Video Game Degrees are Serious Business

The Kansas City Star recently reviewed the job market for games and gamers, during the course of which the reporter interviewed Entertainment Software Association spokesman Rich Taylor, who made an interesting point: "A generation that has grown up playing video games is entering college??"Schools are responding to that."

Mr. Taylor backed up his perspective with some statistics. This year there are 254 colleges and universities offering a video game programming degree, a figure that is up 27% from 2008. In fact, there are several education options that are applicable to positions in the video game profession, many of which have been available for years.

College graduates from animation schools have been seeking entry level opportunities with video game companies for years. Many professionals who have obtained multimedia degrees found their way to the gaming industry when advertising agencies began to lose clients as the recession took hold. Regardless of the economy, according to Taylor, "In the last four years, software sales have quadrupled." Video games soared with the rest of the software sectors, to the point where games and consoles are now a $22 billion business.

Schools that began to see a drop-off in interest for traditional information technology programs started to insert video game development and design courses into the catalogue. The response to those programs has resulted in hundreds of schools developing video game degree options.

One community college in Missouri offers an associate's degree in video game development. Many of those graduates continue on to obtain a bachelor's degree in computer science, which is going to provide a lot of career options if an opportunity in the game industry does not arise. While Taylor notes that 80,000 people are employed in the video game industry today, competition for jobs remains keen according to the Labor Department and other sources that monitor the job market. It is also worth noting that work in the game industry is primarily a software development job, which requires hours of programming and code writing in order to create that image or scene that you or a game producer has in mind.

Nevertheless, once again according to the industry spokesman, 68% of all people play some sort of video game and 95% of all young people are gamers as well. It's an industry that may have matured in recent years, but one for which growth is going to continue.