Amiqus Me Anything: 2018’s biggest job opportunities

Each month we work with our recruitment partner Amiqus to find the answers to the burning questions of job seekers within the games industry. 

Brynley Gibson,
Head of Studios,
Curve Digital Entertainment

With the success of the Switch and initiatives like Sony’s PlayLink, we’ll see audiences broaden with innovative ideas and the return of a few family favourites. People with experience in this field will find they have a surprising edge. At [Curve developer] Kuju we continue rebuilding the studio with major news to announce in early 2018. Expanding whole teams across disciplines means welcoming many new faces to join our fantastic core team, particularly in production and code.

Tamsin O’Luanaigh,
Company Secretary & Talent Director,
nDreams

Virtual reality will continue to grow throughout 2018 and we expect the biggest job opportunities to be in this area (of course!). We see constant demand for roles such as VFX, UI, network and graphics programming because
of the emerging technical challenges VR
brings to development. As nDreams continues to grow we are always on the lookout for talented people.

Ewan Lamont,
CEO,
Legendary Games

The big trend for 2018 is going to be ‘connected things’ in our industry, which means increasing multiplay across multiple devices and increasing portability. The Switch is the current living embodiment of where consoles are going and now that we have mature games on our phone there really is no limit. Before the decade is out we will be playing on our thermostat, fridge, car or toaster.

Andy Booth,
Technical Director,
d3t

Games engineering as a service is a massive growth area so we’re recruiting heavily. Many triple-A studios are leveraging off-the-shelf game engines like Unity and Unreal. Skills for using these engines are really useful, but there’s a definite skill gap in understanding how to optimise these engines. Additionally, Nintendo Switch has really gathered momentum so I predict a lot of opportunities in these areas for engineers with the right skills.

Emma Purvey,
HR Manager,
Outplay Entertainment

At Outplay, growing our marketing team with talented artists, player support specialists and data-driven UA and CRM managers who focus on user experience will be key. They will collaborate further with production so we can shift into a games-as-a-service mentality.

Ian Flatt,
Executive Producer,
Codemasters

The scale of triple-A games continues to grow, especially with the emergence of the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. This will bring opportunities in every speciality of game development as teams expand in order to meet the emerging requirements. Esports is a new frontier, bringing fresh specialist positions. There will also always be a demand for specialist programmers – Codemasters is continually looking for candidates with skills in physics, AI and graphics.