Computer gaming has undergone a remarkable transformation over the years. The industry has evolved to a large, multibillion-dollar industry, with the Entertainment Software Association reporting that the industry made an estimated revenue of $36 billion in 2017 in the United States. It is a blooming enterprise which has created job opportunities for a lot of people, ranging from game designers to producers to programmers to artists and so on. And even though this growth should normally be a thing of joy for those involved with the industry, it has been observed that it is quite tricky navigating through the industry with its numerous uncertainties.
We examined the situation of things in this industry and we were able to arrive at some derivations. We talk about them in this article.
VR and Augmented Reality Represent Strong Areas of Opportunity
When virtual reality started in the 1990s it was not that successful. Now, it is doing quite well and taking a cursory look at the availability of opportunities in virtual and augmented reality, we see very strong results. There has been a radical increase in the number of gaming jobs since 2015, with job postings in this area has risen by almost 100% in this period. In the past year alone, the job posting jumped by 17%
As eSport Booms, Game Tester Job Decline
eSports is also making waves currently, even though the possibility of such occurring was very remote a few years ago. This implies that more jobs are also being created in this field. Job postings on eSports have risen by 18% within the past year and by 57% since 2015.
The emergence of VR and eSports as the dominant jobs in the gaming industry has had a negative impact on other sectors of the gaming industry. We have noticed some declines in a lot of the more conventional categories such as a game tester. The opportunity for people who get paid to test a new game before its release has reduced drastically within the past three years, dropping by 43% within this period and 36% in the last year.
In the same vein, game designers, developers and engineers have also suffered a downturn in the number of job postings for them with each of these roles having had nothing less than 30% decrease in the demand for their services since 2015, even if they still lead in terms pf the actual number of job postings.
What Job Seekers Want
Having talked about the demand for the services of gaming professionals, it is necessary to elucidate on the roles these professionals want themselves. The highest increase in job searches is in the eSport category with searches for this role having increased by more than double in the past year and nearly four times since 2015. Also, VR/AR job searches increased by 85% since 2015, although there was a marginal, 1% drop in job searches in that category in the past year. Game developers and engineers have also increased their job searches.
However, there has been a reduction in job searches for certain jobs. Such roles include game designers, game testers and QA jobs.
Hence, you have to be aware that despite the numerous possibilities that the gaming industry present, it is an evolving one which is highly dependent on technology. New technologies might lead to an increase in demand for some jobs while causing a reduction in others and as such the industry is an unstable one which is prone to numerous highs and lows.
