Category: Technology

If you have a strong passion for gaming and want to leave your mark on the video game world, a game developer career is definitely the way to go. The average salary of $115,000 per year doesn’t hurt either, making it well worth the effort it takes to break into this competitive industry. And you can count on it being an uphill battle, for sure, especially if you’re located in an area fairly saturated with talented tech professionals. Fortunately, you can get past the initial hurdles and achieve great success by simply following these five tips on how to launch your dream career as a game developer.

Target a Niche

Although it’s good to have a broad view of the game development landscape as a whole, you need to focus on a niche to truly stand out from the crowd. There are many roles to consider in the game development world, such as:

• Concept artist
• Storyboard artist
• UI designer
• Level designer
• Animator
• Programmer
• Scriptwriter

To figure out your niche, think about where you want to focus your talents to start. As you advance your career, you may get to try out additional roles, especially if you work in small teams. So, you won’t be stuck with your initial choice if it’s not what you expected.

Get Well Educated

While you don’t have to go out and get a bachelor’s degree in computer science, game design, and the like, it certainly can’t hurt. Your degree will ensure you gain the right skills needed to excel in the industry while giving you a competitive edge.

If you do decide to go without formal education, do as many free tutorials as possible to build a strong skillset. Then, put your newfound skills to work in completing your own projects, like creating characters, building levels, and writing stories.

Build a Strong Portfolio

As you put your all into completing your own projects, start building a large portfolio full of your best work. You can then use the portfolio to demonstrate your game design skills whenever you’re ready to apply for your first job in the field.

A website format works best for a game developer portfolio. As you complete each web page, go in-depth about the process of making each piece to show the tools and techniques you used along the way.

Join the Gaming Community

A strong professional network is key in landing your dream job in the game design field. You can start building that network by joining gaming communities all over the web.

You might want to start by participating online at: 

• GameDev.net
• Indie Gamer
• Devmaster
• Quora

As you dig around online, you’ll also find groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and other platforms dedicated to your niche of choice.

Start Networking at Tech Events

Attending game design conferences and other tech events is a great way to build your professional network. Start by looking for conferences hosted in your area – unless you have a big travel budget, that is. If you’re in Western Washington, for example, the Game UX Summit might be a great conference to attend.

At each event, focus on building relationships above all else – and the help building your career will naturally follow. Do what you can to volunteer your time helping others as well, so you can gain a great reputation in the industry.

With these tips on your side, you’re well on your way to a lucrative and rewarding game developer career. Just be sure to keep your eye on the prize and you’ll soon start to realize your dreams of becoming a leader in the game design world.  

Just think about where society was about 100 years ago. There were only a handful of cars on the road and nobody knew what a cell phone was. Some might argue that technology has hampered society in certain ways, but nobody can argue that the benefits overall far outweigh any of the negatives. Society makes our lives easier in ways that you might not even think about. Here are some aspects of your life that tech makes easier.

5. Organization

Perhaps you’re old enough to remember the days when you had to write down pretty much everything or ask people to remind you to do things. Now, you’re able to organize almost every aspect of your life thanks to technology. Need to remind yourself to take your daily vitamin? There’s an app that can do that. The same goes for organizing all of your paperwork (think Google Drive) and even store photographs that you want to look at years from now. Technology is getting rid of filing cabinets faster by the day.

4. Finances

Technology is making it simple to take your finances into your own hands. It used to be that you had to run to the bank and deposit cash, but almost everything is digital now. Even stocks have become insanely simple as you’re able to trade with the push of just a couple of buttons on your phone or computer at no charge thanks to apps like Robin Hood. We could also talk about cryptocurrency for hours on end, but we’ll just remind you that it’s there for now and you can research it at your own leisure.

