Critical skills for game developers: an analysis of skills sought by industry

ABSTRACT

With electronic gaming on the rise, several major universities involved in game development research have implemented curricula specifically for future game developers. Gaming curricula are now being offered in smaller universities, colleges, and other educational institutions, with other departments wondering if they should follow suit and what content should be covered. For this quantitative research, the author performed a content analysis on posted job advertisements for game developer positions, to determine qualities the gaming industry desires when seeking game developer employees,. A categorization of qualities was performed after reviewing each job ad and five categories for qualifications were developed: Experience, Education, Interpersonal & Personal Abilities, Technical Skills, and Supporting Knowledge and a frequency distribution of the qualities in each ad was performed. The results show that there are education and experience levels, skills, abilities, and knowledge that are clearly sought by industry and certain qualities are sought with more frequency than others.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Computers in other domains

    • Personal computers and PC applications

      • Computer games

• Information systems

  • Information systems applications

    • Multimedia information systems

      • Massively multiplayer online games

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing education

      • Model curricula

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software development techniques

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Virtual worlds software

        • Interactive games