J. Poolos - Careers in Online Gaming

Published in 2014 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010

Copyright 2014 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Poolos, Jamie.

Careers in online gaming/J. Poolos.1st ed.
p. cm.(Careers in computer technology)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4488-9592-2 (library binding)

1. Electronic games industryVocational guidance. 2. Computer games Vocational guidance. 3. Electronic games industry. 4. Computer games.

I. Title.

HD9993.E452P66 2014

794.8023dc23

2012040036

Manufactured in the United States of America

CPSIA Compliance Information: Batch #S13YA: For further information, contact Rosen Publishing, New York, New York, at 1-800-237-9932.

INTRODUCTION

A re you ready for a career in one of the most fun and intense industries ever? Do you love video games? Are you really good at something? (It could be almost anything.) Then a career in online gaming may be just right for you.

What exactly is online gaming? An online game is in most ways like a PC or a console game. With many online games, the actual gameplay is identical to a typical console or PC game packaged in boxes and sold in retail stores. The main difference is in the way the games are distributed. While a conventional game is played on a local machine, an online game is played over the Internet or a mobile network on a PC, console, tablet, or mobile phone.

With online games, gameplay may involve multiple players in locations all around the world competing against one another or working in teams. It also includes single-player games distributed over the Internet or via cellular networks.

There are all kinds of games that are distributed online. Some, such as massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), can support hundreds or thousands of people playing the game over the Internet simultaneously. On the other hand, in social mobile gaming, gameplay is lighthearted and targeted toward casual gamers. In their excellent book Fundamentals of Game Design, Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings say, Online gaming is a technology rather than a genre, a mechanism for connecting players together rather than a particular pattern of gameplay.

The Finnish game developer Rovio sold more than twelve million copies of the online game Angry Birds.

But does a career in online gaming make sense? We all know how important it is to choose a career in an industry that is healthy and has opportunity for growth. So how healthy is the video game industry and online gaming now, and what will it look like in the future? According to a report from DFC Intelligence, the video game industry is doing $67 billion in business annually worldwide. Thats a lot of power-ups. Its true that these days the video game industry is outperforming the overall economy. And in some cases, its outperforming other high-stakes entertainment industries, such as the Hollywood film industry. Video games are wildly popular, and online games are a big part of this popularity. This is great news for young people considering careers in the industry.

We know how popular video games are now. But what about five or ten years from now? Will consumers still want to buy games? The good news is that according to the same report, the video game industry is forecasted to grow to $82 billion globally in the next few years. Compared to almost any other industry, that is a lot of growth over a relatively short period of time, making the computer game industry one of the most secure fields available. But the largest driver in this projected growth is online gaming, accounting for $35 billion of the overall $82 billion. This figure is up from $19 billion currently. In the next few years, according to Forbes magazine, 39 percent of console game revenue will be via online distribution and online revenue sources. By all indications, a career in online gaming is a smart choice from an economic perspective.

So its a thriving industry, and online gaming is on the uptick. But where do young people fit in? There are many jobs in the computer game industry, and new jobs are being created every year. They require unique skill sets, just like any job in any other industry. But jobs in online gaming demand more than a high skill level: they require personality, the ability to have fun while working hard, and a sublime passion for making games.

CHAPTER

What Is Online Gaming?

O nline gaming originated at the dawn of computer networking. In other words, as soon as people were able to connect computers, they began to play games on them. In 1972, the personal computer had yet to be invented. Big universities utilized central mainframe computers, with terminals scattered across their campuses.

The first online game is thought to have been developed for such a computer at the University of Illinois, with players at different terminals interacting with one another. A few years later, Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) games became all the rage. These were free, text-based, real-time fantasy games in which players typed messages to one another to direct gameplay. While MUD games were popular among the computer crowd, online games didnt reach a mainstream audience until 1993, when the game Doom was launched. Doom was a graphical first-person shooter that allowed a player to join multiplayer games over a network or to set the modem to direct dial friends to play.

As graphics became richer and worlds became more complex, online games demanded faster network services to support the heavy processing loads. The developers of Quake made a significant leap in online gaming when they developed a technology that made it possible for many players to engage in a 3-D world without server slowdown. This young technology was refined in 1997 with the release of Ultima Online, and online gaming was catapulted into the mainstream. Today, popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars offer gamers some of the richest graphics and gameplay of all computer games. Firstperson shooter games such as Halo and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive bring players from all over the world together in action-packed gameplay.

Ubisofts popular Splinter Cell Blacklist has licensing tie-ins to military thriller novelist Tom Clancy. It is a first-person shooter in which multiple players compete with one another online.

MOBILE GAMING

As the massively multiplayer games began to increase in popularity, a new kind of online game was just getting started. In 1997, the Finnish company Nokia, the worlds leading mobile phone supplier, packaged a simple maze game called Snake as a standard feature on its phones. While packaging primitive games on phones became a popular practice, it wasnt until a few years later when phones began to support the Java programming language that developers and businesspeople began to see the potential of a mobile game market. Over the next ten years, development picked up, but it was slow because mobile phone manufacturers could not standardize the game-specific capabilities across the industry.