3. Health

It wasn’t too long ago that people were putting little pedometers in their pockets to see how many steps they were taking in a given day. Now you don’t have to worry about that little Tamagotchi sized archaic device. Instead, most of us have smart watches that not only track steps, but also every detail of your health. From quitting smoking or drinking to your nutrient intake to your body fat percentage, you can do it all from just your phone and watch. It’s also cutting down on insurance premiums since the data is right there to show your provider.

2. Work-Life Balance

Before everyone was connected to high speed internet from their homes, you had to drive to the office and make sure that you were on time so that you didn’t miss a single thing. Now, you don’t even need to leave your home in a lot of cases to get your work done. Telecommuting with services such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and more make it easy to be a remote worker and instantly communicate with your work team. This means more time with your family and less time commuting and wasted office time.

1. Navigation

Speaking of driving to the office, you might still need to do that for your job. If that’s the case, technology is making it easier to travel every day. You can get a shared ride (Uber, Lyft, etc.), find real time traffic thanks to Google Maps and Waze or get the times for public transportation and pay it all through your apps. Needless to say, technology has made almost every aspect of our lives easier.

As we move deeper into the future that many science fiction movies, books and television shows predicted for us decades ago, the technology is starting to match that of science fiction. Included is the fact that everything is ‘smart’ now and tends to come with an app for our mobile devices. It’s not just watches and cars, either, as homes altogether can be converted into smart homes. What is a smart home, though, and is it the right choice for you, especially when considering the costs?

For starters, there isn’t just one project that you can undertake that will make your home into a smart home. Instead, you’ll have to work on one at a time, focusing on eventually bringing it all together. This includes the lighting, thermostats, audio, security, safety and even lawn and pool care. While these were all expensive when they first debuted, converting certain parts of your home into smart home features is easier and cheaper than ever.

Think of a smart home as an investment. While it might be seen as a luxury with a lot of fancy bells and whistles, smart homes bring a lot of features that will not just maintain your home’s value, but also increase it in the long run. Being able to lock your doors and monitor the premises through cameras will cut down on insurance, while lowering the lights when not in use, not running the sprinklers while it’s raining and turning the thermostat to a higher temperature when nobody’s home will save you thousands in energy bills.

There is one caveat to running a smart home, and it’s the fact that you’ll have to be connected to the internet. While your cell phone will still be able to pick up mobile data when the internet goes out, the same might not be true for your smart devices as these run mostly on wi-fi. Assuming that your internet is working, you can use your phone as a hub to control everything. User interfaces are becoming easier to use, as well, making it simplistic for even the most beginner user. Using this hub also lets you know how much you’re saving in energy and allows you to set timers to adhere to your schedule.

So is a smart home right for you? The answer is probably going to be yes unless you have problems with maintaining a solid internet connection or don’t have the money to spend at the moment. Since it doesn’t have to be done all at once, you can chip away at the costs with one project at a time. If you want to start off with something small, a device such as an Amazon Alexa can be a good hub for your audio needs and to set reminders as you work your way up with feeling more comfortable using all of the apps.

As for the internet, new technology is making it so that smart home devices can still run when not connected. This includes Thread, a technology that is helping with this issue. “ And looking at current use cases, the biggest elephant in the room in terms of bandwidth are cameras,” said Vividh Siddha of Thread and Apple. Once this issue is taken care of, you won’t have to rely on your bandwidth to keep your smart home at its smartest.

Nothing is more important to your business than having a satisfied customer base, which is why a customer relationship management process (or CRM, for short) is vital to thrive. These days, there are a lot of CRMs that are vying for your business, so it can be a bit overwhelming to try and pick from all of these platforms that allow you to consolidate your calls, emails, meetings and much more. So when your business is browsing for the perfect CRM, there are some things to consider. Let’s break down what makes a CRM the right one for your business.

What Your Company Needs

Not all CRMs are built the same, and in some cases, you don’t need many of the services that are offered. Because of this, some small businesses end up paying too much money for a CRM, paying for services that go unused. Before you use a CRM, think about what it is exactly that you’ll be using it for. Are you trying to generate sales leads? Retain customers on a monthly basis? Identify the most glaring concerns and, from there, find which CRM is the most highly rated in that particular category. 

