Careers in Focus: Computer and Video Game Design, Third Edition

By Ferguson

Ferguson's Careers in Focus books are a valuable career exploration tool for libraries and career centers. Written in an easy-to-understand yet informative style, this series surveys a wide array of commonly held jobs and is arranged into volumes organized by specific industries and interests. Each of these informative books is loaded with up-to-date career information presented in a featured industry article and a selection of detailed professions articles. The information here has been researched, vetted, and analyzed by Ferguson's editors, drawing from government and industry sources, professional groups, news reports, career and job-search resources, and a variety of other sources. For readers making career choices, these books offer a wealth of helpful information and resources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ferguson
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781646933969

Book preview

title

Careers in Focus: Computer and Video Game Design, Third Edition

Copyright © 2022 by Infobase

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:

Ferguson

An imprint of Infobase

132 West 31st Street

New York NY 10001

ISBN 978-1-64693-396-9

You can find Ferguson on the World Wide Web

at http://www.infobase.com

Contents

Computer and Video Game Design

Entries

Animators

Audio Recording Engineers

Augmented Reality Developers

Computer and Video Game Designers

Computer Programmers

Digital Agents

Digital Designers

E-Sports Professionals

Graphics Programmers

Multimedia Artists and Animators

Multimedia Sound Workers

Online Gambling Specialists

Product Development Directors

Product Management Directors

Product Managers

Software Application Developers

Software Designers

Software Engineers

Software Quality Assurance Testers

Special and Visual Effects Technicians

Unity Developers

User Experience Designers

Video Game Art Directors

Video Game Producers

Video Game Testers

Webmasters

Index

Computer and Video Game Design

Overview

Trade fair attendees demo the latest installment of Skylanders, a video game series, at the company's booth.

Source: Stefano Tinti. Shutterstock.

The computer and video game industry, also known as interactive entertainment, provides leisure activity for millions of Americans each day but also creates a livelihood for about 220,000 U.S. workers.

Popular interactive games range from sedate word games like Words with Friends to high-adrenaline, first-person shooters like the Call of Duty series. Games may invite players to interact with highly complex simulated worlds such as the one in Second Life or involve the simple slingshot action of Angry Birds. Players can find games on many hardware platforms, from arcade machines to home consoles to smartphones. In fact, 60 percent of gamers are now playing on their smartphones.

From its beginning in the early 1970s, with the simple geometric action of Pong, to today's high-definition stereoscopic games, the industry has pushed the limits of the available computer resources and has inspired advanced technologies that later became common on desktop and mobile devices.

The industry provides entertainment for 164 million Americans and generated $43.4 billion of sales in 2018, including software, hardware, and accessories. By comparison, sales totaled $22.4 billion in 2014. Content accounted for $35.8 billion of overall sales in 2018, up from $30 billion the previous year and $25 billion in 2016.

One indication of the reach of the industry is the fact that 75 percent of American households have at least one gamer. Although video games have the image of being primarily a diversion for teenage boys, the average player is 33 years old, and the most frequent game purchasers are adults, who buy 38 percent of PC games, 37 percent of smartphone games, and 33 percent of console games. Forty-six percent of all gamers are female. The industry sometimes faces the criticism that it desensitizes gamers to violence and encourages social isolation, although there is little research to support these beliefs.

Game hardware development finances the cutting-edge innovative efforts of many computer hardware engineers and technicians. Game development involves designers, artists, voice actors, programmers, computer software engineers, and testers. Marketers and a network of distributors bring the games to players. With such a large base of players, the industry also supports numerous fan publications, many of them Web-based. Popular characters and settings have inspired movies, such as the Lara Croft and Resident Evil series, and television shows, such as The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

Japan's early leadership in miniaturized electronics helped it become an early leader in the video game industry. For example, Japan's Nintendo owns two of the most popular video game series of all time, Pokémon and Mario Brothers, which have spun off countless toys, trading cards, cartoons, and other products. According to the market research firm, Newzoo, Japan was the world's third-largest video game market in 2018, trailing only the United States and China. Mobile games, in particular, were achieving strong growth in Japan at the end of the decade.

The major U.S. trade shows for the industry are the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit, Game Developers Conference, and Gen Con.

Background

The computer and video game industry has grown more rapidly than cinema, television, or any other entertainment industry that has preceded it.

