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Six years of jobs on Sumea

While I've been migrating the data across to our new site at tsumea.com from Sumea, I've also been tagging all the job advertisements we've had in our six year history into their correct categories. If you look at our jobs page, you'll find all the job categories and the number of jobs listed in each category.

I've presented that data into some handy pie charts and the results are very insightful. We pretty much receive job details from most developers in Australia and New Zealand, so it's interesting to see which are the more common job openings in our industry, which are the slim pickings, and the variety of jobs that have been advertised here. Some of the results are fairly predictable, with general artists and programmer related jobs dominating our jobs section. Specialised fields and the higher tiered positions are advertised much less, so if you're wanting in on those jobs, don't be sitting around waiting for them to come to you!

Submitted by souri on Thu, 10/07/08 - 11:49 AM Permalink

The three main pie charts are artist, programmers, production & administrative, and anything else that doesn't fit in there goes into the misc. chart. Creative Director is a role I'm not too knowledgeable about - do they oversee the whole design team?

Anyway, if you have any suggestions on moving fields or improving things, I'm all ears.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 17/07/08 - 1:11 AM Permalink

...i've worked in places where the designers were useless and some where the production was, and i can tell you that the ones with sucky producers still sometimes made okay games.

Surely there's enough different types to fill a their own pie?

Designer jobs i have known (or done) (or seen advertised on tsumea);

Design Manager
Senior Designer
Lead Designer
Level Designer
Dialogue Writer
Writer/scriptwriter
Cutscene Writer
Storyline Writer

Then you get down into specific gigs, like Skill Progression Designer or Front End Design (usability, not the look) or Quantum Rabbit Upgrade Designer

I'd also argue that the design pie should go third in your 'random' order. *cough*

But hey, it was still cool to see, good one!...although it made me regret not pursuing my art skills more...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/02/09 - 10:21 PM Permalink

The explosion of design specializations and jobs is the main problem the games industry currently faces. You only need ONE creative designer - they should be the equivalent of a creative director. After that you just need level designers/builders, who can be artists anyway.

How many people does it take to design a blood effect anyway?

Submitted by Peccavi on Fri, 11/07/08 - 12:43 AM Permalink

Great, I only read the "Six years of Jobs part", and was about to read through it to ask whether or not there was going to be any kind of graph. Sweet. Good to look over.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 17/07/08 - 9:34 AM Permalink

It makes sense that level scripting has very few advertised positions. Its sort of implied with level designing these days.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 13/11/08 - 5:59 PM Permalink

I still can't believe how design is just not taking seriously in Australia. I mean, isn't it at the heart of game development?

It needs it's own pie!

And a Creative Director is someone who may have come up the ranks as an artist, however, the role is all about design. Overseeing all the titles in development -- from a design point-of-view. Setting the direction for product design and development for the studio, etc, etc.

I'm sure people will disagree and have their own interpretations on the role, but, it is a design role -- it can also be known as: Design Director.