with STEM™ CAREERS JOB KIT
Game Designer+ Developer
Insights, information and advice on cool careers in the world of gaming
Study animation, game design and software technologies at QUT to develop real game solutions for an industry client.
Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments
More than fun and games
Gaming tech is so much more than just entertainment, with applications in fields ranging from medicine to defence
Nineteen million Australians play games. Globally, over a billion hours are played every day. We use games to teach, heal, simulate, and communicate. From Minecraft in the classroom to real-time rendering in virtual film production, game technologies are shaping how we interact with the world and how the world interacts with us.
That is the context in which we teach at QUT.
Our Games and Interactive Environments degree is built for students who want to create, not just consume. From the first semester, students work in teams to design, prototype, and test ideas. They respond to real briefs from industry and government partners. The goal is not just to learn tools; it is also to apply them effectively. It is to build with purpose.
Students at QUT learn important skills that make game education effective. They work together in multidisciplinary teams, learn how to give and receive helpful feedback, manage projects under pressure, and adjust to changing goals. Game development helps them to think creatively, understand how systems work, and follow steps to get things done. These skills can be used in many jobs, especially when developing complex technology that people interact with.
dr Cody Phillips Senior Lecturer
My colleagues and I stay connected with local studios like Gameloft, PlaySide, and MAXART to make sure our course meets the evolving needs of the sector. Our graduates have worked on global phenomenons like
Our Games and Environments degree is built for students who want to create, not just consume.”
Fortnite, international hits like Satisfactory, and award-winning Australian games like Cult of the Lamb. Now is an ideal time to enter the field. The Digital Games Tax Offset (DGTO) supports local digital game companies by providing a 30% refundable tax offset, making it one of the most generous schemes of its kind in the world. It is fuelling local jobs, global investment, and a new generation of interactive creators.
As VR, AR, and generative AI become part of daily life, the demand for people who understand interactive systems will only grow.
Games are no longer on the edge of culture. They are at the centre of it.
Dr Cody Phillips, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science (Digital Games, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality) at QUT
Careers with consoles
Controllers at the ready…
If you’re streaming Free Guy on Disney+ and have 10,000 hours on Steam, this page is for you! You totally appreciate the design and development of gaming, plus all the layers of code it takes to simulate worlds and characters for your playing pleasure. Want to make a career out of it and join the industry that’s worth $4 billion dollars in Australia alone? Here are some hot facts you need to know. We’ll call it homework for gamers. Pippa Duffy
Skills list
Scoping
Teamwork
Creative thinking
Time management
Problem-solving
Eye for detail
Critical reasoning
Imagination
Digital dynamos
Bookmark these studios for your future job searching…
• Gameloft
• Nintendo
• Epic Games
• Activision Blizzard
• Animal Logic
• Riot Games
Edu-tainment is having a moment
Sure it’s all fun and games (geddit?!) but gaming is playing a huge role in other sectors, too.
From online safety for the 170,000 new users (i.e. kids) clicking on the internet each day, to integration in health, government, security and environmental organisations, design and development in the digital space goes way beyond an online multiplayer session.
• Schools use gaming platforms such as Studyladder and Reading Eggs to help students with their learning.
• Duolingo is reducing the language barrier for 120 million users across 19 dialects.
• The humble Solitaire is a game of patience and a brain exercise for people with Alzheimer’s disease.
• CSIRO’s Human Centric Security Team have integrated Cyber Circuit, an ‘old-school’ style game to test and increase cyber security knowledge for employers.
• The United Nations Environment Programme has teamed up with big games like Angry Birds 2 to incorporate things such as climate change into their gaming options.
Translation station
Like many industries, the gaming world has its own lingo. Take note of this list of helpful words and their meanings — but remember, you’ll also learn on the job, so you don’t need to be an expert to enrol!
Milestone: Each step in the development process is a milestone.
Bugs: Bugs in the gaming world infiltrate programming and create problems that need to be solved by QA testers so we, the people, can play without hitting any probs.
Dev: Literally developer, just abbreviated.
Noob: This is an inexperienced player in a gaming environment. Designers and developers work hard to ensure user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are premium, by considering IxD (interactive design; see next point) at every turn. So noobs don’t stay noobs for long!
IxD: Interactive design is how designers switch from their initial idea and creative vision to thinking about how the user will play their game.
Alpha and Beta: Major stages in gaming design. Alpha refers to the first build of a game, when it’s ready for testing. Beta is when it gets to the almost-ready- for-the-public stage and all the bugs are (hopefully) fixed.
Ping: The location of a mark within a gaming simulated world.
VC: Voice chat. Very important in online gaming, so making this seamless in development is a no-brainer.
Welcome to the world of Edu-tainment!
Aisha Darmansjah is a fan of 2D design, old-school games that educate and entertain, her cat Susu and shaking up study practice. Loving both STEM and humanities, Aisha completed a double degree at QUT — the same uni her parents graduated from (“They’re both arts people”) and where she now works as a research assistant while completing her Honours in IT.
“I did a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments,” Aisha says. “But I’m continuing on with the game side of things for my Honours.”
IT wasn’t always the path she thought she’d go down — originally, Aisha had dreams of becoming an archaeologist. “I’ve always had an interest in the connections between humanities and STEM, which led me to look into pursuing archaeology. However, the uni open days opened my eyes to the lack of jobs in this field in Australia. So, instead, I turned to another meeting of disciplines I enjoyed — games.”
