Skip to the content
Compass
AboutWhat can I enter?Sign in

The guide

Close

Games & interactive

Computer Science

Building games and interactive worlds: the code, the systems, the feel.

This suits you if…

You love the medium enough to pay a price for it, you finish what you start, and you can play the same thirty seconds a hundred times to judge whether it feels right rather than whether it works.

Look elsewhere if…

You need steady income, or games are how you rest. Studios staff up and lay off around project cycles, the pay sits below equivalent software work, and many people find that building games for a living removes playing them as recovery.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

Building systems and then tuning them by feel: an enemy isn't 'done' when it works, but when it feels right, which is decided by playing the same thirty seconds a hundred times. Days are engine work, performance budgets, tooling for the artists and designers, and a great deal of iteration on things players will never consciously notice.

The catch

This is the hardest bargain on the list, and it should be stated plainly: games pay less than equivalent software work, job security is weaker because studios staff up and lay off around project cycles, and long crunch periods before release remain common in parts of the industry. People do it because they love the medium. That is a real reason, but go in knowing the price.

What people get wrong about it

That working in games means playing games. Playing your own build for the two-hundredth time to judge a jump arc is a different activity, and many people find it removes games as their form of rest.

The jobs inside this area

  • Game developer
  • Game designer
  • Graphics / engine programmer
  • Technical artist
  • VR / AR developer

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Making things · IndependenceA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

CS plus game jams. Making one small finished game beats a long unfinished one.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Make small finished games. A jam game completed in a weekend is worth more than an ambitious project abandoned at 30%, because finishing is the skill studios can't teach you.

  2. What you study

    CS with graphics and maths, linear algebra especially, or a dedicated games programme. Be sceptical of courses that teach one engine and little computer science: engines change, and the underlying craft is what transfers.

  3. How the first years actually go

    Junior roles are narrow: UI, tools, one gameplay system, or QA as a genuine route in. A portfolio of finished small games is the hiring currency, more than a transcript.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

16 countries · 31 cities · 36 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

Without leaving home

3 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Enter a game jam with a strict theme and a 48-hour limit and finish something, however small. What you learn about scoping under a deadline is the single most transferable lesson in this area.

Do the job for an afternoon, before you pick a degree

Employers build these to recruit, which is why they are honest about what the work is. You do the real tasks, unpaid and ungraded, and find out whether you can stand it. Free, no deadline, nothing to win.

  • Electronic Artsabout 4 hours

    Propose a feature for a live game, sketch how it would be built, and write the class design. Game engineering is mostly a product argument.

These are on Forage. Search it by the employer’s name — what each one is called changes, and who built it does not.

Open Forage from the catalog

These are ways to try Games & interactive before committing to it.