Just because I’ve been kind of following this on the past few months/years, I figured I’d post a little about it: the game industry is changing, and with the current wave of evolution of games and game engines, user interface design is becoming more and more of an issue. While most of the skills of the Flash designer and programmer doesn’t immediately translate to this new medium (at least technically wise), it’s incredible how much of a resemblance graphical user design for games is similar to the one you find on rich Flash-based websites in concept.

With that said, here’s some tips for anyone looking to break into this dream/nightmare industry via the user interface door:

First: Epic Games, creators of the Unreal series and of course the Unreal engine, are looking for a Motion Graphics/Graphics Designer. From the skills and requirements mentioned, they’re looking for someone to do game interface as well as some motion graphics; they cite Flash as one example. This opening has been on the site for quite a while, so if you’re looking to work with what is one of the leading companies on the field, there it is. They’re on the United States.

My request to the person filling this position: please work hard on requesting the unification of the GUI system into one single thing and stop the insanity (GUIPage, Vignette, Canvas, etc). Please make font/style classes not suck anymore and ask programmers to fix the texture generated by the truetypefontfactory command. Please also ask programmers to create a new ImgStyle that works like ISTY_Stretched but that you can set the scale based on the resolution. While you’re at it, also please try putting to use a new system for user interface elements, as in XUL with CSS or something really generic and easy to use like that, and make sure it’s something that can be reloaded while in-game for debugging (kinda like the DOOM 3 GUI system). Oh, and be sure to try and create a new transition class, as the current Animate() stuff is pretty bad — something more generic & practical like MC Tween or the built-in transition classes on Flash MX 2004 would be wonderful. I know, that’s a lot to ask, but hey, I’ve been playing with this for a while and I’m one whiny fellow.

Second: DICE, creators of the Battlefield series – including the marvelous-but-buggy-as-hell recent Battlefield 2 – are looking for an user interface designer, to, guess what, design the interface of the game. And get this, they cite Flash knowledge as a requirement. They’re on Sweden, even though the page is in English.

My request to the person filling this position: please make a responsive interface that works.

I’ll hopefully try something similar… in three years and a half, when I’ll have my bachelor’s degree in digital interface design.

Update: How could I forget this one?

Third: Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the Warcraft and Starcraft series, are looking for a 2D interface artist. The common set of requirements is mentioned, although the skill set they’re looking for seem to be a bit more geared towards the texturing and illustration side. They’re also located on the United States.

My request to the person filling this position: The Lost Vikings… Rock’n Roll Racing.. grumble grumble… oh well, nevermind.