First I'm going to start out with a career of actually playing video games. The first thing that might come to mind is reviewer. If you're interested I'd recommend getting involved with a local paper right away. Most likely this will be a school paper, and will most likely be done on a volunteer bases. This will give you a good start in journalism, and you may want to look into getting a BA in Journalism or at least take a couple classes at the college level. This will help you get the needed base to start as not only a game reviewer but a game journalist who can cover major press releases, and other game events. It also surprises me how little journalists actually know about journalism law so getting a quick background in that can give you a great edge if you manage to get an interview. One thing a lot of people probably don't realize about this job is you tend to work a lot more hours than normal and it really ends up being two jobs, one for writing about games, and another playing them. You also have to play a lot of really crappy games and unlike normal gamers if you don't like the game you still have to thoroughly play it.
The other guys who get to play games all day are the testers. Testing doesn't really require to many skills just a strong will to do repetitive actions, and having good enough communication skills to describe what you come across. "I was doing that thing, and then the game started bugging out" is not good communication. With testing the hours suck, the pay is low, and odds are you'll hate the game you're testing. Honestly I have no clue why some people think this is a good job, but it is an "in" to the gaming industry and can get you connections which I'll talk about later.
The last person I'll talk about is the professional gamer, and though a few pro gamers can make a ton of money at tournaments, and through sponsorships lots of other pro gamers make their money through teaching. If you have excellent knowledge of a game and can easily get clients you can get paid pretty decent teaching others the stuff you had to learn the hard way. The hard part about this job is getting those first initial clients who (if you are any good) will pass your name to others looking to gain some "skill" without putting forth hours and hours into a game. Few people have the skills to pull this job off, but it's still worth mentioning.
Now I'll get to the game creation careers which I'm sure most of you are mostly interested in. First when starting your career in game creation you need to figure out which category you fit into which can mostly be broken into programming, or artist. Lost of people currently in the in the industry are hybrids, but once doesn't have to be since most developers are looking for specialized professionals. For these jobs you will need a few things. First people in the gaming industry need to actually know who you are. Few game jobs are publicly advertised and many game HR departments get tons of resumes/portfolios every day so trying to get a job based on that is pretty much like playing the lotto. You really need to do alot of social networking and talk to people in the same field. Communication is huge in game development, and is an essential part of getting a job. Next expect to move to an area where game studios are located, very few jobs in this industry can be done remotely.
Most people think that programming is the only way to get into game creation, but honestly there's a lot of people in the industry that don't do ay programming. Still it's fairly common so I'll go over it. Like the job says to be a programmer you have to know how to program. There's tons of different programming languages to learn and the more you can learn the better chance you have of getting a job. Most people find a CS degree pretty helpful, but a portfolio can show off just about the same amount of knowledge. To start off I suggest learning any programming language (C#, C, C++, flash, heck even scripting is a good place to start). Good news about game programming is the pay is very high. The bad news there's tons, upon tons of programmers out there to compete against. Still if you start programming and you love it (some people actually do) you'll eventually get really good at it. If you don't like programming it's not something you can really force, you may learn a few skills, but you'll never be any good if you don't love it.
Next is the art department which is pretty diverse in games. I'll start from beginning to end sort of. First you have the concept artist who in the early part of the games development creates the art which will become the reference for the entire game. This is often done with traditional art tools (like paint, and brushes). For this job you need to be a really well established artist who can work quite fast, and one of the few jobs you can actually work off-site. Other artist jobs are the texture artist, and modeler. Technically there are a lot of other jobs but it breaks down to these two skills. Texture artists tend to progress a bit more with traditional art skills along with some insane Photoshop skills. They've got a great eye for detail. The modelers tend to be more technically attuned being skilled at 3dsMax, and/or Maya many know these complex programs in and out. More and more artist jobs are requiring a traditional hand art skill which tends to keep a lot of people away since they figure it's a natural talent, but I've seen quite a few people learn these skills over a matter of months quicker than they learn 3d programs, or Photoshop.
Now learning the skills needed for game creation doesn't come easy, but a great thing about the game industry is that many developers are not too picky on a college education. Therefore you can save thousands teaching your self, provided you know what you need learn, and have the mentality to actually do it on your own. I would say schools tend to have a much higher success rate, and better guidance towards what to learn and where to learn it, but if your not serious you'll fail either way.
There are a few jobs outside the visual arts and programming I should probably mention. Audio plays a key role and can be an avenue into the game industry for audiophiles, or even a few voice actors. Also public relations, and game business are growing industries that need experienced people that understand not only understand games, but those that also understand how to run a media campaign. Far too often good games are ignored because publishers/developers didn't hire the right people for PR. Also storyboarding, and writing for games is becoming more open to outsiders, but I wouldn't count on it.
