Virtual Ping Pong

Hitoshi Jones asked:


For those that don’t want to be stuck in the basic coding of a video game, never witnessing the visual interpretation of your work, the role of game designer might be a better fit for you.

While, programmers are directly attached to basic code and game engines and artists are in charge of bringing all visual aspects to life, the game designer is a mash-up of everything and one of the most important roles in the video game industry.

Your job as a video game designer will be to craft the basic concepts of the game. Often, you will need to have a degree in writing or a similar field and a great deal of experience in doing so. A lot of game designers graduated with English degrees and worked in journalism, magazine, or fiction before turning to video games. However in the video game industry, versatility is key. If you can also have experience in programming and visual design, you’ll be a lock for a great job in game design.

The job itself involves mapping out the course of the game. A game designer will often work on the basic concepts, writing up how a game will operate, how it will work, and what will happen over the course of a game. One of the most famous game designers of all time is Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario and Zelda. His schooling was in the arts and most of his job involved creating characters and game concepts, detailing intricately how he wanted his game to work.

Those details are then passed on to the programmers and artists who will start to create the engines to do what the game designer envisions and the characters to do it. A game designer is something akin to a director of a major film. Your job could include almost anything on that set, and you’d better be capable of doing it, because you are the most important person involved.

The job is probably the most fun you can have in the video game industry though. As a game designer you get the chance to pitch, develop, and write your game concepts into reality, turning those amazing ideas you had on the basement couch with your buddies into the next great video game. Your job duties are immensely varied, with everything from writing to programming to visual design and you’ll be involved in most aspects of the game’s design.

Strong leadership skills and the ability to keep track of multiple tasks will do you well in this role, and a creative streak of gold. The video game industry is always looking for the next great game designer and it could very well be you.

But if you’re looking for a position that isn’t at the top of the ladder, or that doesn’t involve so many duties there are many more to choose from. You might be a born math whiz and find programming as your niche, or a born artist, only interested in helping create the characters for video games. There are many different aspects of the video game industry for you to look into.

Andy West asked:


Many people who have a passion for playing video games dream of someday being able to make their own. If you are particularly adept with computers, this might be an entirely feasible career. However, you must keep in mind that a career in video game design is not something that happens overnight and your first job probably won’t be working on the Playstation 4. But if you have the proper dedication and talent, a rewarding career in video game design could be yours.

Most video game designers started out by making their own video games from home. Most start with creating a very basic video game and then slowly work towards more and more complex games. It is fairly unlikely that you first video game will end up making you a millionaire but the experience that you will gain from hands on experience will prove invaluable in the future. A good way to start and to get constructive criticism is to debut your video game to your video game loving friends. Make sure that they are giving their honest opinions because that is the only way you will be able to improve your skills in video game design.

There are a few things to consider when attempting to obtain a job in video game design. A plague of many designers is that many are not able to put the finishing touches on the game and therefore never have a complete product to show to potential employers. Walking into an interview with a complete video game in your hand will certainly prove to the potential employer that you are worthy to work with their company. Employers like being able to tell right away that the applicant is able to see a job from the planning stages right up to the final edition of the game.

Depending on your skill level and also your connections within the industry, you could earn a very comfortable salary from the lucrative business of video game design. If you keep improving your skills, working hard and garnering new ideas, there is no limit to the amount of success that can be obtained. This is a booming industry that keeps growing and growing each and every year. New jobs are created daily, but the number of people interested in these types of jobs is also increasing quite quickly. That means that the competition for the higher level jobs can be a little tough. But with enough dedication, you can soon be making the money you’ve always wanted by doing what you love.

On a larger scale, there are also many different types of positions when it comes to video game design. There are junior and senior programmers, tools programmers, hardware engineers or even network programmers. Depending on what area you excel, you can find the job that perfectly suits your talents. Just like any other industry, most newcomers will have to start at the bottom but if you have what it takes, you could be in charge of a fleet of programmers in only a few years. Video game design is a very complex and competitive world. If that is what you truly want to do with you life, then you should not let anything get in your way. Just remember to start off small and build your reputation. A rewarding career in video game design will follow.

Dennis Eisenhower asked:


Have you heard of the new adage “All play while at work makes Jack a great guy” - Confused! This is so because you might not have yet heard of a freelance occupation that allows you to play online games or games on consoles to test them. Yes, the occupation is one of a Video Game Tester. Imagine being allowed to test new games, often the full versions, and be paid for it.

