The Joy of a Video Game Design Degree

Are you one of those people who love to watch flashy graphics and funny little characters filling your screen, giving your eyes a banquet of images to take in? Do you get excited by blowing things up or creating your own civilizations? If you can relate to these things, then you will see the joy of a video game design degree.

Starting point

To start with you are going to need to get the proper schooling; this involves a two to four year long stint at a college or technical institute. Places like the Florida Digital Media Arts College or the Collins College in Arizona offer extensive degree courses in video game design. With the demand for skilled video game designers growing rapidly, the companies responsible for creating and marketing these games are always on the lookout for the wiz kid, so to say. This means that there are more places offering courses and the wage rate is higher than most other design industry jobs.

Study guide

To be successful in video game design you will need to know about all aspects of designing and programming some of the things you will need to study include:

• Computer programming
• Graphic arts
• Electronic digital art
• Computer simulation
• Modeling
• Software engineering

There are many stages involved in the design of a video game and, while having an understanding of the entire process, you will likely wind up specializing in a particular part of the process. You could concentrate on illustration, or you might want to do more on the programming side. You will probably start out as a tester. Testing new games to make sure they perform consistently right through all of the features is a necessary task and can be a lot of fun.

Industry Knowledge

As with all specialized careers, it is important to know the industry you want to be involved in. Make it your aim to get to know who the major players are what type of games they produce, and what market they are aiming at. The time will come when you are finished your study and you will want to start to apply for work. By knowing the industry and the companies that operate within that industry, you will know who want to target for work. By doing your homework on these companies, you can find out little bits of information that you use to your advantage. For example, if you would like to work for a Japanese company, then it would be an advantage to know the language.

Another way to familiarize yourself with the industry is attend trade shows if you can; these trade shows give you the opportunity to meet and greet with people already working within the industry. If you attend these trade shows, you find endless amounts of information and learn about all aspects of the trade. Let's be honest. School is great, but it can never fully prepare you for the real world. Be a go-getter. Remember, you have at least two years of college to do, but two years can go really fast. So if you are just starting your degree, it is still not too early to start networking and learning the inside secrets of the business.

Average Salary

Studies indicate that the average salary in the United States for a video game designer runs between $40,000.00 and $55,000.00 annually. Highly skilled designers that have built a solid reputation can into the six figure range. In comparison to other more traditional design careers, the joy of a video game design degree gives you the chance to earn more money.