Many text-based games were developed in the early days of computers, but video games, by definition, are based on graphics. In 1961, almost as soon as a graphic display had become available for a widely used minicomputer, the PDP-1, a team of students at MIT developed a game for it, Spacewar, which became the first widely distributed video game. Ten years later a Spacewar imitation, Computer Space, was the first game to be offered in arcades. The public was not yet accustomed to the kind of interaction that this game demanded, however, so the game that was a breakthrough commercial success in arcades was the simpler Pong.

One of the creators of Pong co-founded Atari Computers, releasing the 1972 arcade game as a home game in 1975. Magnavox had already pioneered the sale of home game consoles in 1972, and its Odyssey system also included the first hardware peripheral for a game, a light gun. The first consoles offered preprogrammed games, but only a few years later cartridges became available as a means of distribution, and soon a third-party vendor, Activision, started marketing games for Atari consoles.

The 1980s saw the debut of 3-D games (previously, objects such as the aliens in Space Invaders had moved in only two dimensions); use of a virtual world extending beyond what a single screen shows; and distribution on laser discs. Popular games also appeared on new platforms: Tetris on PCs, which previously had been considered incapable of offering engaging video effects, and Nintendo's games on the hand-held Game Boy. At the end of this decade, Sega launched Genesis, with a 16-bit processor that brought arcade-quality graphics to the home.

In the 1990s, a Senate investigation of violence in video games prompted the industry to create the Entertainment Software Rating Board for labeling each game package with the suggested age of players. Also in this decade, computer desktop software shifted to graphic interfaces such as the Macintosh and Windows, borrowing much of the necessary expertise from work that had been done for video games. Internet technology migrated in the opposite direction, from PCs to games, removing distance as a barrier to cooperative and competitive play. Late in the decade, revenue from video and computer games exceeded revenue from the movies for the first time.

The new century saw the rise of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), in which large numbers of players interact with each other in virtual worlds that persist and evolve even while players are offline. Subscribers to World of Warcraft exceeded 10 million by 2010 but dropped to about 7.6 million by 2014.

Two important advances that let users interact in new ways were Nintendo's Wii, 2006, which allowed players to use the controller for gestures such as swinging a tennis racket, and Microsoft's Kinect, 2010, which used a camera and microphone to react to players' bodily motions and spoken commands and to recognize players' faces and voices.

Today smartphones, tablets, and social networks are widely popular gaming platforms. For example, Zynga's FarmVille, which debuted on Facebook in 2009, engaged 10 million daily players within six weeks. Users may download almost any kind of game to play on their mobile device. Among the most popular are Alto's Adventure, PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (PUBG), Alto's Odyssey, Sega Heroes, and Shadowgun Legends.

Structure

One market research company ranked the top 10 highest earning video game companies of 2018 as follows:

Tencent

Sony

Microsoft

Apple

Activision Blizzard

Google

NetEase

EA

Nintendo

Bandai Namco

This is a mixed list, with companies that vary widely in terms of how they earn their revenue. For example, Microsoft manufactures both hardware and software for games, as well as marketing Skype, Windows Phone, and some other media products. Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts are publishers of game software. The list gives a good idea of the complexity and volatility of this industry.

Hardware and Software Platforms

Console sales totaled $7.5 billion in the United States in 2019. Worldwide, the top-selling hardware platforms in 2018 were Sony's PlayStation 4, Nintendo NS, Microsoft's XBox One, and Nintendo 3DS.

Like most electronic products, most game consoles and hand-held devices are now manufactured in China. However, many of the computer engineers who do the research and development work are located in the United States. For example, Japan's Sony has an R&D center in Foster City, California. The industry also helps support R&D centers in academic settings. The Institute for Virtual Environments and Computer Games at University of California, Irvine, was partly sponsored by the publishers Blizzard Entertainment, Ubisoft, and Supervillain Studios. Major donations from Electronic Arts to the University of South California helped establish a master's program in interactive media, created an endowed faculty chair, and funded the EA Game Innovation Lab.

Game software helps support R&D for many platforms other than consoles, such as smart phones and tablets. The engineering work on these hardware platforms, on virtual machines such as Java and Flash, and on browsers happens mainly in the Silicon Valley and other hubs of the technology industry. One reason game software companies cluster together is the volatility of the industry; if one firm goes under, the technical staff can find work at a nearby competitor.

