Believe it or not, there are careers in gaming. When someone today talks about “gaming”, they aren’t necessarily talking about professional chess players, or ping pong champions. 9 times out of 10 they are talking about video and PC games.

With the video game industry reaching out to all demographics including senior citizens (Wii has become very popular with the senior crowd, my grandmother even “goes bowling” using my brother’s system), almost everyone is into video games for one reason or another. Whether it is for fitness, adventure, or just plain old fun, there are a number of ways to have a career in gaming. Is it possible? Let’s take a look.

Westwood College – Game Degrees

Westwood College is one of the best online animation colleges available to students who want to earn their animation degree. This is an undergraduate program (bachelor’s degree), where students will be prepared for a career as a web animator, desktop publisher, 3D animator, or flash designer.

• Associate Degree – Graphic Design and Multimedia
• Bachelor Degree – Animation
• Bachelor Degree – Game Art
• Bachelor Degree – Game Software Development
• Bachelor Degree – Interior Design
• Bachelor Degree – Visual Communications

This degree program can also prepare you for a career in animation in as little as 3 years compared to a traditional 4-year bachelor’s degree program. Course topics include 2D animation, advanced 3D animation, advanced character animation, character development and setup, digital animation, digital image editing, and advanced digital effects. Westwood college also boasts a degree program that contains more core courses than general education or other required courses, so most of your time is spent focusing on your major.

International Academy of Design & Technology – Game Degrees

The International Academy of Design & Technology also is one of the online animation colleges that is engaging and quite thorough.

• Associate of Science in Building Information Modeling
• Associate of Science in Graphic Design
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Advertising and Design
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Media Production
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Game Production
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design
• Bachelor of Science in Web Design and Development

They offer a digital media production & animation major as a bachelor’s degree program. As a student of this program, you will learn about project management, introduction to drawing, video production, motion graphics, screenwriting and more! It truly gets you in “behind the scenes” into the animation process.

Gaming  Careers

There are numerous ways you can seek a career in gaming. One of the most lucrative but competitive ways to find a career in gaming is by becoming a professional gamer. Of course this does require thousands of hours of practice and could result in competing in several national and international events. It’s not a guaranteed way of making money, or even sustaining a true “career” in gaming, but it is one way of having a job within the gaming industry.

However, there are other ways to have a career in gaming. You may want to consider looking at the creation of the game itself. You can become a game designer and create the ideas used to start the game process moving, or a game animator, to take those ideas and make them move and come to life. Game programmers are the ones who enter the technical aspects to actually enter the data into a code that makes the game an actual game.

You could also decide to be part of marketing the game and monitor beta testing and oversee the entire project from start to finish by becoming a game developer. These are just a few of the people required to help create the videos games we play today. If you have ever taken the time to look at the booklet inserts in some of today’s more popular games, you will realize that it takes almost an entire army to put together just one video game. You too can be part of that army.

Game Degrees

For any of the career paths listed above, a great deal of training and education is required. There are specific degrees for video game design, video game programming, computer animation, and video game development. These degrees usually can be found in both undergraduate and graduate levels, and can be taken online as well as on-campus.

For those who are already computer savvy, you may want to look into online degrees to get your education and allow you to have more flexibility as to when and where you will learn. These degrees will give you the basic tools you need to do your job and provide you with more insight into the design, development, and programming of a video game.

A career in gaming – is it possible? As I said before, yes. It all depends on what type of career you seek, but you can find a fulfilled and rewarding career making, designing, or playing video games.

This is a career based around the testing of video games for quality control and feedback. A video game tester will sit down with a game and try to beat it all the way through. They will look out for any glitches, give impressions of the game, and mark out the difficulty levels. This is crucial for the gaming industry, especially now that graphic advancements are becoming more stagnant, and the quality of game play is the current focus.

How do I Get a Video Game Tester Career?

Contrary to popular belief, this is not usually a long-term career option for most. This is more like an entry job into the gaming industry. A lot of artists and designers, as well as coders, will hop on board with this position to start making their way up the corporate ladder into a cushier job later on.

How Much does a Video Game Tester Career Pay?

Not much. Someone with a video game tester career can expect to earn around $12 per hour, which is pretty low. The payoff is that you get to  play games. Who wouldn’t love to do that all day long for a paycheck?

In video games tester jobs one must have in depth knowledge of the operating systems or consoles that you will be testing on, as well as, be able to use other software well, including Microsoft office products and have some knowledge of Windows and other operating systems used in games.

Your main role as a beta tester is to find and report bugs and game defects; one has to provide a detailed report about the problem one finds. If you can’t make a bug reproducible then it’s very similar to wasting everybody’s time. A video Game tester job requires strong written and verbal communication skills.

The video game Industry has skyrocketed over the past few years, but the salary in video game tester jobs depend on experience and where you work. Video game tester jobs sound glamorous but the work can be a bit tedious at times. As a tester you may be required to play through the same levels of the same games over and over again which at times can be very boring and frustrating. These jobs cannot be done just for fun, as a lot of hard work has to be put in to achieve success, but if you have a passion for gaming, then go for it.