Furthermore, will your business need additional customer support that you don’t have the staff for currently? Some CRMs will allow you to purchase a feature that routes questions to a call center. You can have the easier FAQ type calls sent this way, and CRMs such as Freshsales, Agile and Nextiva have call center capabilities to use.

Test the Features

Just like any service that knows that it’s worth your business, a good CRM will allow you to test their services through a free trial. In most cases, the top CRMs are offering a free trial that runs for 14 days, while some such as Freshsales runs for 21 days. This allows you enough time to get familiar with the user interfaces and see if the options in the service are what you need. You can adjust the subscriptions from there so that you’re only paying for what you’re going to be using.

Ease of Use

While you might consider yourself tech savvy, there may be some people within your business that aren’t going to be able to navigate quite as well on some platforms. Because of this, you want to pick a CRM that’s going to be easy for all employees of your business to use. Interfaces are much different when looking from one CRM to another, and ones like Pipedrive were rated as the easiest to navigate while also offering the ability to manage from your mobile phone. That’s another key aspect for ease of use, as some CRMs can only be accessed from a desktop.

Word of Mouth

Before even hopping into the free trials for some of the CRMs that you haven’t used yet, try asking around to see what other businesses are using. Other businesses will have their preference, so try to find someone in the same field that has a CRM. If you can’t find anyone, then online reviews will always help. Currently, the top reviews for CRMs are being given to Zoho, Monday, Zendesk and Insightly just to name a few. 

Hackers have been all over the news in our current era where everything feels like it’s based off of the internet. With that, our data is on the internet, including card numbers, social security numbers, phone numbers…basically every sort of number. Hackers can get their hands on this information if you’re not careful (and sometimes even if you are careful). People that do this are known as black hat hackers. These are the ‘bad guys’ of the internet that steal data for their own personal gain. Think of identity thieves or bank robbers, hence the “black hat” like the villains from old western films would wear.

White hat hackers, though, are on the opposite end of the spectrum. White hats are the ones that are trying to bolster your private data, and they can actually do that through hacking. White hats receive permission from agencies and companies to try and find any potential areas that can be breached. This is completely legal, and those that have permission aren’t subject to any criminal charges. In fact, most white hats are employed by those that they’re trying to hack. However, it does get a bit trickier when you’re talking about those that didn’t get permission.

A subset of the white hats is known as a gray hat hacker. White hat hackers simply find weaknesses and then don’t do anything with the information that they’ve obtained in their hacks. Black hats have very malicious intent, and gray hats are somewhere in between. Gray hats are those that find and exploit weaknesses, but don’t use it for their own monetary gain via an individual. Instead, they may tell a company that they’ve found weaknesses and will fix it for them for money or a job.

Of course, this falls into a legal “gray” area, if you will, as some of them violate laws with their hacking but don’t get severe punishments due to not actually stealing anything. In most cases, gray hats are subject to a small fine or even a warning. That doesn’t mean that all white hat and gray hat hackers haven’t been subject to legal trouble, though, especially in recent years. The US Department of Justice has ramped up efforts against all hackers, especially when it comes to extortion.

A new policy called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is trying to weed out these hackers that use their talents to exploit for money. “The new policy acknowledges that claiming to be conducting security research is not a free pass for those acting in bad faith,” the DOJ said. “For example, discovering vulnerabilities in devices in order to extort their owners, even if claimed as ‘research,’ is not in good faith.”

With that in mind, you have to be very particular with what you’re doing as a white hat hacker and make sure you’re getting permission to do what you’re doing. As of now, the Department of Justice is not seeking any legal action against those that fall under the definition of white hat hackers, but those in the gray area should be on high alert. “Good faith security research means accessing a computer solely for purposes of good faith testing, investigation, and/or correction of a security flaw or vulnerability,” the DOJ said.