VIdeo Games, The Next Big Thing: Turn a love of video games into a fantastic career.

So, naturally when you read a title that says "the next big thing" your first question is usually "what was the last big thing?" The answer, in this case, is the movie industry. That's right, video games are moving to replace movies as the top form of entertainment in the next ten years. "Surely not," you say, "nothing will ever trump the movie industry." Is that a fact? Would it surprise you then, to find out that in 2009, the video game industry made ten and a half billion dollars in revenue, while in the same year the movie industry made only 150 million dollars more that that in revenue, and has gone down by a solid two billion dollars since? In the meantime, the video game industry has climbed just as much.

Hint, if your face looks like this you're surprised.

I understand, you're looking at these numbers and thinking "Yeah, but what does the average guy make in this industry?" $73,000 dollars a year. That's the median, the average guy in this industry makes more than a soldier, more than a teacher, more than most people in the private sector, period.

And the industry takes all types, it takes all fields, all professions. It needs writers, programmers, artists, engineers, marketers, lawyers, you name it, they need it. There aren't a lot of jobs out there where someone who just wants to tell a story can make a lot of money, but who do you think writes the dialogue, and comes up with the story in these games? Or, in the case of engineers, makes sure that all the physical interactions in a gaming world behave realistically? People who can write well, be they comedy writers, screenplay writers, or anyone who can write a conversation or history with passion are highly desired for video game design. It's also one of the most promising fields for an artist to go into, considering the fact that everything you see on a video game is at some point drawn by a person, usually numerous times across various media. Musicians and anyone with a talented voice are also needed in the field. Most every game has it's own music written specially for the game, or remakes of other songs that somebody needs to perform. And when you hear people speaking in games, they needed someone with a voice that fits the character, or someone who can speak with multiple voices.

HE'S RIGHT!

So some of the less pragmatic of you are looking at my happy list of numbers and logic and thinking "Yes, but what do I get out of it intrinsically? Why should I do this instead of building baby hospitals?" To be fair I can't tell you not to build baby hospitals. But lets be honest, you can only do things like that and working for the Peace Corps for so long before it starts to take it's toll on your body and mind. The video game industry, however, lets you create something new, lets you design and build and tell a story that will make millions of people very happy, all from the comfort of an office chair.

None of this is to say that it's an easy profession. I won't try and kid you, it can be tough, it can be brutal, it's fraught with failure and deadlines. But the one thing that I hear from the people in the industry who do this kind of thing every day is that it's the most fun they've ever had, working anywhere.