Game Developer
You make the games: the characters, the levels, and the way it feels to play. Nobody has to hire you to start either, one person can build and put out a small game now, and that is how most people get in.
Related: Software Engineer, Designer, Founder
The day in the life
jumper · the toy
// player: one square
onPress(SPACE, () => {
player.vy = JUMP // not tuned yet
})
// no goal, no fail, no restarta square that jumps, nothing else yet
You've got a bare square that jumps, and your job is making that jump feel so good people hit restart. What one thing are you chasing?
Try a day as a game developer
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Games are more popular than ever, but the companies that make them are hiring fewer people than ever. People with the very same skills get paid more building things that are not games.
Jobs at games companies are hard to come by. You can also build your own game and sell it yourself, but most games people make alone earn very little.
What you’d do all day
On a studio team you usually own one narrow slice of a big game (one system, one tool), not the whole vision, and a lot of the day is debugging and iterating. The tools help with the repetitive code and rough art, but the part that matters most is taste for what’s fun: the systems and game-feel judgment no tool can supply.
- Coding & implementation50%
- Debugging & testing20%
- Design & systems decisions10%
- Meetings & coordination10%
- Tools, builds & polish10%
Half the day is writing the code for one part of the game that somebody else already decided on, and a fifth is working out why it broke.
Making games splits into a few very different roles, even on the same team.
- Gameplay & systemsbuilding the rules and mechanics that make a game fun to play.
- Graphics & enginebuilding the technology that renders everything else on screen.
- Toolsbuilding the software other developers on the team use to make the game.
- Indiedoing most of the above yourself, on a small team with no studio behind you.
A typical early-career day
- 10:00Team check-in
Quick standup: what you shipped, what you’re on, what’s blocked. Then back to your piece.
- 10:30Build your piece
Work on the one system or tool you own, a small slice of a much bigger game.
- 1:00Debug & test
Hunt down why something broke and make it hold up. This is a big chunk of most days.
- 3:00Playtest & iterate
Play it, feel what’s off, tune it. "Is it fun yet?" is the question you keep asking.
- 4:30The repetitive parts, handled
The repetitive code and rough assets get handled fast; the calls about what’s fun are still yours.
This is a day on a studio team. Crunch, meaning long nights and weekends near a deadline, is the defining hazard of the work and a real one.
The outlook
Where it’s going
Two opposite things are happening: the games market itself is large and growing again, with healthy revenue and player numbers, but the jobs went the other way. The industry just had the worst layoffs in its history (around 25,000+ in 2023-24 and still going) as studios correct from over-hiring and consolidate, with AI adding pressure on top.
Right now
It’s a tough time to land a first studio job, especially at big studios: entry roles are scarce and laid-off veterans are competing for them. But the games market is healthy, so the dream is crowded, not dead: the accessible way in is making and publishing your own games, where there’s no gatekeeper to get past.
Would you like it?
Worth a look if you love figuring out what makes a game fun and you’d build one whether or not a studio hired you.
Tap any that sound like you.
In practice, people realize it’s their thing when…
…and it probably isn’t their thing when
How people get in
- 4
- Years it takes on average
- $48K
- Average cost
- 19,112
- Games that came out last year
Every way in
A computer science degree
About 6 in 10
Four years · About $48K for the degree
Teach yourself and finish a game
About 3 in 10
However long the game takes · Your own time
A school built around games costs more, not less: DigiPen, the most game specific one in the country, runs to $69,920 a year once living costs are in.
The jam and the degree are not competing. One is a weekend and the other is four years, and the people hiring look at what came out of either.
How your first job gets decided
Nobody is holding a door shut. 19,112 games went on sale on Steam last year and 9,327 of them got fewer than ten reviews, so the hard part is not being let in, it is being played.
What employers check
- Something you finished that they can play. A game made over one weekend, a project of your own, or a summer spent at a studio all beat the degrees.
- For coding jobs it is both. A computer science degree carries more weight there than a games degree does, and you still have to show something you built with it.
- Nobody will meet you in person. Hiring here happens entirely over video now.
Studios hire for art, code or design, and which of the three you turn up with decides which door opens. On the art and design side, finished work can stand in for a degree completely.
- There is no government job title for making games, so no official pay figure for it exists.
- There are more people who want the beginner jobs than there are beginner jobs.
- The way in nobody expects is testing. Starting as a tester and working up is one of the most common ways people get in.
When to apply
The one date worth putting somewhere is free and lands in the school holidays.
- November 1Places that want to host a Global Game Jam start signing up.
- December 1You can sign up to jam. It costs nothing, and 12 to 17 year olds go through GGJ Next, which runs at the same time as the adult one.
- January 25 to 31, 2027The Global Game Jam runs everywhere at once. You get a theme, and a weekend to make something out of it.
- March 1 to 5, 2027The game industry meets in San Francisco. The jam sends some of its own people there on a scholarship.
How long it takes
The degree takes four years. Nothing else here has a length, and the people who hire say a game you finished counts for more than the degree does.
A four year degree is a lot to spend on finding out whether the part you love is making games or playing them. Deciding why a level is not fun yet takes an afternoon, and that is the job.
Try making something feel funMake a Tiny Game That Actually Feels Good
Make one tiny game that feels good to play: pick a single thing the player does over and over, build it, then do the real work of adjusting it until that one move feels right. Knowing whether something is fun yet, and fixing it until it is, is the whole job, and the best first test of whether this is your kind of work.
Where these numbers come from
Written by the Sidequest team, from the sources below.
- Pay: No dedicated BLS code; closest are Software Developers and Special Effects Artists & Animators (May 2024); PayScale / Glassdoor / ZipRecruiter game-dev bands (2025-26).
- The outlook: GDC 2026 State of the Game Industry; game-industry layoff trackers (2022-26); Newzoo market-growth (2025). Dated June 2026.
- Getting in: How many people take each route is our own estimate, rounded. O*NET OnLine 15-1255.01 Video Game Designers, site updated August 25 2026, read September 2026, for Job Zone Four and the education answers of 55, 15 and 10 in every 100; that occupation publishes no pay or employment figures of its own and borrows them from 15-1255.00 Web and Digital Interface Designers, which is mostly web design work, so no wage figure is carried here. O*NET OnLine 15-1252.00 Software Developers and 27-1014.00 Special Effects Artists and Animators, both read September 2026: neither lists a single game title among its own job titles, which is what the no code finding rests on. Nour, Wells and Steinkuehler, Hireability Gaps and Frictions Between University Game Programs and Industry Hires, International Game Developers Association with the University of California Irvine, 2023, full report read September 2026, for the 21 recruiters at 20 companies, the quoted line about jams and side projects beating degrees, the computer science point on programmer hiring, and every participant hiring remotely. SteamDB figures as reported by TechSpot, December 14 2025 and cross checked against three other outlets, read September 2026, for the 19,112 games released in 2025 and the 9,327 with fewer than ten reviews. Global Game Jam, its own participation and dates pages read September 2026 through Internet Archive snapshots dated August 31 2025 and September 1 2026 because the live domain blocks every direct read, for GGJ Next covering ages 12 to 17, the January 25 to 31 2027 jam, the November 1 2026 site sign ups and the December 1 2026 jammer sign ups. Game Developers Conference, gdconf.com, read September 2026, for March 1 to 5 2027 in San Francisco; the jam runs a scholarship to that conference, which is reported rather than read on the jam own pages, so no number is attached to it. DigiPen Institute of Technology, tuition and cost page, read September 2026, for the $69,920 a year with living costs at 2026-27 prices. College Board, Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, public four year in state tuition and fees of $11,950 a year, for the four year total. Dated September 2026.