This may surprise you, but playing video games could be the first step to a career! Thousands of employees who develop video games for a living say their passion for playing is what drew them to their jobs. A love of games is an advantage in an industry whose stock and trade is fun and fantasy. But this also requires serious skill and only highly qualified people find these jobs.

There’s a huge variety in games; sports, action, adventure, educational, strategy, or just plain violence. These games are made for PCs (personal computers), consoles, arcades, and the internet. They can even add excitement to some retail sites and electronic organizers. The demands for games are rising and the industry is growing. Sales of gaming software generated more than $6 billion last year. More than 19,000 new games were showcased at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. According to a Coopers and Lybrand study for the Interactive Software Developers Association, the average development company grew by 18 percent between 1997 and 1998, with about 50,000 people working in video game development in 1998.

The best of the game designers would work around the clock. A good designer would write down every idea that comes into their head. But those are just the storyline and character sketching designers. The people that actually give the characters and stories life and movement, probably have work shifts in their building/headquarters.

To employ into this career, you need to take 6 courses. The courses are: Modeling for Games Character Animation Texturing for Games Game History and Theory Modeling Environments for Games Game Level Design These courses give you the knowledge of the history of video games, from the arcade to online to mobile devices, as well as the theories behind game play and what makes a successful game. It helps you understand the principles of game design and of the game development process and the ability to create a game design document.

They also leave you with the ability to animate game characters and objects and familiarity with the game industry and the jobs that are required in the game development process. There are many other things you can learn from these courses. You can do these courses in The New York University, School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

Games will just keep coming and coming. Companies have been making new consoles with better features than ever before for an average of about every 6 years. From now until forever, video games will just keep on getting better and better and the costumers will just keep buying and buying. I don’t think that there’s a chance that anyone will get bored of this network of entertainment.