodic games. Telltale Games were among the first to strike gold with their The Walking Dead games that asked little gameplay input from players but fascinated them with rich characters and story. Even if it leaned more toward being a TV show with interactive elements than a game, it would be the first of many episodic games where story progression was everything.

Not For Everyone

But for every player all about story, there is also one out there who just wants to enjoy the gameplay. Whether they’re the good or bad guy, fighting aliens or an evil government organization, these players just want to slay beasts, shoot enemies, solve puzzles, and more. They may still prefer a decent story over something terrible, but to them great level design and challenging obstacles are far more important than a likable protagonist and unique plot.

Perhaps that is why the newest Call of Duty will do something not very many games have done before: let you skip ahead to a level you haven’t played. This means that players can choose to hop from the first level to the very last one, which can be seen as the equivalent of reading the last pages of a good book before starting from the beginning.

An Archaic Mentality

Jason Blundell, the campaign director of Call of Duty: Black Ops III, explained to Eurogamer why this feature was important to include. “The unlocking level system is an archaic mentality,” he said. “Consumers and game players in general are far more mature these days. There are so many things vying for our interests today. It’s about, how do they want to consume it? Maybe they put it down on level two, and then they’re in work the next day, and some guy says, ‘dude, you’ve got to check out level four!’ And he’s like, ‘okay, I’ll have a quick look.’ That’s totally fine. I think it’s their choice.”

In other words, players shouldn’t have to play level 3 before getting to enjoy level 4 in much the same way that Netflix doesn’t force you to watch the episodes of a show in order. This is even if it gives players an irresistible way of spoiling the ending for them, and that’s fine.

Enjoying Games Your Way

As mentioned before, some gamers see skipping to the end as a sure-fire way of ruining the entire narrative experience. Perhaps they have a point when it comes to games with major plot twists that are the most impactful when you don’t see them coming. Even so, Blundell is confident that this feature will please plenty of gamers who like going about a game’s story their own way.

“If you see the end you’ll say, I need to understand this more,” Blundell added. “But it’s about the journey, though, right? Sure, people will jump on and play the last level. Okay. Cool. That’s up to them….I don’t think playing the last level will give you everything. You’ll just look at it and go, okay, there’s the last level.”

A Possible New Trend

It’s likely that the ability to skip through a story campaign’s levels or stages becomes the norm one day. After all, games are at their best when they give the player options, whether it be to skip cutscenes, tutorials, etc. If this feature ends up being very well-received by fans, you can count on many of the top developers considering it to give their own players the same level of choice many have been waiting for years.

[su_note]Learn more about the School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy by clicking here.[/su_note]

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It’s never a bad idea to examine a particular game studio and see how their process helps them create successful games. Of course, what works for one team might not work for another due to a host of reasons. But when you start noticing the same characteristics across several of the best game developers, it’s time to start paying attention.

The following are a few similarities between some of today’s top game companies that industry veterans have noticed throughout their careers. They should serve to benefit anyone hoping to one day lead a game team or start their own. And if you haven’t, take a look at our profile of Satoru Iwata to learn more about the best practices of successful game developers.

1. Their Developers Test The Game Excessively Alongside QA

There are some developers out there who think playing their game during development only slows down progress. Instead, they think quality assurance people should do the majority of the testing during the Alpha and Beta stages while they focus on building the game. While it might not be wise for a developer to spend most of their time testing and little time developing, you’ll find that this isn’t how most people at the top studios do things.

Teams at successful game studios actually play their games to exhaustion, from the moment a build is playable to just before launch day. It can be difficult testing early builds since they often have many technical issues and placeholder art, but it’s also the best time for designers to notice any gameplay problems.

Game testers are of course essential for spending extended periods testing the game to catch more bugs than anyone else, but only designers who test can then go back and fine-tune any problems related to the gameplay and design.

2. Their Game Teams Start Small And Gradually Grow

We’ve all seen the near-endless list of credits after completing a big-budget title. Sometimes you’re looking at the names of hundreds of people who all contributed to the game’s development. While by the end the game did have help from both in-house developers and contractors, it more often than not was far from the case at the start.

Top studios don’t hire hundreds of people from the get-go, even if they already know they’ll eventually need them. Most game projects actually begin with a small group of the most experienced and talented people there. This allows for a more tight-knit setting so that communication and brainstorming can be done more efficiently to get the core of the game ironed out.

More programmers, artists, etc. are then introduced as the project continues development. Even if the team eventually grows large enough than the need for meetings becomes more common, the best studios make sure their size is never overwhelming.

3. They Make An Effort To Bond With Their Players

Whether you’re a company as large as Blizzard Entertainment or small as Yacht Club Games, having a community form around your game can offer benefits unlike anything else. That is why every good game studio starts each game project with the intention of pleasing players enough that they band together as loyal fans of their work.

To do so, a team must learn to make games while having their players in mind. There are plenty of companies and studios that amassed a community after a successful game only to inadvertently kill it with their second title. Usually this is the result of a team losing respect from players for doing things far too differently and not listening to their fanbase.

As an indie team, spending time interacting with your game’s fans through social media has become almost essential. The best take advantage of it to form strong communities around their games and thus create better titles.

4. They Take Risks And Ship Despite Any Early Critique

Although there are countless exceptions, some of the best games ever made were done by a team of people willing to do something different, and therefore, risky. Games require a lot of time, money and effort to build, which makes it easy for a team to start feeling pressure and questioning their own design choices if they don’t receive 100% positive feedback.

However, a team won’t know if their game is meant for success or failure until they actually ship it and see what the market decides. Nintendo risked everything with their non-traditional Wii console and its motion controls, and it blew away the competition. Then they took another risk with the Wii U’s second-screen gamepad and it didn’t go nearly as well.

When it comes to games, a perfect example is found in two of FromSoftware’s successful titles: Demon Souls and Dark Souls. These games were predicted to be failures for being too difficult in a time when hand-holding tutorials were the norm. They continued developing, shipped the game, and are now one of the top Japanese studios.

[su_note]Learn more about the School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy by clicking here.[/su_note]

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