The requirements of a video games tester job will be to have a lot of experience in the gaming field and will need to you to play new games, usually the beta version or the pre release games to check it for bugs or glitches. Interesting, is it not?

Let us now learn about how to become a game tester. To become a game tester, one needs to have lot of gaming experience and also good communication skills. One thing that you need to remember is that becoming a video game tester is not an easy task. One way to go is to try and check through your contacts to see if there is anyone in gaming field into programming who can help you out.

Otherwise, you will have to look out for opportunities on the internet. You can even post profiles on various sites where companies will look out for people to become video game tester. This profile should contain whatever relevant experience and aptitude you possess to qualify as a good video game tester and should be regularly updated to add in every new achievement.

Alternatively, you can also get a membership to a site such as Gamer Testing Ground that has been making its presence felt ever since it was started in 2004. According to various Gamer testing ground reviews, this site has been providing efficient guidelines to its members through a methodical step-by-step guide to help them become thoroughly equipped to qualify as a video game tester and improve their chances of getting good opportunities to become a game tester.

But, is the role of a video game tester a lucrative option? It is quite difficult for a person without much experience to earn a handsome sum but people with experience can earn a handful and convert this mode of work (or should we say play) to become a full fledged job. Although many people take up this as a part time option, some even end up working full time. A video game tester salary can range anywhere from $6/ hour to about $80/ hour.

Now, let us look at the downside to being a video game tester. First and foremost, it is quite difficult for a novice with no experience to land up with jobs in this field. Many people therefore might opt to just take up whatever lands in their plate and then try to grow from there. But, once they get the necessary experience they can be selective about the kind of testing jobs they take up and choose only the ones they enjoy playing.

Although it is quite common to think that people will enjoy playing new and unreleased games, it is actually quite difficult to do so as they not only have to play the game, they should be on the lookout for bugs and glitches in the game. For this reason, they might need to play a particular level over and over again which might not be very exciting.

But, gaming is not for everyone and there is a special class of people who are total addicts and do not mind playing a game over and over again. Also, the role of a video game tester needs you to be very patient and pay thorough attention to detail.

All in all, taking up video game tester jobs is an attractive option that one can look out for as a good freelance option and can even be turned into a full time job if you have the flair and the aptitude to go the entire way.

Tony Jacowski asked:


Companies are interested in hiring those people who have a natural instinct of what makes a game good or bad, someone who knows how to design good games, a person who is passionate about playing video games. Secondly, while designing, one comes across many problems so they need someone with good problem solving skills. Last but not the least, companies need a person who can do things efficiently in a very short span of time, because of the fast paced competition in this industry.

Training Requirements

Not everyone can become a video game designer. It requires very specific training from a video game designing school. Many degrees are available online.

Colleges and universities offer degree programs and technical training in video games designing. These programs help you to develop various levels in the game from the beginning till the final stages. Technical training includes drawing, characterization, editing, interactive media and game design which strengthens your foundation for video game design.

Working Environment

Working as a video game designer involves working with a team of people from different fields who coordinate different aspects of the game to create a new video game. If you are interested in making a career in this industry you could choose from a wide range of positions. A storyboard or character artist works out the skeleton with sketches and paintings of the different elements of the game. For this you need advanced technical training in graphic design and computer animation, which helps you to put your ideas through.

Animators and character artist produce the characters of the game and give it a real look and feel with the help of 3D programs. Creating a new game is a long process and designing is one of the major stages. The team is made up of a lead designer and other level designers. It is the responsibility of the level designers to create the right environment at different levels of the game for the player. They perceive the design team’s vision of the game and create the necessary impact. They have to make the game exciting and engrossing. As the levels change, environment designers give the game a three dimensional quality. Texture artists give the flesh and skin to the various elements of the game. They see to it that the textures are convincingly fitted to their characters.

Programmers make the video game engine run. C++ is the preferred programming language. This is an essential part of video games. AI is helpful in creating different elements of the game. Interface designers create menus heads up display in the game. Sound and audio experts create the required dramatic sound effects of the game and set the right mood. Professional testers deal with bugs and other related problems.

With the help of specialized training in advanced graphic design and your passion for video games you will be able to bring your video game characters to life and use your conceptual skills to bring out the concept envisioned. This will prove to be a valued asset for creating new video games and give you the required cutting edge to succeed in this competitive industry.

