What skills are required to work as a software engineer in the game industry?

Answer 1

Game developers look to hire software engineers with experience. This experience can come from getting a Computer Science degree and being lucky enough to get an entry level job with a game company, or it can come from making your own games. Some colleges offer game design course that pair groups of students together in order to create portfolios with small games.

College is a great place to learn the computer skills necessary to create a portfolio and to see if you actually like the job. While playing Video Games if fun, writing code for computer programs is meticulous time-consuming work that requires intense attention to detail, critical thinking, frequent retraining in new software, and the ability to work very long hours.

Also, software engineers are not the people who get to make decisions on which games to make. As literally tens of millions of dollars are spent to develop and market AAA games, often the titles game developers work on are projects intended to make the companies they work for money rather than passion projects that the makers care about and have a stake in creating. It is possible to stay on this career path until you impress people enough that you are able to take part in game design meetings and help mold a title, but this is a senior level duty. The job of a software engineer entering the game industry is to create code that executes other people's visions. The competition for entry level positions is exceedingly intense. Due to this, your coworkers will likely also have exceptionally impressive skills, so gaining a chair in design meetings will be difficult.

For these reasons, you should find out if you love writing computer code. If you just love playing video games, then look elsewhere for a job you can enjoy, and just play video games when you are off work.