First a little background info about me. I've been a pc gamer pretty much since 1995 and if you count the C64 it's been before I can really remember. Before 95 I was a sheep (which pretty much every gamer was), and from 95-03 I was a hardcore hermit, until I got an Xbox. So even though I'm mostly a PC gamer I do have some experience with consoles.
To begin I'm going to break down PC into two parts: hardware, and software. Hardware is the physical stuff, and software is mostly games. Historically PC hardware has undoubtedly out performed its console counter parts generation after generation, but I've noticed that each generation the hardware gap gets smaller and smaller. There's also a big difference in the generation cycles of consoles and PCs. Consoles have a 5 year cycle of new hardware, while PCs now have a 6 month cycle. Now this has lead console fanboys to assume you have to upgrade your PC every 6 months, but we all know that isn't true. What these shorter hardware cycles actually do is shorten the effective hardware dates. Right now PC hardware is only effective for about 3 years before needing to be replaced to play currently released games. On the positive side this also gives PCs better graphics through out the generation if you're willing to shell out the cash for the new hardware. There's also the problem of having to actually know something about PC hardware if you want to be a PC gamer. You have to know your PCs specs, and how long hardware is going to last, and which upcoming trends are gimmicks and which are going to be needed. Not only all that but you also should know how to install it into your own computer. Now for long term PC gamers like me that's not really a big deal, but for your average person they'd probably have better luck at brain surgery.
Now looking at the software side of things I think PC has some of the best games around, but as I think about these games they don't really tend to be for everyone. First you need to have your operating system (OS, aka windows) running smoothly, and surprisingly for a lot of people that's a huge problem. I mostly blame the user for these problems because in my experience windows XP rarely just messes up on its own. Normally it's a 3rd party problem often cause by the user attempting to get free porn/music/games. Now we come to tweaking the game itself which for a PC person is actually kind of fun. If you're way past the recommended specs you can normally just crank everything on high and play that way, but few of us have that luxury often we're choosing between detail options, and screen resolutions to get a personalized optimal performance. This can be very confusing to a non-pc person unlike the console counter parts who are use to having next to know performance options and don't really understand the terms.
Once you got your game up and running we need to look at the PC game titles. FPS, RTS, and RPG (western RPGs) tend to dominate the pc landscape so unless you're a huge fan of these three PC doesn't really have much else to offer. If you are a huge fan the PC is the place to be since you'll find a ton of exclusive must have titles from these genres. Many console games do get ported to the PC but trust me they are much more fun on consoles, and though I'm sure some hermit will say "you can play with a game pad on pc", trust me I modded my Xbox controller (which is the best PC game pad besides the 360 controller) to work on my PC, and for 1 or 2 games it's fine, but for 90% of my PC games it's not worth the effort, because I have to spend so much time tweaking the button layout for the game every time I get a new skill, or such. Also less and less "console" games are becoming available on the PC when they are released. The great thing about PC games is mods which can give a mediocre title some new life, and fix things many users don't like about the game.
Last I'm going to be talking about costs which tend to dominate most arguments of PC vs console. Anyway you cut it PC gaming is going to cost more, but how much more really depends on the type of user you are. Hermits claim PCs only cost $800 and last 5 years while console fanyboys claim PCs are $3000 and last 6 months. The truth really depends on your knowledge of PCs and wants. For example if you only follow 1 or 2 games that only release ever 4-5 years you can build a $800 PC and it'll last quite a while. For example my friend only plays WOW and Counter Strike so his 2003 pc is just fine for him until Diablo 3, or Starcraft 2 comes out. Of course if you have to play the latest games on the highest settings and can't build your own PC $3000 isn't really out the question and that PC will need to be upgraded in 2 years to play next years titles on high settings (or even 1 year if you got cheated because you didn't know anything about graphics cards). An average PC gamer will have to spend more than $500 every 5 years on hardware no matter, but considering more of us "need" a pc anyway it's not so bad. Now I hear a lot of arguments about how PC games are cheaper in the long run because console games are now $60, and PC games are still $50. What most people tend to forget is that not only can you easily buy console games used for much cheaper than PC games, but console games tend to drop in price much faster (especially if the game sells well, and goes into the "platinum" collection). Overall to me PC gaming is worth it because I know about the hardware, and need a good PC anyway. I know when to upgrade and how much to spend to get the most bang out of my buck, and though it cost a bit more than a console overall it's not like I wouldn't be spending most of that money on a PC anyway.
As I always say PC gaming tends to be for PC people.
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