The Acagamic

People often come to me ask­ing if I know any good books or sources to give a begin­ner a good lit­tle overview of the jobs out there in the games indus­try. While I know many books on many spe­cial­ties, most of which fea­ture a decent overview of the game indus­try jobs and appli­ca­tion areas, the choice really also depends on the game that is being devel­oped as require­ments may vary from plat­form to plat­form or whether you are cre­at­ing an own or a licensed ip. However, here are the sites and sources I usu­ally rec­om­mend to new­bies. Feel free to share any good resources you have on the topic:

• First, I usu­ally rec­om­mend hav­ing a look at my Master’s the­sis (pure self­ish­ness, I know), in which I had a look at the devel­op­ment process and the areas involved (although it is a bit dated by now).
• Then, I once found a good expla­na­tion on how to get into the games indus­try by Eurocom, which fea­tures short descrip­tions of all major jobs includ­ing project man­agers, pro­duc­ers, design­ers, artists, ani­ma­tors, pro­gram­mers, sound design­ers, and game testers.
• Exhilarating and hilar­i­ous are also Paul Barnett’s IGN videos on how to enter the indus­try, which I espe­cially rec­om­mend to young, over­en­thu­si­as­tic peo­ple want­ing to get their big break.
• The very old IGDA site: Breaking in can be par­tially neglected except for hav­ing a quick look at the devel­oper profiles.
• Olivia Crosby’s arti­cle from 2005 called Working So Others Can Play: Jobs in Video Game Development is also avail­able on the web in var­i­ous for­mats and still use­ful as an overview source.
• Another very dated advice can be found at a Gamasutra archive and is called “How to Get Started in the Game Industry” and writ­ten by Ernest Adams, who should need no intro­duc­tion here.
• Bookwise, I can warmly rec­om­mend Erik Bethke’s Game Development and Production, which does fea­ture thor­ough details about dif­fer­ent roles in a game production.
• Game Design: Theory and Practice by Richard Rouse III was one of the first books I read on the topic and still holds value to those inter­ested in the details of a game production.
• Introduction to Game Development, which is edited by Steve Rabin is one of the broad­est approaches on the sub­ject of devel­op­ment and def­i­nitely a nec­es­sary buy for all schol­ars of the field, because of its well-selected papers from the vari­ety of areas involved in game development.

As the dig­i­tal game indus­try matures, degrees are finally becom­ing more impor­tant and you find all infor­ma­tion to get started with infor­ma­tion on schools and pro­grams at Gamasutra’s sis­ter site GamerCareerGuide.

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