WII1: Understand job roles, career structures and business models across the games, animation and VFX industries
Inside of Digital Media, there are tons of particular job roles and hierarchies, as an example as a person who would like to work in the video games industry as a game designer these are jobs that could be associated with, not limited to the Games Industry:
QA Tester – Hierarchy may include Senior QA Tester, Junior QA Tester.
Level Designer
Programmer – Hierarchy may include Lead Programmer, Junior Programmer.
Whereas the VFX Sector might have jobs such as
Set Designer
VFX Artist
Video Editor
Film Director
And the Animation Sector is an interesting one as it is a transferable sector that translates into other areas such as
Animator – Links to Games and VFX (Hierarchy may include Senior Animator, Junior Animator)
Voice Actor / Narrator – Links to Games.
And of course all three sectors can share jobs between them, some examples include:
3D Artist
Environmental Artist
Motion Artist
Marketing
Communication Manager
personally I am most interested in working in the Games Industry however, not quite sure where I would place myself inside of it as a jack of all trades, I think the thing I would like to stay furthest away from is any Animation and Art related stuff. I have good digital art skills such as creating logos or effects, or photo editing but drawing environments, storyboards etc.. are not my strong points. Ideally the dream is to either have my own studio with a small team creating immersive experiences and video games out of this world or to work within a studio where the ambition is endless.
QA
A Quality Assurance Tester is basically responsible for the quality of the production, they do this by finding bugs and exploits in the game that they are testing. To do this, they will meet up with developers and producers of the game and have a chat about what segments they want the QA people to test. The QA Tester will then go and play the game to break it. Then they will try to repeat the bug and then make a log of it.
For a QA tester, it would be good practice to try and narrow the bug down to each individual variable, as an example, if a gun in a FPS shoots the enemy’s hand and the game freezes or something doesn’t react the way it should, its either the gun causing the issue or the enemy. They would then change one of the variables and test again, if the same thing happens then it might not be relative to the thing that they changed.
Following on from this, they would log their findings in the database and alert the developers who may be responsible for fixing this. Once it if fixed, it would be a good idea to keep testing that specific area to see if anything else broke whilst that bug was fixed.
The QA Tester role could be considered as an entry level job, it will get you into the workplace and you can continue to develop and enhance any portfolios you may have, all whilst learning about how that particular studio operates. It also give you a chance to build a good rapport with other colleagues as you will want to work closely with those kinds of peers.
Producer
A producer is essentially a manager. The Producers role will be to put proper scheduling into practice and to communicate effectively between teams. They will need to demonstrate leadership skills but try to put creative inputs to the side and leave that to the developers, the end goal is to make sure the team is communicating and working together in order to create a nice workflow.
Managing a project is no easy task however, you will need to be thinking on your feet at all times, problem solving and creativity are two important skills that will benefit in this role. You will be the go to person if there is a problem or a hitch in the system that can be fixed but hasn’t and you’ll need to know who to go to get it fixed. You are managing a team so that you can make your game ship.
If Producers didn’t exist, then the project wouldn’t have much organization or a sense of direction going for the project. There will be constant roadblocks that never get cleaned up and the project becomes harder to manage overtime. Although skills such as Leadership and Communication may not come naturally to some, this position is one of the easiest to get into however, can also be one of the most demanding positions within the industry.
JORDAN | GLITCH ARCADE 