Whatever type of game you dream to design, there’s a fit right here in one of the world’s largest game design centers. Canada’s $2.3 billion gaming industry ranks third in the world behind Japan and the U.S. Among its 329 companies are leaders like Digital Extremes (Unreal, Dark Sector) located in London Ontario, BioWare (Star Wars, Baldur’s Gate) located in Edmonton and Montreal and Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed, and Splinter Cell) located in Montreal and Toronto. The gaming industry, according to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada is expected to grow 25 percent through to 2016. A career in gaming has a future.
Example Careers in Game Design
Upon graduation what can you expect? The process of creating a video game is a complex thing. Much of the work is highly specialized and requires a division of labor amongst the entire team. A game designer must work in any number of other capacities while bringing games imagined by others to life. You may expect to begin your career doing something other than game design, at least until you get some work experience. Some of these careers in game design and their national median starting salaries are:
- Lead designer $81,000
- Game programmer $55,000+
- Game artist $42,000+
- Game animator $47,000+
- Quality assurance $32,000+
- Lead quality assurance $40,000+
- Software engineer $70,000+
- Game designer $55,000+
- Software developer $60,000+
- Game writer $44,000+
Aside from the high starting salaries and diverse range of skills entailed, game design jobs also have highly rewarding work environments.
Other Factors That Affect Game Designer Salary
The numbers above are averages from many hundreds of designer salaries, so they’re very general. In reality, there are other factors that can help designers beat the averages by quite a lot.
- Company/studio size. Larger companies generally have bigger project budgets, which allows them to pay their game designers higher salaries.
- Education background. Although game designers enter the industry through many different paths those that garner a higher starting salary are those with a degree or certificate in game design from a college or university. Students from a design school will usually have a portfolio of games that they’ve made as school projects and some works experience from an internship. This gives the employer confidence in the prospective employee’s abilities.
While the graduates of game design programs go on to work with some of the most prominent video game designers in the world as members of development teams, most game design jobs are located throughout only a handful of locations. In the United States, 75% of all game design jobs are located in just six different states: California, Texas, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois. In Canada, while there are over 350 game studios, most game studios are located in either Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto.