America's Most Wanted

If you're looking to break into the video game industry, there are certain specialties that are in high demand. How's your 3d math? How are your communication skills? Here are two possible specialties that most development teams are constantly looking for.

Graphics programmers are highly valuable to every development team. Being a graphics programmer requires strong math and programming skills, and it helps to be a good team player since graphics programmers and artists work closely together to create the beauty we all see in games.

Generalists. Yeah, this is an odd one and you often won't see the position listed like this. Generalists are the utility infielders. They are comfortable poking around any codebase, any third party API, they can decipher cryptic crash dumps, they have no fear manipulating code they didn't write themselves. When it comes to most software development, legacy code is a fact of life. Rewriting anything from scratch is one of the riskiest things you can do and should never be approached lightly. In general, working in game development means working with code you didn't originally write. Generalists just love games, they love writing code, and they don't care if its adding a new menu object, a gameplay feature, improving a content tool, fixing null pointers and crashes, or the hundreds of other tweaks, bugs and changes that occur on a daily basis. These guys carry your team; these guys get you to the finish line; these guys are the lifeblood of every programming team.