Roles in the Games Industry

Creative Director

 The Creative Director is a fairly new role in the games industry and it is ensuring the quality and style of the artwork, music and gameplay within a game. Not all companies have a Creative Director so they share out the responsibilities to the Lead Programmer, Lead Artist and Producer.

 If you are to be a games Creative Director you have to be able to inspire artists, programmers, producers and marketing staff to create the best quality game that they can. You will have to decide how the game feels and looks and also understand that there is a limit and to work inside a budget. To also look at the bigger picture in game development and really have a passion for playing games as well as recognize what is appealing to different audiences. You must own an amazing sense of creativity, imagination and have a good puzzle-making ability  in which you can apply to the game and have excellent communication and presentation skills to convey your ideas and sway people to decide to make your game.      

A creative director is not an entry-level route, you will usually need around 5 years experience in a senior game development position to even be considered for the job, or you could acquire a similar job in special effects or animation to move up to creative director which gives you time to form links and contacts in the industries. Some more well known creative directors are:Peter Molyneux, Neil Druckmann and  Shigeru Miyamoto responsible 

for such games as fable, The Last of Us and The Legend of Zelda.

The average pay can range anything from £48,000 a year to £73,000 depending on the company so it is a very well paid

job and is rewarding in the sense that you can make something that can stir feelings in someone or keep them engrossed for hours at a time.

Examples of Creative Director job advertisements: