As one of the fastest growing industries, now is the time to get into game design. The field offers competitive pay, paired with the satisfaction of designing a unique game that people around the world can find joy in.
In practice, being a game designer requires focus and technical skills, and hiring managers will be looking for applicants who can demonstrate their familiarity with the industry. Game design encompasses multiple tasks to create code and media at each level of the process, meaning your background as a game designer may be different from someone else’s.
Overall, game development includes the conceptualization process, designing the game world and its systems, and building a working prototype using code and visual editors. Last comes the testing process, which involves putting the game through its paces to ensure playability and remove bugs.
To help you build a resume that will catch the attention of hiring managers, this guide begins by looking at four types of game designer resume templates. Afterward, the skills you should emphasize and the action verbs you should incorporate are discussed.
As hiring managers do not spend long reviewing each resume, you’ll want to make an impression quickly. A few key ways to do that are to start with a fact-filled, succinct summary and hit on strong action verbs that are relevant for game designers.
If you're a career changer or have a lot of experience, consider beginning your resume with a summary that encapsulates your experience in the game design industry in a few sentences. Avoid being overly wordy and always use numerical data points to keep the hiring manager reading. Avoid buzzwords like 'go-getter' or 'talented' in your game design resume summary.
Generally, game designers are tasked with one outcome: designing a game. By including strong action verbs that are relevant for the position (such as "designed", "developed", "built", and "collaborated") in your list of accomplishments, and repeating choice ones, you’ll be highlighting that you know the role and what it requires.
Senior game designers have added expectations compared to less experienced game designers, including potentially leading teams. Reference any accomplishments related to leadership and consider listing your skills to highlight your capabilities. Desmontrate soft skills like leadership, teamwork and initiative in your bullet points - avoid listing those words directly, but instead show them through your resume's bullet points.
As a senior game designer, hiring managers will expect you have taken on increasing levels of responsibility at your previous positions. Make sure to include examples of how you "spearheaded", "supervised", "led", or "managed" groups or teams to cement this impression.
Along with referencing your background in leadership roles and including relevant skills in your list of accomplishments, you may want to have a skills bank on the right or bottom of the page. This list of skills should encompass your technical skills and the types of games or platforms you have experience with.
While some game designers dabble in multiple platforms, video game designers are dedicated to console games. Regardless of your specialization, you can stand out by adding in numerical values to your accomplishments and including relevant certifications or activities.
Whenever you can, include a quantitative value to let hiring managers know the extent of your accomplishments. It is much more effective to convey that you led a team of 30, for instance, rather than to say you led a team. Similarly, testing over 300 mini games is more impressive than saying that you have experience testing games.
If you have additional certifications beyond your academic background, you should be sure to include them in a separate section on your resume. Any relevant volunteer activities (that utilize any aspect of game designer skills) should be included in this area as well.
Game artists are specifically focused on developing visual assets for games, and thus they employ a different skill set than most game designers. You should be sure to name specific tools you’ve worked with. Additionally, including any internal promotions will help convey your commitment to companies.
Having a working understanding of the tools of the trade adds value to your application. Be sure to reference your work with tools like Revit, 3ds Max, Maya, or any other relevant software as it solidifies your familiarity with crucial applications. Add in the big projects you’ve worked on to further impart your experience.
If you can demonstrate that you’ve done well at past companies - to the point of being promoted - you should do so. This imparts to hiring managers that you know what you’re doing as a game artist. If relevant, you can also include how quickly you earned your promotions.
A game artist is an animator that designs 2D and 3D art in the gaming industry like scenery, characters, or backgrounds. To advance as a 3D game artist, you will need to show past experiences of how you’ve grown with previous companies or in past roles. You can also use strong language and verbs throughout your resume to show your technical skills and most important achievements and accomplishments.
If you want to continue to grow in your field, you can use previous positions in your resume to show hiring managers how you advanced to different roles in the company. This will also indicate that you have the leadership skills to advance and that you’re able to take on new roles and responsibilities.
You always want to make an impact by using strong action verbs to start off your bullet points. This could include using verbs such as, “Created,” “Illustrated,” or “Designed” to show future employers that you already have the skills that you will need in future positions and that you focus on action and what you’ve specifically achieved.
While game designers could be working on radically different kinds of games, the skills they utilize are generally the same. On the left, we’ve compiled the most referenced skills in game designer resumes.
Once you’ve identified the game designer skills that are most appropriate for your background, you should work them into your resume. You could pick the most relevant ones to incorporate in a short summary, weave them into your bullet-listed accomplishments, or list them in a skills bank.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Game Design job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Game designers need to show their creative flair, plus technical acumen in design software. Use action verbs in your resume to highlight these skills.
Each of your bullet points should detail an accomplishment in your career(s). To indicate that you have a familiarity with the game designer position, you can begin your bullet points with an action verb that is relevant to the field from the list on the left. If you worked in other fields, you can still incorporate these action verbs as a way to emphasize your understanding of the responsibilities the work involves.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
