Introduction
In the following analytical report, two careers choices are compared: entrepreneurship and video game development. The overall purpose of this report is to determine which career is the ideal for a prospective job-seeker to pursue, according to several criteria: education requirements, salary and job security. The assessment of these occupations is performed using scholarly literature from both books and journal articles dealing with the subject of each profession's advantages and disadvantages. First, entrepreneurship will be examined using the aforementioned criteria; a similar assessment of video game development shall follow. Finally, a recommendation will be made regarding which career is preferred.
An entrepreneur, in short, is an individual who operates their own business with their own capital. There is no restriction to industry or field when one becomes an entrepreneur; the term is open-ended and can apply to any market (Gartner, 2002). In essence, an entrepreneur takes an idea or a mission statement and starts their own business with it; they are effectively self-employed, implementing their idea to organize the means to create and/or sell said product. Innovative entrepreneurs provide a new product, market or good and inject it into the market, while adoptive (or imitative) entrepreneurs simply apply the ideas of others to base their business around.
Education
No formal education is required to be an entrepreneur; it is entirely possible to become one with little to no education. However, there are many entrepreneurs who benefit from undergraduate to post-graduate degrees in business management, accounting, marketing and more. Because of the inventiveness required in creating a successful entrepreneurship in an emerging market, a proactive personality must be developed and cultivated, whether through education or personal development (Persinger, Civi and Vostina, 2007).
Salary
Because entrepreneurs are starting a business from the ground up, and are employing themselves to run this business, their revenue will be based entirely on the profits from the company; they are paying themselves with the success of the business. Because entrepreneurs often take on the risks of the business itself, their compensation may be limited at first. However, in the event a self-created business becomes secure and profitable, entrepreneurs can set their own salaries. Compensation varies depending on the industry, but successful entrepreneurs can make an average of approximately $65,000 a year in shared profits, in addition to between $1,000 and $15,000 in bonuses (Gartner, 2002).
Job Security/Marketplace
Most entrepreneurs find themselves in manufacturing, wholesaling, service or retail businesses, as their business revolves around the selling of a product or good. As a result, the success of these entrepreneurs depends greatly on the performance of these markets. Entrepreneurs have the ability to set their own salary, but that is because they also take on all of the risk of the business's success or failure; the danger of entrepreneurship is that the individual is responsible for all assets and operating costs, which can backfire if the business does not survive. Half of all entrepreneurial businesses do not survive after four years; this makes becoming an entrepreneur a risky proposition (Hartog, van Praag and van der Sluis, 2010).
Video Game Developer
Video game development involves the design and creation of video games; a video game developer can contribute to any aspect of the game creation process, from designers to programmers to writers and beyond. It is an open-ended title that can refer to any stage of the video game creation process, and so a diverse set of skills can be required at any one time to fulfill these goals.
Education
In order to become a video game developer, a great deal of education is needed. There are undergraduate and graduate degrees in video game design and programming, as well as training courses and certifications one can gain to learn programming languages such as Flash or Java, as well as video game modeling programs. In order to create a game, a great deal of knowledge about computers and video game consoles is required; this involves substantial time and money expended in said education (Balland, De Vaan and Boschma, 2012).
Salary
Video game developers are paid depending on their profile or position; there are certain tiers of video game development, from first-tier developers (Nintendo, Sony's Polyphony Digital) to second-party developers (Insomniac Games, Valve) all the way down to independent developers who make their games on their own, without ties to a specific console or distributor (Ding, Hicks and Ju, 2011).The average salary for a video game developer is about $73,000 a year, though that varies wildly depending on the development company one works for (Balland, De Vaan and Boschma, 2012).
Job Security/Marketplace
The video games industry is a thriving marketplace, with the global video game industry being valued at nearly $65 billion as of 2010 (Gil & Warzynski, 2010). The advent of the Internet has also made third-party and independent game development an increasingly profitable and viable enterprise. However, the top-heavy nature of the video games industry means that, in order to maintain the kind of average salary mentioned above, one has to ally themselves with a second- or first-tier development company, of which there are comparatively few. Job security is largely dependent on the success of the game being developed; market forces will determine if the game is a hit or a miss, the latter making the loss of one's job plausible. One can also run the risk of obsolescence by your own products, as video games are "durable goods" that can make it unnecessary to make new products the market does not necessarily desire (Ding, Hicks and Ju, 2011).
Recommendation/Conclusion
Given the comparison of the marketplaces, education requirements, salary and job security of entrepreneurship and video game development, it is clear that video game development is the preferable career choice. Though entrepreneurship allows for a wider scope of success if the business takes off, and a wide variety of industries one can start in, it does not have nearly the level of job security or consistency in the marketplace that video game development has. The fact that half of all entrepreneurial businesses do not survive four years, in addition to the fact that a great deal of personal risk is incurred becoming an entrepreneur, are significant discouraging factors in the pursuit of that line of employment. Despite the added education needed to become a video game developer (as opposed to the open-ended level of education required for entrepreneurship), it provides a unique and quantifiable set of skills that can be leveraged into quality, high-paying work that is often thought to be rewarding (Ding, Hicks and Ju, 2011). To that end, video game development is the safer, more logical choice that incurs less risk while promising comparable compensation. References
Balland, P., De Vaan, M., and Boschma, R. (2012). The dynamics of interfirm networks along the industry life cycle: The case of the global video game industry, 1987–2007. Journal of Economic Geography.
Carland, H., Carland, J. W., & Hoy, F. (2002). " Who is an entrepreneur?" Is a question worth asking. Entrepreneurship: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management 2:178.
Ding, Y., Hicks, D., & Ju, J. (2011). Competing with your own products: Endogenous planned obsolescence in the video game industry. Available at SSRN 1886479.
Gil, R., & Warzynski, F. (2010). Vertical Integration, Exclusivity and Game Sales Performance in the US Video Game Industry. Exclusivity and Game Sales Performance in the US Video Game Industry (September 30, 2010) .NET Institute Working Paper, (10-06).
Hartog, J., Van Praag, M., & Van Der Sluis, J. (2010). If you are so smart, why aren't you an entrepreneur? Returns to cognitive and social ability: Entrepreneurs versus employees. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 19(4): 947-989.
Persinger E.S., Civi, E., and Vostina, S.W. (2007). The born global entrepreneur in emerging economies. International Business & Economics Research Journal 6(3): 73-83.
