1. A Programmer is crucial for any game in development, theyʼre what makes the
video game work and usually there is a big team working on one game at a time,
with lead programmers working on core elements and the game as a whole with
people working under them coding certain aspects.
Key Skills:
Have experience in coding in C++, if you can code in C++ it wonʼt take you long to
pick up different types of coding as they are all similar to C++, also you are
expected to know other programming languages along with C++.
You need to be creative and be able to problem solve effectively under pressure,
creativity is important to programming as without it you have a bland user
experience. Problem solving is essential, you need to be able to fix errors
effectively and quickly.
You need a genuine love of video games and have played many different types of
games in the past and have a vast understanding on how they work, this is also
essential as you will have some pretty good ideas if youʼve played many different
games.
Ways to enter the job role:
A degree in either physics, maths or computer science is needed in order to enter
this job role, without this you will not be able to get far, the best way is to start
programming as a hobby at first to get a taste for it and to begin building up a
portfolio and play different types of video games and learn how they work, when
applying for a job youʼll be asked about your knowledge on video games and how
games work.
Another way is to get a work placement at a game studio to build up experience
and a portfolio, but importantly to implement some connections within the video
game industry, during the work placement and opportunity may come up for full
time work and since youʼre already there itʼll be easier for you to get in if you can
demonstrate you can work well.
A contribution made by a programmer to a triple A title:
Travis Mcintosh was one of the lead programmers on “The Last of Us”, his job was
to code the main aspects of the game and the core of the game, to create
something for the other programmers to build up from and this is a tough job to
achieve, as it a lot easier to build up from something but creating something from
scratch is a completely different challenge, he had to think creatively about how the
game would work in the end and ultimately he achieved this well.
Programmer