The Game Industry

There are a lot of gamers out there and a lot of these gamers believe that making games is as much fun as playing them, which is not always true. While there are some fun and positive aspects to working in the game industry, most people's perception of how making a game works is skewed, which is what I hope to clear up in my next few posts.

The game industry has changed a lot over the past few years. As with any company, they are driven by profit rather than pushing the boundaries or coming up with new innovative ideas for games. Since often times innovation includes risk, they take the safe rout and simply push for more sales. Obviously not all companies are like this but you can be sure that the majority are.

There's also the fact that most companies nowadays get more applications, mostly from new graduates, than they can handle. So if they can replace you with someone who has the same amount of knowledge, but at a lower salary, chances are that they are going to do just that. This is often called ‘re-structuring’ and includes layoffs we’ve been hearing about lately. While I believe some companies have been affected by the economy, most are not and are using it as a reason for layoffs.

That's why, if you still want to work in the Game Industry, you have to really be passionate about video games. There's nothing worse than working for a studio for a couple of years and then to be brought into an office to be told that your services are 'no longer required'. Just like that, your out of a job with no clear explanation in less then 5 minutes. It's happened to me and to a lot more people in the industry than you may think.

So, in the next few days I'll post about what I think are some positives and negatives of the Game Industry and hopefully clear up some misconceptions too.