The gaming industry is growing rapidly, and there are plenty of opportunities for Gaming Engineers. This article will discuss these opportunities and help you understand the opportunities available in the gaming industry. Read this article to learn more about the opportunities in gaming!
It’s hard to find an industry growing more reliably than gaming. Per an analysis at WeForum, the gaming industry is likely worth about $235.7 billion in 2022, up from just $120.4 billion in 2017. That’s astronomical growth, yet it’s merely part of what’s expected over 10 years. By 2026, it’s expected that the industry will be worth $321.1 billion.
Look through our own past articles on gaming, and you’ll note that we’ve discussed things like how to become a gaming engineer or what a gaming engineer ultimately does. Essentially, people in these professions create the software and code behind games. They may not always create the games’ concepts, but they build the visuals, establish the mechanics, and bring the games to life.
Having discussed these roles in the past, in this post, we want to look at where aspiring gaming engineers might find opportunities. So, with some $80-plus billion in industry growth expected over the next four years, where specifically might engineers look for work? The following are likely to be some of the busiest corners of the gaming world.
Social & Casual Games
Social and casual gaming is one of the opportunities for gaming engineers. Per the analysis above at WeForum, the vast majority of the anticipated growth in gaming is expected to occur in the “Social and Casual” category.
Granted, this is a sweeping category that ropes in numerous gaming genres across platforms; a list of top multiplayer games at Collider bundled everything from Fortnite and Roblox to Sea Of Thieves and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. One might include simpler games like Minecraft or competitive experiences like online poker.
However, the bottom line is that there is endless opportunity to develop games that facilitate live online socialization. Our advice if this category interests you is to find a company with some success developing these games or connect with others who are interested and develop an indie game on your own.
Casino Slots
Casino gaming is one of the opportunities for gaming engineers. It is sometimes considered separately in analyses like the one we’ve referred to. However, we might consider the category an offshoot of the “Social and Casual” category.
These games are supremely accessible, simple to play, and increasingly involve chats, leaderboards, and other social components. And notably for engineers, the slots that represent the bulk of the casino category are growing far more visually and mechanically complex –– meaning quality engineers are needed!
If you haven’t spent much time with this category, Gala Casino’s Megaways selection effectively showcases some of the “top slots” in circulation at the moment –– and certainly displays the quality we’re talking about.
Titles like Dynamite Riches, Buffalo Blitz, and more inject exciting animations and vibrant graphics into slots, providing some idea of what an engineer in this space might be asked to accomplish.
Bingo & Slingo
Bingo and Slingo are opportunities for gaming engineers. While slots dominate the casino category and have grown particularly dynamic from a development standpoint, we should also note that Bingo and Slingo games are following suit.
Bingo rooms at online casino sites now employ their own themes and graphics (as well as some exciting bonus content from time to time).
And Slingo—a hybrid of bingo and slots—tends to produce titles that closely resemble the kinds of online slots we discussed above.
Slingo titles like Rainbow Riches, Starburst, and Shark Week are as complex and visually impressive as leading slots, making this another intriguing category for engineers.
PC Games
The WeForum analysis also pointed to PC gaming as a space where significant growth is expected. As with social and casual games, this makes for a sprawling and enormous category; indeed, it even ropes in many popular console titles that can be played on PC.
To give you a sense of what’s trendy in this space, though, take a peek at Steam and the most popular games on that PC download platform. Titles like Apex Legends and Realm Royale (battle royale games); survival games like Dying Light and The Forest; and beloved indie titles like Cuphead and Stardew Valley are towards the top of the list.
We could list hundreds more titles, but these at least are some interesting genres to start with as you look around for the kind of game you might like to engineer.
The bottom line is that there’s a ton of opportunities for gaming engineers moving forward. But we hope this has clued you into some popular categories and possibly the types of games you’d prefer to be involved with.
