Considering a Game Development Course?
It’s easy to get caught up in game development dreams. You can already see yourself building something that will rival League of Legends or put Uncharted to shame… and maybe you will, but you have to build a strong foundation first by taking a game development course.
Turn your love of games into a profession and join a global gaming industry that is booming.
Game developers are individuals who use their math, computer, or creative arts skills to program and develop games. This includes programming console, PC, video, and mobile video games.
The popularity of the game development industry is growing at a rapid rate, especially in the last 10 years. This largely has to do with the continued growth of the gaming industry, but also due to the popularity of the internet.
Some interesting gaming facts:
- There are an estimated 3.1 billion people consuming video games as of August 2020, comprising about 40 percent of the planet’s population.
- Mobile gaming now has the biggest share of the market with 48% of players engaging in mobile gaming. In the global games industry, console gaming just outperforms PC gaming with console taking 28% and PC gaming taking 23%.
- With a 99/100 Metacritic score, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is named as the best game ever.
- PUBG is the most played game with over 1 million players in 2019
What Is Game Development?
As the name suggests, game development is the art of “making” games. It includes the design process, development, testing, and release of a game.
Programming is the language of game development.
The most commonly used gaming programming languages currently are:
- C++: This is a gaming standard. It is slightly more difficult than other languages, but when it comes to design, it allows for more autonomy and freedom.
- Java: Java is one of the most versatile programming languages ever made – see our article on Java for more information.
- HTML5: HTML5 (HyperText Markup Language 5) is a markup language used to customize the function and appearance of webpages.
- JavaScript: A web-programming language used to create effects within a web browser.
Career Opportunities
You can follow different career oppertunities as a game developer:
- Indie game developer – You will be working alone or in a small team to create a game and sell it yourself. In this role, your duties as a game developer will be very diverse. You’re going to be responsible for several more elements of the game.
- Working at a game development studio – Game development companies differ in scale/size. Not every developer would work on the same project at the same time so you can expect to work in teams. At a larger gaming company, game developers can have the opportunity to move in a more specialized direction. Each team member will concentrate on a specific area of the game.
- Freelance – designing games or apps for companies that don’t have the in-house abilities to do it themselves
A game developer could be a programmer, sound designer, artist, tester, designer, or any of the many other roles available in the industry.
Irrespective of which type of game development you want to pursue, one thing is for sure: you’re not going to get there by not doing anything. Level up your game developer skills and check out game development courses near you in the Nightcourses.co.uk national course finder.
