Career Potential in the Game Industry

Recently the game industry has become the rising star in Indonesia because of the existence of e-sports which encourages young people to become athletes. Various games have sprung up with ranging from high difficulty to casual, even became the subject of debate during the 2019 presidential election.

If you pull back 10 years, it can be said that this trend has not existed at all. A professional career in the gaming industry can be considered impossible and impossible. These dreams were finally crushed by Steve Jobs when he released the iPhone in 2007 and the story of people who earn $60 thousand a day after selling their applications on the App Store.

At least, this is the story behind Anton Soeharyo to start his career building a game company.

Di #TuesdayStartup this time invite Anton CEO of Playgame to share how the gaming industry opportunities are today, our tips on starting a career in gaming companies, and what jobs are most sought after. Here's a summary:

1. The global trend of the game industry is very promising

According to Newzoo, the gaming industry's revenue this year is predicted to reach $118 billion with a growth of at least 6,5 times over the next five years. This fantastic hike will be triggered by many things. These include online focused revenue, massive development in AR and VR, focus on mobile games, cloud gaming, and the rise of esports events.

The research also mentions that last year China overtook the United States as the largest country for video games with revenues of $27,4 billion. Then, the country with the largest number of smartphone holders is the fastest growing country in the world.

"I see that the game trend must be looked at in China because marketIt's big and the technology comes from there. Meanwhile, Indonesia backed away from them about eight years back. But it is an opportunity to look in the mirror so that we can accelerate the lag," said Anton.

Seeing the development of game technology, the most recent is cloud games driven by the prospect of 5G. This game segment provides a very bright prospect, that all games connected to the device can be connected as long as there is an internet network.

"Next is VR, it still is niche. But now it's a game changer. So if you want to start a career in gaming, you can enter VR, not many people do but this hot, very different from esports."

2. Game industry trends in Indonesia

Still quoted from the same source, the game industry in Indonesia is in 16th position worldwide with 43,7 million players. His potential income is up to $880 million (Rp11,9 trillion). The magnitude of this potential has made Bekraf have its own work program for the financial sector Gaming.

"Interestingly, from half of the smartphone gamers in Indonesia, willing to pay. This is different from the stereotype that gamers prefer something free. That's wrong, many people want to pay because now there are many options, while in the past there was only credit cards."

This stereotype, he continued, also occurred in China about 10 years ago. Many think that people there prefer to buy pirated ones than the original version. But when access to payments is made easier, many people end up migrating and buying the original.

3. Career in the gaming industry

Making a game is not an easy thing, it takes a lot of expertise in various fields, not only good at design and making coding-his. Apart from having programmers and UI/UX, according to Anton, ideally a game company should have 2D & 3D artist, game tester, game producer, composer, game journalist, quality assurance. Also general and marketing departments, such as business development, marketing, finance, adminand human capital.

But the most difficult thing is to find game testers because they have to find fault. They have to find a location that people don't usually look for. Then you have to provide a report and how to fix it in the form of steps so that it can be read by the programmer.

"This game tester is the most stressful job in my opinion because people usually play games to relax, but they can actually get stressed through playing games."

Likewise for searching composer right. They must be able to make music that is rarely heard, easy to remember, but not distracting to the player. That's the hardest part.

Don't forget to continue to develop the company's business, not just focus on games. Because if the game doesn't sell well, you can't make another game because you run out of funds. That's why it is necessary to recruit business development people and analysts to ensure gamers continue to play the game from the first download onwards.

"Analyst is to analyze habits" gamer then give some reward to them to stay loyal to our game. That's why working in a game company doesn't have to only come from an IT background, it can also come from the economy," he concluded.