Many individuals are looking to break into a video game designing career, and it's no surprise. A $9 billion industry, the video game designing business has appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. High salaries and high rates of job satisfaction are typical in the field.

In order to design video games, however, you need a certain skill set. Computer programming is first on the list. While games are made using almost all languages, the most popular programming language for video games is C++, because of its object-oriented nature and because it compiles to binary. The next most popular languages for games are C and Java, but others such as C# and assembly language are also used. A strong background in math is usually required to learn these languages. Individuals wishing to design games should also have an extensive knowledge of both PCs and Macs.

There are many colleges and universities that offer classes not only in programming but also classes specifically on game design. Some of these schools have alliances with game developing companies, leading to jobs for students upon graduation. Programming video games can be lucrative. The average game designer's salary is $62,500, with $55,000 at the low end and $85,000 at the high end.

Programmers are not the only individuals needed to make a video game, however. There are multiple career paths within the gaming industry, including specialists in audio, design, production, visual arts and business.

Designing a video game can be an long, expensive process. The average budget for a modern multiplatform video game is $18-$28 million, with some high-profile games costing as much as $40 million. Making the game, from conception to sale, can take several months to several years. Some games have taken a notoriously long time to make; for example, 3D Realms' Duke Nukem Forever was announced in April 1997 and did not make it to shelves until July 2011.

Video game programmers have a high level of job satisfaction. In a March 2013 survey conducted by Game Developer magazine, 29 percent of game programmers were very satisfied with their jobs, and 39 percent were somewhat satisfied.

If you're interested in a game development career, now's the time to get moving. Take advantage of the many online resources available regarding these careers and start learning right away.

Much of success is about performance. It’s about what we do and what we are able to inspire others to do. There are some simple performance principles I have learned in my life, and I want to share them with you.  They really bring success, and what it takes to be successful, into sharp focus. They are also the basis for developing and maintaining an expectation of success.

The Five Principles of Performance

1. We generally get from ourselves and others what we expect. It is a huge fact that you will either live up or down to your own expectations. If you expect to lose, you will. If you expect to be average, you will be average. If you expect to feel bad, you probably will. If you expect to feel great, nothing will slow you down. And what is true for you is true for others. Your expectations for others will become what they deliver and achieve. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

2. The difference between good and excellent companies is training. The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them! A football team would not be very successful if they did not train, practice, and prepare for their opponents. When you think of training as practice and preparation, it makes you wonder how businesses survive that do not make significant training investments in their people.

Actually, companies that do not train their people and invest in their ability don’t last. They operate from a competitive disadvantage and are eventually gobbled up and defeated in the marketplace. If you want to improve and move from good to excellent, a good training strategy will be the key to success.

In programming, memory leaks are a common issue, and it occurs when a computer uses memory but does not give it back to the operating system. Experienced programmers have the ability to diagnose a leak based on the symptoms. Some believe every undesired increase in memory usage is a memory leak, but this is not an accurate representation of a leak. Certain leaks only run for a short time and are virtually undetectable.

Memory Leak Consequences

Applications that suffer severe memory leaks will eventually exceed the memory resulting in a severe slowdown or a termination of the application.

How to Protect Code from Memory Leaks?

Preventing memory leaks in the first place is more convenient than trying to locate the leak later. To do this, you can use defensive programming techniques such as smart pointers for C++.  A smart pointer is safer than a raw pointer because it provides augmented behavior that raw pointers do not have. This includes garbage collection and checking for nulls.

If you are going to use a raw pointer, avoid operations that are dangerous for specific contexts. This means pointer arithmetic and pointer copying. Smart pointers use a reference count for the object being referred to. Once the reference count reaches zero, the excess goes into garbage collection. The most commonly used smart pointer is shared_ptr from the TR1 extensions of the C++ standard library.

Static Analysis

The second approach to memory leaks is referred to as static analysis and attempts to detect errors in your source-code. CodeSonar is one of the effective tools for detection. It provides checkers for the Power of Ten coding rules, and it is especially competent at procedural analysis. However, some might find it lagging for bigger code bases.

How to Handle a Memory Leak

For some memory leaks, the only solution is to read through the code to find and correct the error. Another one of the common approaches to C++ is to use RAII, which an acronym for Resource Acquisition Is Initialization. This approach means associating scoped objects using the acquired resources, which automatically releases the resources when the objects are no longer within scope. RAII has the advantage of knowing when objects exist and when they do not. This gives it a distinct advantage over garbage collection. Regardless, RAII is not always recommended because some situations require ordinary pointers to manage raw memory and increase performance. Use it with caution.

The Most Serious Leaks

Urgency of a leak depends on the situation, and where the leak has occurred in the operating system. Additionally, it becomes more urgent if the leak occurs where the memory is limited such as in embedded systems and portable devices.

To protect code from memory leaks, people have to stay vigilant and avoid codes that could result in a leak. Memory leaks continue until someone turns the system off, which makes the memory available again, but the slow process of a leak can eventually prejudice a machine that normally runs correctly.

Related:

The Five Principles of Performance

In Demand IT Skills