Production Tools

The industry supports the continuing development of software tools that are used to produce and display the games. For example, map-editing software is used in production to create the layout of a virtual world. The game engine software that operates at run-time integrates specialized modules, often called middleware, that handle functions such as rendering graphics, detecting collisions of objects, playing sound, and running on a network. The publisher may be able to customize the game engine to give one game a unique capability. The game engine may be developed by a game publisher for its own use or by a vendor who licenses it to publishers. Hardware manufacturers develop software development kits for their software division and for licensing to independent producers.

Production Talent

Production of most video games involves a team of many talented workers, under the direction of a producer. Sometimes production oversight is divided between an internal producer working for a development company and an external producer working for a publisher.

The game designer sets the overall vision for the environment, rules, and structure of the game. The designer assigns writers to create dialog for scenes that are embedded in the game. The art director manages a team of artists, who may work in two or three dimensions or with animation. The audio director works with sound effect technicians, musicians, and voice actors. The music composer provides music that loops sometimes and changes at other times.

In a game that is divided into multiple levels of play, level designers use the game engine to bring together the various creative elements at each game level. Software engineers customize the game engine as needed. Testers provide quality assurance to detect bugs and anything else that detracts from the game's entertainment values. After the game has been shipped, programmers respond to bug reports by issuing patches to the software.

In large development companies, some of these creative workers may be on staff, but often they are freelancers working under individual contracts, or they may be on the staff of a specialized service provider.

Distribution

Publishers may market directly to retail outlets or work through a wholesaler. Online digital distribution is a rapidly growing channel that allows publishers to market directly to gamers. It is also making it easier for small independent producers to find a market.

Industry Outlook

In the console hardware industry, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are the only major manufacturers left from what used to be a much more crowded field.

Although videogame console sales had been declining earlier in the decade, the market research firm, Newzoo, reported that consoles were the fastest-growing during the late 2010s. Sales reached $47.9 billion in 2019, up 13.4 percent from 2018, and were expected to continue growing, reaching $61.1 billion in 2022. Newzoo claimed that console games had surpassed their mobile counterparts for two years in a row. Because gamers were anxiously awaiting the next generation of consoles, this would likely have a negative impact on sales during the second half of 2019 because of delayed purchases.

Console manufacturers, in an attempt to make their product a central entertainment platform rather than just a game delivery system, have given them the capability of streaming video from sites such as Netflix and YouTube, as well as playing music CDs and movie DVDs. The downside of this strategy is that the manufacturer sells the console at a low price and depends on sales of game software to make up for its lack of profits from the hardware; but use of the console for purposes other than games does not generate revenue for the manufacturer.

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the computer and video game design industry has been mixed. The industry has seen an increase in the number of players and the frequency of video game play due to quarantining and social-distancing measures. For example, Nintendo reported that sales of its Switch console rose 24 percent year-upon-year in 2020, and the latest game offering in its Animal Crossing series reached 22.4 million units sold since soon after its launch in late-March. While isolation and lack of other activities led to increased interest in video-gaming, supply chain shortages led to difficulty in meeting demand for gaming consoles, especially Sony's PS4, and gaming PCs, which rely on components produced in China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began. Other forms of gaming, such as mobile and tablet gaming, saw increased demand as well and no product shortages because the games are delivered as downloads.

The gaming industry overall is expected to grow by more than 9 percent annually through 2025, according to a November 2020 forecast by Reportlinker.com. As of December 2020, the video game market in the U.S. was valued at about $67 billion, with 196,600 business employing 258,659 people. The research group IBISWorld predicts moderate growth for this sector through 2025, and this growth will likely continue to significantly outpace most other United States industries.

Mobile Games Dominate the Market

The rise of phone- and tablet-based gaming is a major factor in the past decline of consoles. People seem to enjoy the convenience of being able to play games anywhere without being tethered to their television sets or to a dedicated hand-held device. According to Newzoo, mobile gaming dominated the global gaming market in 2019. Following growth of 10.2 percent over the previous year, the category's sales reached $68.5 billion.

Mobile gaming was expected to account for nearly half of the entire gaming market by 2022. Smartphones, remain the key growth driver in the segment. While growth in the mobile gaming sector was slowing down in more developed markets, including North America, the firm indicated that emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia were fueling growth. Even still, factors such as an uptick in the number of available titles and the advent of faster 5G mobile networks were expected to bode well for mobile games in the coming years.

