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Nicholas Tippner
CST 300 Writing Lab
9 September 2016
Game Development

When you think about software development, what kind of job do you picture? Perhaps a

job where you are tasked with creating a solution to a company’s database management problem

comes into mind. The reality is, a software developer can ply his trade in every field imaginable.

In this day and age, electronic applications run everything from healthcare to our education

system. And for every application that needs to be created, there is a software developer that

designs and manages its creation. The Bureau of Labor listed over a million people as having a

job as a software developer in 2014, and the projected growth rate for software developer

specializing in applications was 19% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). Getting a bachelor's

degree in computer science is the best first step someone can take towards becoming a software

developer.

While there are many industries that specialize in developing software applications, the

gaming industry is one that specializes entirely in applications. Every game that gets put out by a

major company, like Activision or Naughty Dog, has a team of designers and programmers

experienced with software development that are behind its creation. Several game developers are

subsidiaries of a larger company that publishes the games the developer makes. For example,

Naughty Dog, the makers of the Uncharted series, is a subsidiary of Sony. Microsoft is the

publisher for its own game development division. However, one company outshines the makers

of the Xbox and the PlayStation, making more than the two of them combined in terms of game

revenue in the first quarter of 2016 (Newzoo, 2016a). This company is Tencent, a Chinese

developer and publisher that has made most of its money from its two major game developer

subsidiaries, Supercell and Riot Games.

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Riot Games is a game developer and a subsidiary of Tencent, but stands on its own due to

the fact that it accounts for more than half of Tencent’s revenue, generating $1.6 billion last year

alone from League of Legends, the single game Riot has made (DiChristopher 2016). Riot’s

main office is in Los Angeles, but they have 18 other offices located around the world, three of

those being in the United States (Riot Games, 2016). They employ around a thousand people

who work as artists, engineers, and testers, adding over two hundred jobs last year (Fortune,

2015). While they don’t have as many employees as other game development companies, the

wild success of their only game has established them at the forefront of the multiplayer game

industry, with many other companies still attempting to replicate their success.

Considering the fact that Riot Games makes so much money, has locations around the

world, and employs a large network of people, one might be surprised to learn that the main

source of income for Riot is a single game they released for the PC back in 2009; League of

Legends. The programmers who work for Riot are mostly focused on updating and improving

the seven year old game, with new patches coming in every month. The worldwide influence the

game has is due to heavy localization efforts, with the game being available in several languages

with completely redone voiceovers and sound effects. (MCV UK, 2010) However, not all of

Riot’s extraordinary revenue comes from the game itself. Riot also has an eSports division, in

charge of organizing and broadcasting competitive games and tournaments. On Twitch, a game

streaming site, League of Legends has the highest amount of total hours watched by eSports

viewers (Newzoo 2016b). This just goes to show that League is not only popular enough to have

67 million players a month (Riot Games 2014), it also shows that the game is popular enough to

have hundreds of thousands of people watch the game being played, as well as watch the
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advertisements and buy the merchandise that comes with its status as an international spectator

sport.

Riot Games was founded in 2006 as a video game development company by business

partners Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill. They spent their first couple years talent scouting and

hiring industry veterans with previous experience in designing games. Their big break came

through when they secured seven million dollars of funding from venture capitalist companies

Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital in 2008 (Alexander 2008). Later that year, Riot

announced its first, and so far only, game, League of Legends. The next year, Riot began their

beta testing phase for League of Legends, and received another eight million dollars in funding

from its previous two investors, as well as a new investor named Tencent Holdings (PE Hub,

2009). Towards the end of the year, Riot ended its beta testing phase and released League of

Legends to the public.

When Brandon Beck, the current CEO, and Marc Merrill, the current President, founded

Riot Games in 2006, they didn’t have much experience with designing and programming games.

Both were recent graduates of the USC Marshall School of Business, and both had a passion for

online games (Beck & Merrill, 2011). Before founding Riot Games, Brandon worked as a

strategy consultant for Bain & Company where he specialized in media and entertainment and

private equity while Marc worked as an analyst at USBank and corporate marketing manager at

Advanstar Communications (Gaudiosi, 2013).

The customer satisfaction of Riot Games is proven simply through the amount of people

that play its only game. As the game is free, if people were dissatisfied with the product, they

would simply stop playing it. Founder Brandon Beck said, “The free-to-play model only works

when you’re giving players content and services they value, so we’re really kept on our toes.
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Players aren’t shy about telling us when we’ve screwed up” (Gaudiosi, 2013). As for employee

reputation, Fortune listed Riot Games as the #13 best company to work for, with Riot offering its

employees compressed work weeks and flying them to Korea for fun teambuilding exercises

(Fortune, 2015).

The gaming industry as a whole has grown 8% in the past two years alone, and is

projected to grow 30% from 2014 to 2019. Sales of physical copies of both console and pc

games have fallen, while sales of digital copies of games have gone up. However, the section of

the gaming industry that is expected to experience the most growth are the free-to-

play/microtransaction-based games, which are games that are free to download but make their

money from advertising and small in-game purchases. This industry is projected to grow 17.8%

in the next few years (Takahashi 2015). This is unsurprising considering that the four games that

made over a billion dollars in revenue last year (League of Legends, Clash of Clans, Crossfire,

and Dungeon Fighter Online) all are free-to-play games (DiChristopher, 2016).

If one were to go looking for a software development job right now, in the gaming

industry or otherwise, they would find out that getting hired as a software developer by major

companies tends to require a bachelor’s degree in computer science, years of experience with the

programming languages the company uses, and years of experience with the database the

company uses. It is easy to be discouraged as a college student looking to get their dream job

with little work experience, especially if one is lacking any sort of technical experience.

However, this is a technical industry and while larger companies might be more discriminatory,

smaller startups are less interested in a student’s pedigree and more interested in what a student

can actually do as a programmer and developer. Dave Yarwood, previously a new college

graduate with little work experience, writes of his journey to become a software developer,
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I found that the start-ups I applied to were more flexible about the amount of education

or experience that a job applicant has. At my job interview with Adzerk, we talked about

my open-source projects, what programming languages I liked and disliked (and why),

and how I would approach solving specific problems relevant to what we do. I had a

similar experience when interviewing with other software start-ups. The software

engineers who interviewed me were, for the most part, not concerned that I had little to

no experience with the databases, languages, or frameworks that they use. They were

more interested in whether or not I was the kind of person who would be interested and

driven enough to learn to use them. (Yarwood, 2015)

Software development is a wide, all-encompassing field that is only limited by the

industry one wants to work in. One of the more interesting industries to work in is mobile game

development, specifically mobile games that interact with the real world. Buying new consoles

and PC upgrades every few years is expensive, and as such limits the number of people who

participate in those hobbies. However, many more people have smartphones, and therefore

mobile games reach a larger amount of people. Mix that with a system that encourages

interaction with the world around the player, and the result could be a massively successful game

like Pokémon Go. This game broke new ground, and shows that there is room for success with

this type of mobile entertainment.

While getting a bachelor’s in computer science is a great first step towards becoming a

software developer, it won’t help much with distinguishing themselves from other potential

hires, as having a bachelor’s in computer science tends to be a standard requirement just to have

an application even considered. Fortunately, CSU Monterey Bay offers great core classes and

electives that not only can be listed on a student’s resume to show their specialization into a
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certain industry, but also assigns small projects that can be included in a personal project

portfolio on GitHub. The core classes that I’ll be taking through CSU MB are CST 205, 300,

311, 336, 338, 361S, 363, 370, 373, 438, and 499. 205, 336, 338, 363, and 370 all teach integral

programming languages essential for any programmer such as Python, PHP, Java, C++, and

MySQL. 300, 311, 361S, 373, 438, and 499 teach real-world skills such as critical thinking and

analysis, computer networking skills, service learning, and ethics, as well as providing the

opportunity to demonstrate a student’s knowledge through a capstone project (CSU MB, 2016).

All of these classes together builds a solid base for a student’s understanding of the programming

world and prepares them for a job in the tech industry.

While the core classes taught at CSU MB as part of their Bachelor of Computer Science

program give a good general education towards having a career in a tech field, the electives that

are available to choose give specialized knowledge towards whichever relevant industry a

student plans on going into. Some good electives pertaining to becoming a software developer in

the gaming industry are CST 306, CST 320, CST 321, and CST 421. CST 306 teaches game

engine programming skills and object-oriented techniques, which is useful when attempting to

understand the limitations of what can and can’t be done in various game engines. CST 320 goes

over the process of designing a game as well as the roles of various team members during the

production of a game. As a software developer who might have a team of programmers at their

disposal, this class is crucial to proper resource management. CST 321 and CST 421 both have

students make a game of their own while teaching project management and asset management.

These classes are great to bolster a student’s job portfolio (CSU MB, 2016).

Outside of college, there are many ways to prove that a college graduate has both the

knowledge and the drive to be an expert software developer. One way to prove they are
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knowledgeable with a certain programming language is to get certified in it. C++, C#, or Java are

good languages to get certified in, and companies offering these certifications often have testing

centers all over the country. Another way to prove they are knowledgeable is to have a blog

detailing recent technological advances and industry trends to show that a student is both

passionate and intensely curious about the industry they’re applying to. Of course, companies

want to see that they are capable of applying the knowledge they have into relevant

programming projects. This is why it’s incredibly important to have a GitHub portfolio of

projects that a graduate has worked on personally. Learning programming languages is just like

learning foreign languages, meaning that if you don’t use it consistently, then you’re going to

forget it. And as a software developer, working with a programming language gives the best idea

of its limitations and strengths. It is valuable to have a wide variety of languages included in a

strong portfolio.

To summarize, software development is a flexible occupation that can be applied to many

different industries. Software developers can find jobs in healthcare, finance, and gaming, thanks

to the system application needs of each industry. While large companies provide stability as a

software developer, startups are the best place to start up a career in software development. Riot

Games is a great example of a startup that experienced massive growth because it filled a need

that had not yet been met by any other company. Reading about a successful startup like Riot

convinced me of the potential for success that startups have. I cannot wait to take some college-

level programming classes at CSU MB and start filling my portfolio.

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References

Alexander, L. (2008, July 10). Riot Games Gets a $7M Launch. Retrieved September 09, 2016,

from http://kotaku.com/5023761/riot-games-get-a-7m-launch

Beck, B., & Merrill, M. (2011, April 29). We Started a Riot. Retrieved September 09, 2016, from

https://www.marshall.usc.edu/about/voices/2011/we-started-riot

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2015, December 17). Software developers, job outlook. Retrieved

September 09, 2016, from http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-

technology/software-developers.htm

CSU MB. (2016). Course descriptions. Retrieved September 09, 2016, from

https://csumb.edu/scd/course-descriptions-1

DiChristopher, T. (2016, January 26). Digital gaming sales hit record $61B: Report. Retrieved

September 04, 2016, from http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/26/digital-gaming-sales-hit-

record-61-billion-in-2015-report.html

Fortune. (2015). 100 Best Companies to Work For 2015. Retrieved September 04, 2016, from

http://fortune.com/best-companies/2015/riot-games-13/

Gaudiosi, J. (2013, July 10). How Riot Games Created the Most Popular Game in the World.

Retrieved September 09, 2016, from http://fortune.com/2013/07/10/how-riot-games-

created-the-most-popular-game-in-the-world/

MCV UK. (2010, June 29). Riot Games Chooses XLOC for League of Legends Localization

Management. Retrieved September 20, 2016, from http://www.mcvuk.com/press-

releases/read/riot-games-chooses-xloc-for-league-of-legends-localization-

management/072148

Newzoo. (2016a, April). Top 25 Companies By Game Revenue, April 2016. Retrieved September
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09, 2016, from https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-25-companies-game-revenues/

Newzoo. (2016b, June). New Twitch Rankings: Top Games By Esports And Total Viewing

Hours. Retrieved September 09, 2016, from https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/new-

twitch-rankings-top-games-esports-total-viewing-hours/

PE Hub. (2009, September 9). Riot Games Raises $8 Million. Retrieved September 09, 2016,

from https://www.pehub.com/2009/09/riot-games-raises-8-million/

Riot Games. (2014, January 28). League Players Reach New Heights in 2014. Retrieved

September 04, 2016, from http://www.riotgames.com/articles/20140711/1322/league-

players-reach-new-heights-2014

Takahashi, D. (2015, June 2). U.S. games industry forecast to grow 30 percent to $19.6B by

2019. Retrieved September 04, 2016, from http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/02/u-s-games-

industry-forecast-to-grow-30-to-19-6b-by-2019/

Yarwood, D. (2015, November 17). Getting Your First Programming Job: Not as Hard as You

Think. Retrieved September 09, 2016, from http://adzerk.com/blog/2015/11/getting-your-

first-programming-job-not-as-hard-as-you-think/