Coding Career Spotlight: Video Game Developer
Coding digital playgrounds
Game development is one of the most sought-after fields for coders entering the professional market – which makes perfect sense! Who wouldn’t want to make a living testing video games and creating playable realities? If you love games AND coding, a career in video game development could be immensely rewarding for you.
WHAT IS A VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER?
The type of work you do as a game developer will vary depending on the size of the company you work for and your specialization. At a bigger game company, you’ll probably have a more specialized role, but at an indie game company, you might see video games all the way from conception to completion! In addition to writing and testing the code for a video game, developers may create initial concepts, write storylines, invent characters, and devise the game’s artistic style.
WHAT SKILLS DO GAME DEVELOPERS NEED?
In order to both imagine entire playable worlds and translate those worlds into language that a computer can understand, game developers need a range of exciting skills: coding proficiency, physics knowledge (how fast should the player’s avatar drop when they jump off a castle wall?!), excellent communication and collaboration skills, and familiarity with gaming engines like Unity or Unreal.
HOW DOES CODING EXPERTISE HELP GAME DEVELOPERS?
Coding is an absolutely critical skill for game developers to master if they want to get in the game and stay in the game! Programming languages like C, C++, and C# occupy the lion’s share of the gaming industry. Without a solid foundation in code, you could still pursue a career in game design – focusing on the initial work of creating storylines, drawing characters, and building video game worlds – but in order to be a game developer, you need to know how to talk to computers through code.
Keep an eye out in the coming weeks and months for more blogs in the Coding Career Spotlight series. You might be surprised to learn about all of the professional paths that open up with a coding education!