The video game market is booming. In Spain, the video game sector is also in excellent health. Its billing data shows it: 1,747 million euros in 2020, according to data from the Spanish Video Game Association. In fact, video game development aims to become a strategic sector within the economy that will demand more and more professionals.
The growing interest in video games is already creating jobs. There are currently more than 650 video game companies or studios that generate more than 9,000 direct jobs and more than 23,000 indirect jobs. The most in-demand professionals are those with degrees in video games, software engineering, or design. Therefore, it is worth studying game design and development, a career with a bright future and a high rate of employability.
To make video games, what do you have to study?
Although video games have a long way to go, until recently there was no specific training path. The race to develop videogames in Spain is little more than a decade old . For this reason, the most common profile in the development of video games are those with degrees in Computer Engineering and Software Engineering. However, it is not the only profile that video game development studios demand. To create a video game, different professionals must intervene, including writers, creative designers, audio technicians and producers.
Behind a video game there are several professional figures who work in synergy. For example, in addition to the project managers and producers, there are the game designers , who are in charge of developing the game’s mechanics, deciding the plot and guiding the interactions between the characters. Instead, the programmers are responsible for writing the code so that the interactions that the game designers have devised work on different platforms.
Therefore, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts you could take care of all the aesthetic aspects of the video game, both the creation of scenarios and the characters. However, the ideal is that you choose a specialized degree , such as our Degree in Video Game Design , with which you will learn to create stories by applying the visual arts through the use of digital tools such as 2D and 3D animation programs. Also, if you are interested in the more technical part of computing, you can study this degree to be a video game programmer.
What to study to develop video games?
If you like video games, you can follow different training paths. The most common, until now, was to pursue a career in the area of ??programming. Although Computer Engineering and Software Engineering can give you the foundation of programming and applied mathematics needed for image processing and interface creation, you’re better off choosing a specialized program.
If you are more interested in programming, you can take, for example, a Double Degree in Video Game Design and Computer Engineering that will give you all the knowledge and skills you need. This way you will have a more complete professional profile that will allow you to work in the best Spanish video game studios.
If you want to have an overview of all the profiles that work in the creation and design of video games, you have our Degree in Video Game Design. But if you are interested in delving deeper into the artistic part, you can study the Double Degree in Animation and Video Game Design .
Another possibility to study video game design and start working earlier in this sector is to take a Higher Technician . With our Superior Technician in 3D Animations, Games and Interactive Environments you will be able to learn to create, design, plan and direct characters, elements and scenes of video games. You will master the basics of design and creation of the creative concept, as well as modeling with tools such as Zbrush, Maya Autodesk, 3D Max. You will also learn to use programs such as Unity and/or Unreal so that you can program and create multimedia projects for different platforms.
There is also the possibility of complementing these degrees with different video game development courses focused on emerging design and programming technologies . For example, you can take a course in virtual reality VR and augmented reality for video games so that you learn how to use development platforms such as Unity 3D. Or you can decide to start with a broader approach, educating yourself in the most used and important programming language today: Python . If you want to train in the basics of Python programming, you can opt for our Online Python Course.