Video Game Designer/Developer
Job Duties
As a video game designer, There are many tasks and responsibilities one must accept in order to create engaging and fun gameplay for users. Designers must regularly fix, balance, and adjust the gameplay and its subparts in order to ensure for a better experience. They must be creative enough to fabricate and design core games features such as story lines and item mechanics in order to push the experience to the next level. Designers must also be willing to receive feedback and be able to then implement the feedback into the game experience. These tasks are just some of what video game designers must do to be successful.
Skills required
In order to perform work or develop games, videos game designers need to be very comfortable working with technology. They must be comfortable and fluent in many types of code languages C++, C#, and JavaScript. Knowing many of these languages is key as designers will be working on debugging, adding to, and adjusting the code of games. Videogame designers must also be comfortable working for design and graphics software. This is important as they will be required to create blueprints and possible design ideas for graphics within the game. Excluding technology, designers may also need to have an understanding of phycology as they may need to account for the emotions, behaviors, and traits of a characters. They must have a grasp on how a character may speak or react depending on their background.
Education required
Most positions of this job require a bachelor's degree though, a very small percentage do not.
Salary
Median wages for a Video Game Designer is $40.02 per hour or about $83,240 per year.
Reflection
The Video Game Designer career provides those who pursue it a stable and high income. The average income for this job is $83,240 and can reach all the way up to $172,000. The job develops a person's character and mind through its process, as it requires collaboration and creativity. However, the job is highly demanding and challenging as it requires one to have expertise in both technical fields and artistic fields. In addition, the job is strictly indoors and requires those interested to sit and spend time indoors for long hours at a time. Personally this job seems quite intriguing and attractive to me. Although I am not the most artistically creative person nor do I like the long hours of inactivity, I do love video games. I have a strong passion for them and due to that I feel that this career may be something I want to pursue in the future. I feel that I am a technical person and that I enjoy subjects within the CS field such as programming which may further suggest why I feel an attraction. Personally, I feel that if I were to truly pursue this career, I would be successful as I am truly passionate about the subjects this job encompasses. The creativity aspect may cause some struggles but that is a skill that can be developed through the job. Overall I think this job is a good match up for me.
Computer Network Architects
Job Duties
Create or suggest network security measures like firewalls, security audits of the network, or automated security probes.
Develop Plans for disaster recovery
To uncover issues, pinpoint ineffective use of computer resources, or undertake capacity planning, monitor and evaluate network performance and reports on data intake or output.
Work with associated network designers to coordinate network or design projects.
Skills required
Network architects must know design and modelling as the job requires the drawing of systems and the modelling of networks.
Cybersecurity skills are another key skills to becoming a successful network engineer. Network engineers will often have to develop firewalls and security audits
Networks Architects must be able to think critically as the job often comes with task that may require obscure alternate solutions.
Education and experience
At least a 4 year bachelors degree in computer and information technology or other related fields
Salary
Median annual salary is $126,000
Reflection
Being a network architect pays a very high amount at a median salary of $126,000 a year. The work shifts for the job are not incredibly bad, being the standard 9-5 8 hours shifts. However, accepting this job mean accepting the negatives that come with it. Being a network architect takes high amounts of dedication and grit as employees generally must go through several years of on job training. Additionally, like many IT/Computer science careers, this job forces people to live a more stationary/non active lifestyle, with over half of the people in this career path reporting that they sit for extended periods of time. Furthermore, this job requires expertise in many fields of computer science which may be a challenge to those not dedicated enough. Personally, I feel that this job would be a good fit for me. I personally enjoy computer science and even though this particular area is not extremely appealing to me, I still like it. As mentioned above, I enjoy much more creative and graphic/gameplay development as opposed to a more technical job. Therefore, I feel that I may lose some passion for my work, but I still like the pay and I am relatively interested in fields encompassed by the job such as cyber security. I think that if i were to pursue this career, that I would succeed. This job is more requires more critical thinking to solve problems, which I find myself decent at.