According to Reportlinker.com, post pandemic, the global mobile gaming industry is projected to reach more than $153 billion by 2027. Mobile gaming has grown popular due to the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and user engagement is expected to continue growing after the pandemic is contained.

New Business Models

These new platforms have helped change the business models by which publishers monetize their games, partly because people expect to pay much less for a smartphone app than they would for a console game. Some of these games use advertising for support—not an entirely new practice in games, but one that people are used to seeing in apps for these platforms. The freemium game is a fast-growing model: Gamers can enjoy a simplified game at no charge but, once they are hooked, they must pay to unlock the game's more engaging features. Some of these games allow players to purchase virtual objects that they can use within the game.

Cloud-Based Games

Many highly popular games are offered online and are not specific to a given hardware platform. By 2019, free-to-play battle royale games had become extremely popular. Epic Games' Fortnite, which had an estimated 250 million players in 2019, was a prime example. Rather than charge customers to play, these types of games, which pitted multiple competitive shooters against one another amidst a changing landscape, generated revenue from optional purchases made within the game. Fortnite, and other titles like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), had affected the videogame industry by taking customers away from paid titles, dealing a blow to some videogame producers and their clients.

Subscription, cloud-based videogames were extremely popular at the end of the decade. September 2019 marked the launch of Apple Arcade, giving subscribers access to more than 100 new games that could be played on iPads, iPhones, Apple TVs, and Mac computers. Google's Stadia was slated to come online just two months later. In addition to other supported devices, customers could combine the service with a Chromecast Ultra device and Night Blue Stadia Controller for enjoyment on televisions, including 4K TVs. In May 2020, Nvidia GeForce Now added 19 games to its cloud gaming library and announced that it was planning to add an additional 18 new games, according to a Reportlinker.com article.

Downloaded Games

Internet downloads are gaining ground as a way of distributing software. This change is due partly to the rise of mobile platforms, partly to the widespread Internet connectivity of consoles, and partly because the industry wants to discourage the resale of purchased physical media. Downloadable games are sold on media sites such as iTunes and on specialized gamer sites such as IGN. According to Statista, game downloads generated $14.7 billion in revenue in 2019. A growing number of people have downloaded games during the pandemic and this growth is expected to continue post pandemic. Statista predicts that in 2021, most revenue in the download games sector will be generated by the U.S. For the global download games sector, revenue is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 6.6 percent from 2021 through 2025.

Distribution by download has increased the opportunities for independent game producers to find a market and will enrich the industry with original game ideas. Some indie producers are using crowdfunding Web sites such as Kickstarter and ArtistShare to raise the funds necessary to turn a good idea into a finished, marketable game.

For More Information

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences provides information about award-winning games and scholarships for the study of game development.

Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS)

3183 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 196 F13

Los Angeles, CA 90010

Tel: [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

https://www.interactive.org/

Founded in 2003, DiGRA is the premiere international association for academics and professionals who research digital games and associated phenomena.

Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)

E-mail: [e-mail]

http://www.digra.org/

The Entertainment Software Association serves the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish computer and video games.

Entertainment Software Association (ESA)

601 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 300

Washington, D.C. 20001-3743

https://www.theesa.com/

Gamers Outreach is a charity organization that provides recreation to children in hospitals through the power of video games and the gaming community.

Gamers Outreach Foundation (GOF)

PO Box 694

Saline, MI 48176 United States

E-mail: [e-mail]

https://gamersoutreach.org/

The International Game Developers Association is a nonprofit membership organization for individuals from all fields of game development.

International Game Developers Association (IGDA)

150 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 402

Toronto, Ontario M4P 1E8 Canada

https://www.igda.org/

Words to Know: Video Game Terminology

boss: In combat games, an opponent who is much harder to defeat than most others, and whose defeat usually is needed to advance to a higher level.

cut-scene: A video sequence that provides a narrative bridge between game segments and that the player cannot interact with.

DLC: Downloadable content. In most cases, this is purchased.

first-person shooter: A game that involves shooting, in which the action is seen through the eyes of the character holding the weapon.

MMORPG: Massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which multiple gamers play simultaneously and take on the roles of characters.

mod: A modification to a game made by a fan, who may be called a modder.

NPC: Nonplayable character. The programming of the game determines this character’s actions.

platformer: A game, such as Super Mario Bros., in which the player’s character moves through a level by jumping on platforms and avoiding obstacles.

rhythm game: A game, such as Guitar Hero, in which the player’s input keeps time with the music.