Donald Mitchell asked:


Dr. Johji Satoh was a studious boy while growing up in Japan, but he took some time to enjoy table tennis. In Japan preparing for college is taken very seriously, and there is little time for play. Table tennis is a good choice for relaxation because you can compress a lot of activity chasing a ball into a short amount of time and smashing a table-tennis ball can be very satisfying after a long period of studying.

When you play table tennis, you quickly learn to adapt your game to the conditions in which you play. If there’s not much room around the table, you have to be prepared to lunge across the table rather than fall back or sideways to gain time to respond to an opponent’s shot.

If the ceiling is low, you have to get to the ball before it caroms crazily off that obstacle. If the table has quirky spots that affect how the ball bounces, you plan your ready position and shots to take those potential bounces into account.

In spite of his hard work, Dr. Satoh did not do very well in school but was accepted at Keio University in Tokyo where he studied economics and management. After college, he worked for a boutique stock brokerage firm in Tokyo where he learned more about a topic that had been introduced during his college studies: the role of financial options and futures to buy and sell at predetermined prices. His work brought him to the United States, and he became fascinated by the lectures he attended with American economic and finance professors.

Taking the option to learn more English, Dr. Satoh studied at the ESL Institute of Tulane University. Once he had improved his language skills, he took an MBA degree from New Hampshire College (now Southern New Hampshire University) Graduate School of Business. For one of his courses he wrote a term paper on a regression model of financial option pricing, which encouraged him to study more about various types of options.

Returning to Japan, Dr. Satoh encountered the great economic depression in that country. Jobs in financial services were hard to find, and he trained to become a management consultant. From this work, Dr. Satoh realized that he needed more knowledge about management and business options to help his clients. By now, he had become fascinated with a new concept, real options, in which the concepts of financial options are transformed into management tools for creating better business results.

The point in table tennis is to be prepared for the ball’s movement as quickly and exactly as possible. As you know, the ball seems to bounce randomly, but the players must move to intercept the direction of a shot based on the shot angle, spin, speed, and where the ball lands while allowing for randomness. In table tennis terms, real options might be considered as helping players anticipate where the ball is coming next: The point for real options is to anticipate future cash flows for business projects to realize better business results. Real options are designed to take out most of the randomness.

In a business context, real options may be thought of as valuable decision-making tools through exacter anticipation of the cash flow of projects with uncertain value changes such as oil exploration and development of new drugs. It is difficult to predict the future cash flows of a drug development project because it has various risks such as efficacy, side effects, rising material prices, and the market movement.

If a rival company takes a lead in developing a similar drug product, the project might be discontinued after much wasted expense. So the management team must watch the project and its market environment carefully, calculating the cash flow from the project at each development stage, which is the stochastic process. In that process, the random movement of cash flow, like the seemingly random ball movement in table tennis, is presumed.

Because of his fascination with real options and his sense that they were poorly developed by most academics and consultants, Dr. Satoh decided he wanted to become a professor of management in a university, write books about real options, and provide consulting services that would add to the practical applications of this concept.

Where could Dr. Satoh gain the opportunity to do such cutting edge work in real options while that subject was barely developed in most universities? Dr. Satoh cast his research net wide and discovered Rushmore University, where he could do his real options work under the supervision of professors who were well-known authorities in finance and business model innovation. The university also offered great flexibility in designing his course of study.

Working on real options at Rushmore, Dr. Satoh developed the mathematics to correct for the assumption of randomness in business conditions that is incorporated into financial options. Why did he do this?

Like the ball movement in table tennis, results in the business world are not always random. He also wrote papers defining major opportunities to operate conventional businesses more successfully by employing business models built around new types of real options that he conceived.

Since graduating with his Ph.D., Dr. Satoh has developed a real option application model applied for a patent that built on his university work to help publicize and increase understanding of how real options can be used to create superior business models. In addition, he founded AlphaPoint Consulting, LLC., an online consulting firm, to provide services in developing business skills and real options based on his Rushmore papers. Through the consulting firm, he also offers a free online business school where people can learn about business methods including real options.

What’s next? Dr. Satoh sees his progress to date as developing his Ph.D. brain so that he can create innovative solutions to difficult business problems with uncertain value changes that have frustrated people for a long time.

Having benefited from developing his thinking, he wants to do more of the same. He continues his studious ways, teaching himself and others to advance this important frontier of business knowledge and practice, creating superior business models by employing real options.

