The Games Industry and How to Get There

In the past few days several articles have popped up that relate somewhat to getting into the games industry, so I figured I'd bunch them up into one article. If that's the sort of thing that interests you, here are some links! First off, Ralph Edwards over at IGN has summarized the salary ranges that can be expected for various industry roles, from programmers to producers. Mr. Edwards follows that up with what he sees as the most important conferences for educating yourself about what's going on in games. Somewhat oddly, he does not include Game Developers Conference, but does include it's European counterpart GDCE. For a different perspective, there's an interview simply called "Breaking Into the Industry" with Tomm Hulett, a writer at Atlus who ended up the Project Lead for the recently-released Trauma Center: Under the Knife (DS). He touches on what to expect (and what not to expect) when trying to get a development job. Finally, and this one is a little different in focus than the others, Beth Dillon at Gamasutra reports on the 2005 Indie Games Conference, and the relevant part to this article is that her coverage touches on the types of things independent developers should take into account if they want to try and get their game distributed through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service for Xbox 360. Recently, all sorts of venues have been popping up that will hopefully allow indie developers to get their games out there with the help of third-party distribution, and Live Arcade is looking like it might become an attractive one. While the PC will surely remain the most feasable platform for low-budget development for quite some time, it is encouraging to see console manufacturers such as Microsoft try and support that segment as well. Though the Revolution is a bit farther off than the 360, Nintendo too has pledged its support for smaller developers operating on a limited budget, and has indicated that there would be special resources available for such groups wishing to ship a game on that console. So there you go. A few articles to read, if you like.