RPG: Role-playing game, in which the player assumes the part of a character.

RTS: Real-time strategy game, in which the player controls many elements, such as deploying armies, building cities, and gathering resources.

sandbox: A game in which the player is free to explore the game’s virtual world and ignore the objectives of game play.

third-person shooter: A game that involves shooting, in which the action is seen from behind the character holding the weapon.

Learn More About It: Game Development by the Book

Books

Chandler, Heather Maxwell. The Game Production Handbook, 3d ed. Burlington, Mass.: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2013. How to produce a game; includes a CD-ROM with templates.

Gibson, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#, 2d ed. Boston: Addison-Wesley Profession, 2017. Covers modern best practices and professional tools for game design and development; includes in-depth tutorials.

Novak, Jeannie. Game Development Essentials: An Introduction, 3d ed. Independence, KY: Delmar Cengage Learning, 2011. Analysis of the industry, descriptions of career paths, and tips for finding or creating a job.

Schell, Jesse. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, 3d ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2019. How to use principles of psychology to make a better game.

Thorn, Alan. Game Development Principles. Boston: Cengage Learning PTR, 2013. Discusses core theoretical knowledge game developers use, including game math, textures and materials, lighting, sound, effects, and more.

Web sites

Gamasutra

https://www.gamasutra.com

News and tips for aspiring game developers.

Gamedev.net

https://www.gamedev.net

Detailed information about creating games; includes a section for beginners.

Game Developer Tips

https://gamedevelopertips.com/

Resource for game developers.

Entries

Animators

Quick Facts

Overview

Animators are artists who design the moving characters that appear in movies, videos, television shows, commercials, Web sites, and in other digital media. They are also known as digital animators and motion cartoonists. There are 74,000 multimedia artists and animators employed in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

History

Frenchman Emile Reynaud created what is considered the first animated cartoon in 1892. He created the cartoon by drawing and hand-painting images on film paper and using a praxinoscope, an optical instrument he invented to create the illusion of movement, or animation. Fantasmagorie, considered the first fully animated film, was made by French director Emile Courtet (aka Emile Cohl) in 1908.

As Hollywood grew in the early 1900s, so did companies that created cartoons, although these animated films were silent (just like all movies of the time). Bray Studios in New York City was one of the best-known cartoon studios of the time. It operated from circa 1915 to the late 1920s. Some of its cartoons include Out of the Inkwell (1916), Electric Bell (1918), and If You Could Shrink (1920).

Walt Disney also got his start in the business around this time. In 1923, he sold his first cartoon, Alice’s Wonderland, to a distributor and soon after founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio (later renamed Walt Disney Studio) with his brother, Roy. By the late 1920s talkies had replaced silent films and Walt Disney had created the cartoon character, Mickey Mouse, which still entertains young and old to this day.

The 1930s and 1940s are considered the golden age of animation. The Walt Disney Studio dominated the industry during these decades. During this time, it created the first animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which debuted in 1937. The animated film was so groundbreaking that the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences gave it a special award in 1938, stating: "to Walt Disney for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon." Walt Disney Studio went on to create many other animated feature-length classics, including Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo.

The popularity of television in the 1950s caused a decline in interest in theatrical cartoons and feature films that lasted into the 1980s. Many consider the release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? by Walt Disney Studios in 1988 as the beginning of a renaissance in film animation that continues to this day. Major animation trends over the last two decades include the popularity of adult-oriented animation, such as Waltz With Bashir and television shows such as The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, and South Park; the emergence of anime [Japanese-based (although the phenomena has spread throughout Asia) high-quality animation in a variety of genres that is geared not just toward children, but adults, too]; the creation of cable networks, such as Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network, that offer animation as much or all of their programming; and the rise of computer-generated animation, which allows animators infinite creative options and the ability to complete animated features in far less time than by using traditional methods.

In addition to its rich history in the motion picture and television industries, animation is now used in computer and video games, advertisements, marketing promotions, and computer software applications that are viewed on computers, smartphones, and other mobile computing and telecommunications devices. This wide array of venues for animation translates into good opportunities for animators.

The Job

Animators design the moving characters that appear in films and television shows. They create the visual effects for many films, television shows, and commercials. They also create animations that are viewed on