Top Mobile Gaming Careers
You Could Start Right Now
While many of us think of mobile gaming as a leisure activity to pass the time, you may be surprised to hear that you can actually make a lucrative career in the mobile gaming industry. Here are some of the top careers you can pursue in the sector.
Mobile gaming journalist
A great avenue into many careers in the gaming industry is by becoming a mobile gaming or computer gaming journalist or blogger. Writing about games is a great way to showcase and expose your knowledge to others in the industry, and can also lead to potential connections, as even executives from software and gaming development companies read blogs and websites.
In the UK, BBC Radio 1’s and O2’s New phone, who dis? gaming presenter Julia Hardy started her career by writing for various gaming magazines such as GamesMaster and Tuned. She now makes a gaming series for BBC iPlayer that covers the newest smartphone releases such as the Samsung Galaxy Note10 Plus 5G. If you submit some articles to publications and they do not respond, why not create your own gaming blog linked to social media? This is a great way to create a name for yourself as an influencer.
Game tester
Also known as ‘quality assurance technicians’, game testers essentially play games for a living. But it’s not all fun – if you’re a tester, your main role is to identify bugs that crop up in a game’s development. You need to be methodical, patient and be willing to repeat the same level over and over again, coming up with ideas and ways to fix issues that arise with bugs.
You need to ensure that every glitch in a game has been discovered, which likely means playing the same game for several days, long after the initial fun experience has worn off. If however you are a real problem-solver, writing reports on any bugs that arise and coming up with solutions (patches) for them may be your dream job.
Game engineer
Game engineers specialize in game development. If you’d like to pursue this kind of job, it’s likely that you’ll need to obtain a degree in computer science. It goes without saying that you will also need a keen interest in gaming. Game engineers often specialize in either ‘client development’, or ‘server/back-end development’. Client development is more graphic design and user interface-orientated, so if you are interested in designing the framework of the user’s experience in a game, this could be for you.
You’ll need to understand various coding and mark-up languages for platforms. If server development is more your thing, you’ll be working more closely with databases and back-end servers, and will likely require qualifications and demonstrative experience in software engineering, PHP, Python and Java.
Content producer
A content producer creates content both before and after a game has launched. Players no longer wait ages for updates or new versions of games to be released, which is why software developers have to stay one step ahead and focus on new content creation at all times. This is especially important if players are paying for new content and the company is monetizing its games.
To be a content producer, you need an understanding of how games operate and the in-depth mechanical detailing of them. You also need some experience in gaming design, with a real eye for detail. It is hard to get into this type of role without some previous experience in the gaming industry, and many people who are in this position go on to it from another associated mobile gaming job.
UI (user interface artist)
A user interface (UI) artist designs, implements and optimizes UI elements within a computer or mobile game. Their role is to create beautiful user interfaces that are graphically stunning, but also highly user-friendly and intuitive. To succeed in this role, you’ll need to understand gaming design interfaces and design ways in which players can play a game in different modes with different settings, as well as create navigational menus and design the actual interface/environment of the game.
This role requires patience, a great eye for detail and a dash of perfectionism, as various draft interfaces will often be created before one is eventually approved. A UI artist also designs the ‘world’ of the game they are creating, including characters, textures, fonts, menus, animation, characters, colors and so on.
They typically use 3D digital art, which is then transferred or ‘ported’ into a game engine. UI designers work with programmers to iron out any visibility and user issues that arise. To have a career as a UI artist, you typically require a degree in graphic/UX/UI design, along with some experience in gaming design and development. Those with backgrounds in art are often considered. You’ll also need knowledge of 3D software and 2D software such as Flash.
Pinstripe Magazine Staff
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