Are You A Gamer? 3 Careers You Should Consider
More and more people are finding out they have a deep passion for video games, and they want to make a professional career out of it, making a living doing something related to gaming. This is completely understandable and thanks to our economy moving away from manufacturing and becoming more and more technology-oriented – there are a lot of job openings you can apply for that are directly related to gaming and the gaming industry. This article mentions a few career paths you can pursue that will not only integrate your love for gaming into your daily life but will also provide a solid career path with advancements and decent pay.
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More and more people are finding out they have a deep passion for video games, and they want to make a professional career out of it, making a living doing something related to gaming. This is completely understandable and thanks to our economy moving away from manufacturing and becoming more and more technology-oriented – there are a lot of job openings you can apply for that are directly related to gaming and the gaming industry. This article mentions a few career paths you can pursue that will not only integrate your love for gaming into your daily life but will also provide a solid career path with advancements and decent pay.
Game Tester
Becoming a game tester is the most direct path for a gamer – it involves all the things you love – cutting-edge hardware, never-before-released triple-A games, and a comfortable seat where you can sit down and play to your heart’s content. You’ll also have direct access to the development team as you tell them about the bugs and issues in the game, and you’ll have a first-hand view of the development process and how games are created from scratch. This is a dream come true for many gamers, and the pay and bonuses are quite good, so you’ll also be making a decent living.
But things aren’t all rainbow and sunshine for game testers – there are also some disadvantages that might turn you off from becoming a tester: First of all, playing video games for leisure and for work are two very different things. You’ll have to play a level, again and again, reporting every small error you see, and it can get tedious very quickly. Some testers have even reported losing their passion for gaming due to it, so you have to be careful and make sure you have the fortitude and the patience necessary to become a game tester.
Quality Assurance & Community Outreach
While some people just like to sit down on the couch and play a game nonstop for a few hours, for others, gaming is more about the community surrounding it. The in-jokes, the memes, and the in-depth discussions are what makes gaming special for some, and for this group of people, jobs like quality assurance and community outreach can be excellent.
Quality Assurance
If you apply for quality assurance, you can get a job talking to people about their issues and concerns, their problems with the platform and games, you can connect with many gamers and hear how they think about the different aspect of the product your company is responsible for. If sitting down and discussing video games and consoles for hours sounds like something you might enjoy, quality assurance is for you.
Although, not everything is peachy as you’ll often have to deal with angry and frustrated gamers, and they might ruin your mood. And as we all know, some people can’t just follow instructions, and in those instances, you’ll have your work cut out for you. It also depends on the company to a great extent, troubleshooting why people can’t access their League of Legends accounts can be much easier than handling extremely technical problems during certain game installations.
Community Outreach
If you don’t want to communicate constantly with gamers who have issues, but rather, you’re more into creative writing, community management, and research, you can be responsible for community outreaching in a big game development company. You’ll get the chance to figure out what the fans really want, ways you can improve the games, and the reception to the material you put out there. It is definitely an interesting job that requires ingenuity and hard work, but it is one of the only jobs that let you shape the next generation of games.
But we also shouldn’t overlook the disadvantages of community outreaching: online, where insincere and toxic behavior protected by anonymity is common, it is exceedingly hard to collect accurate data and establish genuine communication with fans of the games. That’s not all – if anything goes wrong, you should expect some pretty harsh words of criticism directed towards you – all in all, this is a high-stakes job, and you should be mentally prepared for it.