Over the past few years, gaming on social networking sites and mobile gaming has dramatically increased, and as a consequence people have been able to make successful Careers around this. The reason for this is rather simple – manufacturing games for mobile phones and social networking sites takes up less time, commitment, and set-up costs in comparison to producing games for consoles. So for anyone who is interested in starting up a New career in games development, then these are the places to start. There will be a wide range of New careers for you to advance into, should you be successful with the games you create. We will look at the increase in popularity of these games over the past few years, and different Careers you can venture into.

The major boost for small games makers in the past few years has been the explosion in popularity of the social networking site Facebook. With over 500 million active users as of July 2010, it has been no small wonder that the gaming applications available through Facebook have seen an increase in popularity. One especially popular Facebook application is the Farmville application, with over 61 million users registered in June 2010. So as you can picture, the scope here for earning money from these games is huge. Now while the initial download and playing of the game is free, money is generally made by providing marketing space to companies whilst the game is running. The major money generator in these situations however, are the micro-transactions which exist in the games. These micro-transactions, so called because they permit you to purchase items or money for use within the game for real-life money, are typically only small sums of money, perhaps a few pounds at a time. Of course however, with a large user base like what Farmville has, these transactions quickly rise up to massive amounts of profits for the games manufacturers. Of course not all games will get to anywhere near the amount of popularity as a game such as Farmville, however it is still a very good place for you to start a New careers, as preliminary development and set-up costs can be quite low – all you need is a great idea!

The same principle relates to mobile gaming, which has also seen a big increase in popularity as improving technology means mobile phones are able to manage more demanding graphics, meaning gaming is becoming ever more popular. Development for mobile phone applications is generally supported by the makers of mobile phones – for example, Apple have a developer kit available for a moderately low cost, and it supplies people with the tools they need to develop applications and games for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Of course you must have a good idea, and creating a game that is popular and liked by many will take time and commitment from you. However, once you are flourishing, you will have gaming experience which you will then be able to enhance, should you be thinking about console game programming in your future New careers. However you may also decide that creating games for social networking is taxing enough – the choice is yours!