Best job for a person who likes gaming

It depends on your skills. If you feel artistic and think you could learn to make 2d art or 3d models you may do well as an artist. Or if you're good at math and think you could learn to program, you could become a game programmer. Whatever you like doing, and have an aptitude to learn, is probably the "best job" for you. Making games is the best job in the world. It is a lot of hard work and takes people that are really passionate about making games. -- also continually learning. If you start learning PS4, by the time you do, they may be ready for PS5...

Bear with me for a second while I tell you a story...

When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a physicist. I studied hard in school through high school and college. In my free time, I played video games and tabletop games with my friends. In fact, all my free time I spent either writing or playing tabletop and board games. This continued through graduate school, where I realized I was miserable studying physics. I loved the subject, but I hated the discipline. One summer, I took a job writing video games -- and just like that, I knew that was what I wanted to do for a living.

So, here's the moral of the story: don't pick a job you think you will like. Look at how you spend all your free time. *That's* the job you want.

It sounds like you spend a lot of time gaming, so you are half way there. So now, ask yourself: "what is it I like about gaming?" Do you like setting up games to play with your friends (like being a Dungeon Master for D&D)? Do you like building levels for your favorite games? Do you like to play fun games without worrying about how to make them?

If you like *building* games -- like building special worlds in Minecraft or making levels in Super Mario Maker or dreaming about mods for Skyrim -- you may want to look into game development as a career. There are several different fields within game development, which means you can almost always find a way to fit in:

1) Programming: if you like playing with Lego, think math is fun, or enjoy solving logic puzzles, you will probably enjoy programming. In this job, you will write code that makes the computer draw the pictures, play the sounds, and apply the rules that make video games come alive.

2) Game Design: if you like imagining new worlds, writing stories, or solving pencil-and-paper puzzles (like crosswords and sudoku) you may like game design. Game designers build the rule sets that make games challenging and fun. They also sketch out the levels and write the stories that define game worlds.

3) Visual Artist: artists create everything you see in a game, from 2D icons for the interface to animated 3D models that populate the worlds. Most artists specialize in one or two disciplines, like 3D modeling or animation, because there is so much art to build it's difficult to be an expert in every field.

4) Production: producers are the people that help Programmers, Designers, and Artists get games done. Producers figure out how much time and money it will cost to turn a game design into a finished game. If you like to organize things or you're the person everyone wants to copy school notes from, you will probably be a good producer.

5) Tester: testers play games over and over, looking for bugs. It sounds like fun, but playing the same level over and over for 8 hours (or more!) a day, 5 days a week, takes discipline and dedication. If you love trying to make games do things they aren't supposed to do, you will probably make a good tester.

6) Marketing / Business Development: larger game studios need people to tell the world about their games. Marketers dream up the commercials you see on TV and the big cardboard displays you see inside stores like Game Stop and Best Buy. If you are always smiling and are always cheering up the people around you, you might like this line of work.

These aren't the only jobs related to gaming -- they are just the most common. Almost any job you can imagine touches gaming, these days. Large studios may have lawyers on staff to help with legal questions. Some studios have on-site chefs. Still others bring masseuses into the office on a regular basis. So, before you tell yourself, "I must get a job in games," ask yourself, "what is it I love to do each day, every day?" If the answer is play games, ask yourself a follow-up question: "What is it about games that I love so much?" These answers will tell you what kinds of jobs you will enjoy, whether or not they are in games. Once you think you know what job you will like, figure out how to do that as part of the gaming industry.

Good luck!

I'm a gamer and I mean any job can be good for a gamer, but IT seems like the natural extension. I've been gaming since the 80s and really into computers and technology for as long as I can remember. That drove me to IT, so I could around computers and get a chance to do my thing with games sometimes.

Of course if you are really into games you could work for a gaming company in a variety of positions.