Creative Director - Video Games

Video Games

With the increased team sizes and more specialised disciplines in the games industry, certain game designers are titled as 'creative director', 'executive designer' or 'game director'. A creative director in a videogame company is usually responsible for product development across a number of titles and is generally regarded as the prime design authority across the company's product range. Some examples are Peter Molyneux, Alex Hutchinson or Shigeru Miyamoto whose influence extends across more than one project.

The video game industry is very important when it comes to the roles of creative directors. The creative director has a very important responsibility in this industry because video games are all visual and motion graphic driven. The director must devise ideas to lead a video game project forward and many responsibilities involve working with various individuals or teams spread out within the entire project/video game production. This can include collaborating with motion graphic artists, 2D/3D animation developers, various illustrator artists and much more. Academically speaking, a creative director must have a bachelor’s degree, but there are some circumstances where a high school education strongly focusing on aspects such as art, graphics, computer science, and math can be acceptable and provide some valuable insight to students who hope to aspire in this field of work. Some skills that a creative director working in the video game industry must have include proficiency in computer programming, graphic development (illustrations, fine art), excellent interpersonal and writing skills (since they deal with many other clients and management leaders). Once a concept has been decided and agreed upon, it is up to the creative director to recruit a responsible and skilled team. The magnitude of video game development is incredibly large and expensive and most of the time requires an enormous team of skilled people with experience in graphic, animation, illustration art work, and programming. As usual, the position of a creative director is not an entry spot. One would have to earn that role by showing their skills and development over a period of years. Creative directors have done their share of lower level startup positions such as internships or assisting other directors in art related work fields. It is all about advancing through the career chain and once one has earned the position a creative director, they may be eligible to work for larger and more popular game developing companies depending on how successful they have been with past collaborative projects.

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