It was playing one such game that really caught Aisha’s attention and she started asking the big questions like, “Why did they design that? What was
their thinking putting that in this game?”.
With a double degree in science and games, animator Aisha Darmansjah is combining her love of the natural world and tech
“I was playing Pokémon Emerald and, upon arriving in Mossdeep City, I was shocked to notice mangroves growing there,” she says. “Growing up near the coast, mangroves were a common occurrence for me in real life, but it was at this point I realised I’d never seen them in a game before. It made me want to know why that was. And so I started paving the way that would eventually lead me to game development. Being a natural sciences nerd, I’m very interested in environments and how they can be represented in games to impart experiences on the player.”
Thanks to the opportunity at QUT to combine her love of tech and the natural world, along with the support of her teachers, Aisha was able to double up on her degree and achieve both. “I’m an animator so I do a lot of asset creation, but it means I get to flex my artistic muscles and my science-y thinking muscles, too,” she says.
Aisha also rates the relationships you get to form at QUT by working in smaller cohorts. In her project work, she’s been able to collaborate and form friendships with programmers and game developers who she needs to make her animations come to life. Her ultimate bring-to-life job? “To study the mechanisms that make edu-tainment games work and apply that knowledge to get people thinking about the world around them.” — Pippa Duffy, 2020
I got to flex my artistic muscles and my science-y thinking muscles, too.”
aisha darmansjah animator
A day in the life of a… QA TESTER
Miles Hatcliff has been obsessed with gaming since he got his very first Xbox as a kid. The fact he now gets paid to do what he loves is a bonus!
This is what a typical day for Miles looks like…
7:30am
Wake up and get ready for work.
8am
Catch public transport to the office in the city.
8:45am
Arrive in the office and head up to the roof to make a coffee and have a bite to eat.
9am
Begin the workday at my desk. Check emails and our work chat (Mattermost) messages. Install the latest build of the game for testing later.
9:15am
QA stand-up meeting. Very brief catch-up on what we did yesterday, what we will be doing today and whether anything is blocking us.
9:30am
Design stand-up meeting. Sit in on the design team’s stand-up meeting and take notes.
9:45am
Begin testing the (latest) game we’re working on. Log any issues to project-tracking software Jira. If anything insightful came out of the morning meetings, I might have something specific I want to test.
1pm
As a QA (quality assurance) tester, Miles Hatcliff is living his dream, working in games development at Gameloft. Having already travelled the world with his QUT student team to compete in the Global VR Hackathon in China, as well as publishing award-nominated game Isle of Ewe on Steam store, Miles soaked up all the opportunities and industry connections along the way to score a job before he even graduated. Now, with his Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments, with a major in Games Design and a minor in 3D Animation and Marketing, Miles hopes to eventually move into a 3D artist role and maybe one day open his own studio. Pippa Duffy, 2020
2pm
Lunch time. We normally walk down to a Japanese place near the office and get sushi. Other times, we do a team lunch.
1:30pm
Check to see if there is a new build and re-download it. Review issues marked by devs as completed. This is to check that fixes that happened have worked.
I hope to one day open my own games studio.”
Investigate any issues that a developer saw. Gather more information and log it to Jira.
3pm
Quick tea break.
3:10pm
Run a test plan to check for any unexpected behaviour. Log any issues found to Jira and mark as “pass” or “fail” on spreadsheet.
6:15pm
Arrive home. Make and eat dinner. Chat to my partner about our days.
8pm
Play some video games or do a little portfolio work before going to sleep around 10pm.
miles hatcliff qa tester
Get the job!
Pay grade?
You can expect to pocket this kinda cash when employment calls…
Study corner
Tertiary education is your key to the gaming and creative computer sciences faculties. Where gaming was once a fun thing to do on weekends, career options are now only as limited as your imagination. QUT offers cool courses like eSports and double degrees with everything from business to science, IT and marketing. Hit up these courses on Open Day to find your fit!
Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments: major in animation, game design and software tech
Bachelor of Business / Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments: hone your sales skills once you’re done designing your game
Bachelor of Creative Industries: combine with IT or data science degrees for all-round know-how
Diploma in eSports: kickstart your long-term gaming studies or flex your skills and specialise in esports with this epic diploma
Bachelor of Design (Interaction Design): awesome on its own or combine with engineering for a more product-development-specific pathway
Internships are an excellent way to amp up your skills while still at uni and get a taste for the career vibes IRL. Hit a Google search on these companies to score an opportunity.
Wargaming Sydney
Game Designer: $125K–$130K
Game Developer: $105K–$110K
Animator: $80K–$85K
Software Developer: $85K–$105K
User Experience and Interface Designer: $95K–$115K*
*Source: salaries according to seek.com.au
Find your niche
There are so many characters — er, we mean roles — in the world of gaming! Find your match!
Designer: You’re creative and can develop visual ideas that will translate to a digital environment.
Animator: You have the skills to take visual cues and turn still images into moving parts on a screen.
Sound designer: You have an ear for motion. You create the game theme song, the sound bites/character voices and the “foley” — think footsteps, crashes, cheering, background noise — in-game.
Programmer: You speak computer and can write code to enable the tech to put the creative aspects of a game in the right sequence.
Developer: Your job is to take the game from concept and pieces of code to a playable/ interactive masterpiece.
Marketer: You know how to tap into the buyer’s thinking and generate interest to make your product — i.e. game! — financially viable. Sell. Sell. Sell.