Whats the job market like for HTML5 game devs?

[EmeraldZone]

Hey,

 

Before the new year, my plan was to take time away from my traditional web dev job as I am starting to hate building up websites. both client and server-side.

That plan has pretty much been shelved as my living situation has changed and I can't really take the time off to just work on games. I was just wondering, is there much demand for HTML5 game developers in the workplace? if there is what are the average salary expectations? In an ideal world, I would be more than willing to take a hit on the salary to do something I actually enjoy doing but in reality. I need to be making at least €34K to keep myself a float.

[rich]

I expect this is very country specific. Here in the UK I often see ads for game devs, sometimes contract based, sometimes full time (although not very often, it's mostly contract work). I hire lots of developers (both in my previous job and now) and the one thing I always look at first are the games you've made.

 

Game development is a very specific skill imho. If you've no proven experience of making games, then you're not much use as a game developer I'm afraid, you're more an intern level who would need training up on all the basics first - and sadly salary (and quantity of positions available!) would reflect this.

 

From what you've said I expect you've many years coding experience, so I doubt you'll have any trouble at all picking it up. But if you want to be hired as a game dev you absolutely have to start making some games I'm afraid. I would go for 'quantity' over quality at this point too. Make a "matching pairs" game just to get used to the feel of a game flow, timers, tweens, etc. Making an invaders game to get used to bullet pools, collision, pacing. Make a platform game to get a handle on level design and how that impacts a game flow. In short - make stuff. As long as you don't let feature creep in you will be able to crank them out at quite some pace.