The gaming industry generates more than $60 billion in revenue each year. A good piece of this pie goes to major developers, studios that have been in the business for a good 20 or 30 years. This particular industry generates more in revenue than the music industry or Hollywood, and yet more kids of today dream of becoming a singer or an actor.
This would be because getting in this industry is a bit difficult. So, you might ask the question many coders and now-successful game developers have asked: how to get into the gaming industry with no experience?
The computer branch of coding and development has branched out into many different offshoots, but the game design as an academic discipline and a career goal is just now beginning to gain traction.
If you are one of the very few people who are serious of making it to the upper echelon of the gaming industry and want a very lucrative career in the gaming industry, the following is an answer to how to get into the gaming industry with no experience.
First things First…
No matter what you do, what experience you have and what role you want to assume in the gaming industry, two things are almost given and are considered almost imperative; the first one is an innate understanding of games and how they work and the second one is coding, without which it is downright impossible to move ahead in the industry.
If you do consider yourself a connoisseur of games and are inherently good at gaming, you’re halfway there. If you know coding and understand the basics of coding, congratulations. You’re going to get into the gaming industry even if you don’t have prior relevant experience. Click here to read articles.
How to Get into the Gaming Industry with no Experience?
There are a few steps which you have to undertake before you can get into the gaming industry with no experience. And yes, experience does matter, but skills and determination matter more for the gaming industry, unless you’re applying for an upper-level position. With no experience, you can get into the industry and work your way to the top.
Get a Game Development Degree:
Education begets experience, which means that if you’ve learned how to code or develop a game, you’ve automatically started gaining experience. Which is why, the first step in getting into the gaming industry with no experience is getting a degree in game design.
Yes, they do teach that now, this niche is really beginning to take off now, with many prestigious varsities now offering programmers on game development. But that’s not all. There are basically three domains which you can choose from: game design, game art and game programming. Choose which one you feel like you’ve got the best shot at and get learning.
Program your own Small, ‘indie’ Games:
Another great way of getting into the gaming industry is by making your own small, indie games or projects, as industry insiders call them. There are two things that you need to know about this tip of making it into the gaming industry; the first is you need to learn coding for it.
Because if you can code, you can develop games. Just like being good with a steering wheel is a must for a racing driver, knowing how to code is a must for anyone looking to get into the gaming industry.
The second one is that these small projects or indie games are a very good substitute for having experience from a development house, because it shows that you have drive and can code on your own. The gaming industry has tens of examples of how studios picked up people who started off making small, easy-to-code games.
Get an Internship with a Major Studio:
Studios and high-profile games developers like Hideo Kojima or the duo behind Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon and John Tobias, routinely get on board interns who are just learning the ropes and want to make a big dent on the industry by themselves.
Such an internship goes a long way into getting you to the top of the gaming industry; you learn, you experience and you make a network of other developers, coders and producers. And if you are already enrolled in a game development programmer, it gets easier for you to score an internship at a big gaming studio.
Become a Game Tester or Streamer:
While companies aren’t too keen on hiring the latter one except for marketing, becoming a game tester is relatively easy and pays off better than being a streamer.
Many small, independent studios coming up with the next Fortnite or Pac-Man always require game testers to come and rigorously test the game before release, which helps a person get some good graces with big future game developers, learn a few things about gaming and game development and get a nice addition on their CVs.
Follow these steps and you will have gotten into the gaming industry with no experience.
Read More: 5 skills needed to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
