BW Gaming World
By the mid-2030s, PwC predicts, one-third of all the jobs that exist in the world today would turn redundant. Simply put, every third member of the global workforce would have to either reskill or risk unemployment.
Sombre predictions like these, rising cost of living and sinking investments in equities and crypto alike paint a sorry picture for most working professionals. But not those in the gaming industry. None of these fears seems applicable to them as the demand for gaming talent has continued to soar for years, irrespective of market conditions.
In 2021, gaming in India generated USD 1.8 billion in revenue from 400 million gamers. By 2025, these are expected to grow to USD 5 billion and 650 million respectively. The numbers seem huge but are really a fraction of the global gaming industry which is touted to have generated over USD 200 billion from nearly 3 billion gamers last year.
These figures make the global gaming industry larger than movies and music combined. As gaming booms around the world, the growth of jobs within the gaming industry has kept pace. Here are some of the roles for which leading gaming companies are always on the lookout.
Game designer
Game designers ideate and conceptualise games. Think of them as architects who plan everything about the game: the characters, storyline and progression, rules and mechanics, and economy. They visualise the whole world within the game and articulate their vision to the others on the team. When a new game is being worked upon, designers visualise prototypes and run experiments with their team of developers and artists.
Game developer
A game developer is primarily responsible for bringing a designer’s vision to life with the use of programming languages and game engines. Game developers work very closely with designers, artists, and audio engineers to string together their work into a final output using code.
In the recent past, there has been a massive surge in the demand for HTML5 game developers, as HTML5 games are device-agnostic and can be played without the need to install apps. Leading social apps like Snap and Facebook have dedicated sections for HTML5 games, and companies like Gamezop hone the skills of HTML5 game developers in addition to distributing their games around the world.
Game artists and animators
All the beautiful art, graphics and animations one sees that make any game so enjoyable are the work of artists and animators. Their work provides physical structure to characters, props and environment within a game. Art and animation are very diverse fields and roles could be further split into concept art, character art, 3D modelling and so on, all of which could be done by different individuals within the team.
Sound engineers
Games have plots and characters, and the job of sound engineers is to bring life to them and please our auditory senses at the same time. These engineers use software and musical equipment to create everything you hear in a game: ambient sounds, background music, sound effects and voice-overs.
Professional gamers and streamers
Professional gamers are full-time competitive players who participate in gaming tournaments or esports. Professional gamers play for their teams and are sponsored by brands. Esports are megaevents with huge prize money and have staggering viewership stats. It is estimated that in 2022, over half a billion people will watch their favourite esports stars compete in these tournaments, either at esports arenas or over broadcasts.
Streamers can be professional or semi-professional gamers who stream their gameplay over channels like YouTube and Twitch. They often promote brands during their streams. In India, one finds streamers promoting popular gaming brands like SkillClash, MPL, and WinZO very frequently.
Gaming alliances
From Amazon to MX Player, and Oyo to Samsung Internet – just look around and you will see that hundreds of popular apps and websites have introduced games for their users. Each of these products has a core proposition that has nothing to do with gaming. Yet, using games these products build meaningful user journeys to improve user engagement.
These non-gaming products do not build games in-house; instead, they turn to specialised game publishers to manage this offering for their users. Those in gaming alliances represent these publishers to negotiate a deal with the non-gaming products. They are responsible for finding products that would benefit from adding games and nurturing relationships with them.
Gaming ad sales
Gaming is interactive engagement and commands high attention from the users. Add to that the fact that over 3 billion internet users are gamers – making them the largest and most diverse group on the internet. Within games, brands can utilise advertising inventory on banners, interstitials, videos (pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and rewarded), or native units (such as in-game billboards or jerseys).
Whether the objective of an advertising campaign is branding (reach, scale, viewability) or performance (app downloads, registration, sales), advertisers with all kinds of goals and budgets can turn to the wide list of inventory options that games offer.
Professionals in gaming ad sales represent the inventory that a game or a gaming platform offers, highlighting its user attributes and targeting abilities and securing advertising spends from brands.
Final word
Career opportunities in gaming are aplenty and the above list is not exhaustive. There are other interesting roles in the industry such as game testers, game critics, translators and interpreters, DevOps and other engineering roles, and the business and marketing roles that any content company would have.
The gaming industry in India has massive potential to generate employment for millions. The government also recognizes the significant contribution it can make to the economy and taking cognisance of this fact, has set up an animation, visual effects, gaming and comic promotion task force to aid its progress in India.
Written by Gaurav Agarwal, Co-founder, Gamezop