You never know what you can learn to do until you try. Where do you need to stretch your reach to keep an opportunity from passing you by?

Sean Saunders asked:


Yes, its 100% true, You can get paid to test video games. But, the questions is: do you need a degree? are there special qualifications? Or, do you need to meet any other certain guidelines in order to achieve this? In this article, I will answer all these questions and more so that you can get an idea of who has the best chances of becoming a video game tester.

First of all, you do not need a degree from college or any special training to become a video game tester. While you can likely benefit from having a degree, developing contacts and such, it is not required. And in the absence of a degree, large amounts of ambition and persistence must take its place. Either that or an insider who can show you the ropes.

The “insider approach” can either be done by befriending somebody in the gaming industry, preferably a well known tester, or by buying an in-depth book or guide on how to become a video game tester.

Basically, there are two easy-to-meet requirements that need to be met in order for video game developers and programmers to be interested in hiring you. The first: you must have a high level of skill & experience when it comes to playing video games and you have to have an excellent attention to detail. Remember, you’re job is to test games thoroughly; it’s not to try to beat them quickly. As a video game tester, you’ll be looking for glitches, problematic issues, and other factors that detract from the overall gameplay.

The second requirement step is being able to document glitches and bugs properly. You have to make it very simple for the developer/programmer to understand what is happening during the glitch. This way, when it comes time to fix the problem, they won’t have trouble locating it.

If you have a good attention for detail, and can document bugs/glitches properly and clearly, then you’re exactly what many companies are looking for in a video game tester.

If you’re unsure about your abilities, I urge you to test your abilities by playing more video games. However, don’t just play it for fun. I want you to play it like a video game tester would. Expand the horizon of your vision so that you notice all of the elements on the screen as you play the game. This may feel somewhat different than you normally play, but it is necessary to get the practice you need.

Once you have relaxed and have become “one” with the screen, be aware of all the things that are going on on-screen. See how things relate to each other and how one thing can cause another thing to happen. If you spot something peculiar, write it down and document it asap. Write down what happened to cause that abnormality and explain what you deem as problematic.

If you have no problem with these requirements, then you should definitely consider becoming a paid video game tester.

Sean Saunders asked:


If you’re aspiring to be a professional game tester and wish to land video game tester jobs, then there is no better time to get started than the present. More & more game developers are springing to life every year — therefore, a whole lot more testing positions and jobs are regularly opening up to game testers. With that being said, the market is ripe for any and every new tester to build up his/her reputation and gain the title of “professional video game tester”.

To get started on your path of video game testing success, follow the 3 steps below.

Step 1: Develop Contacts, Make Friends, Build Connections

Looking in the classified ads section of your newspaper isn’t going to help you find video game tester jobs. It would be extremely convenient if that were the case, but it isn’t; so don’t get your hopes up. Rather than waiting around and hoping a developer contacts you out of the blue for a testing job (fat chance), you have to get yourself out there and go to them.

Anyone you come in contact with in the video game industry could be a valuable resource for you. He/she might be that vital contact that “could” put in the good word for you when it comes to new testing jobs. That being said, be sure to handle yourself professionally with every person you come in contact with. By approaching paid video game testing as a job and not just some “weekend hobby”, developing reliable contacts won’t be a problem.

Step 2: Be Serious, Not Goofy

First and foremost, game testing is a job — it’s not play time. In light of that fact, take your assignments seriously and don’t slack off. When you get your first video game tester job — which is quite likely so long as you have a PC or next-gen console — do everything the company asks and more. By ensuring that your work is top-notch stuff, not only will you impress the developer but you’ll increase your chances of getting additional games to test from that company; plus, you’ll acquire another great reference for other game developers.

An important thing to remember when testing video games is to take clear, legible notes. The easier your reports are to read and understand, the easier & quicker it is for programmers to find and fix the game’s problems. This may not seem like a big deal, but it really is; as faster game fixes lead to easily met deadlines for game developers.

Don’t forget to send in your bug/glitch reports on time! If you’re late with your reports, it screams “unreliable game tester”; so get them in on time, every time.

Step 3: Don’t Stop, Keep Going!

Seeing that first video game testing paycheck in your hand may cause you to bloom with happiness and pride, but don’t let those feelings go to your head. Do your little celebration and then get right back out there and do what you’ve been doing; making contacts, applying for jobs, and completing testing assignments. The more video game tester jobs you complete, the more likely you are to land better, higher paying assignments in the future.