Another way to tell is when you give up a promising IT career in the aerospace industry in Philadelphia and take a pay cut to go to work for a video game company in California.

That's what Jackson did. The 1992 graduate of Howard University in computer-based information systems now works as an associate producer at Electronics Arts (http://www.ea.com), an interactive entertainment software publisher in Redwood City, Calif. The company develops and markets games for personal computers and for game systems such as PlayStation and Nintendo 64. 

Having grown up amid the cultist popularity of the Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario games and the old Atari and Commodore systems, Jackson, 31, is one of a growing number of African-American IT students and professionals opting for careers in the video games industry. For creative, talented people who can combine technical and artistic skills -- and maybe like a little living on the edge -- career opportunities await.

Cool Jobs Aplenty

Jobs are plentiful throughout high-tech, and the video games industry is no exception. A recent review of Electronic Arts' Web site revealed 104 available jobs. In a take-off from the David Letterman Show, Electronic Arts, which has 3,100 employees world-wide, lists on its Web site the "Top Ten Reasons" to work for the company. "Cause it's the coolest place to hang out while doing what you love," is number one.

When he received an e-mail message from a former Howard roommate, five years ago, telling him Electronic Arts was hiring video game testers for the summer, Jackson sprang into action and let company representatives know he was seeking a full-time position in the industry. He sent in his resume, did two telephone interviews, and the rest is history. He no longer gets to work on rocket ships, other than in the virtual world, but Jackson wouldn't have it any other way.

"They flew me out, I interviewed for an assistant producer's job, and they offered me a job on the spot," Jackson says.
He returned to GE Aerospace, now Lockheed Martin, where he was working full time after spending two years as an intern at the company, near his hometown of Philadelphia, and told his boss he was leaving.

"I came back and told my boss that I can either continue buying all these video games, or I can help make them. So I turned in my two-week's notice and moved out to California," Jackson says. 
At Electronic Arts, Jackson is involved in the creative design of games. He has worked on Madden Football and now has NCAA March Madness in front of him, in the company's sports games division.

Talents in Demand

Video gaming is big business. In 1999, the industry -- comprising games for consoles, personal computers, and the Internet -- logged revenues of $6.1 billion in the United States, according to the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), an industry group. This figure does not include billions more dollars in export sales.

Once popular mainly among young males, video games are seeing a surge in demand, particularly among females, the IDSA says. A survey commissioned by the association showed that 145 million Americans routinely play computer or video games, and 43 percent of them are female. In 1999, 215 million games were sold, a 19 percent increase over the previous year.

Sega announced last October that only one month after its release, more than 100,000 gamers had signed up for the company's SegaNet Dreamcast network (http://www.sega.net), which allows gamers anywhere to compete against one another, online.
"It's a big industry, it's constantly growing, and there's always demand for talent," says David Cole, president of DFC Intelligence, a San Diego market research company that tracks the industry.
IT professionals find the industry appealing, because the technology used to create games is on the cutting edge, Cole says.

"What it requires now is just a whole range of talent skills -- from basic computer programming to graphic arts skills to music and animation skills. It's comparable to skills you would find in a major movie production, but a lot more technology intensive," Cole says.

Testy Personalities

Ruben S. Brown, 27, a senior lead tester at Absolute Quality, Inc. (http://www.aqinc.com), a 220-employee games testing company in Hunt Valley, Md., says he, too, was attracted to the industry because of his penchant for gaming. He has been at the company for four years.

Brown admits that he would rather start his workday by popping a video game into his computer than by having to, say, manipulate a spreadsheet.

"You have to have a bit of a personality that's slightly anal retentive. It's more for quality assurance, because you have to be thinking of doing everything logically and illogically," he says. 
As a tester, his job is to "provide constructive criticism where necessary to bring out a pretty decent game," Brown says. 
"We will get what the programmers have basically compiled. We will look at it and put it in its most extreme circumstance. If it is a multiplayer game, for instance, we will try to have everybody log in at one time and stretch out the host machine or try to work out every last possible permutation of game play. We try to see if there is any way we can make the program crash or perform in an inappropriate manner."

Brown has been playing games since 1978, collecting them with his brother and hanging out at video arcades in Baltimore. His favorites are action, fighting, and strategy games.

Race and Revenue

Terrie Thomas, a team leader and Brown's colleague at Absolute Quality, says that, as an African American, she is in a position to offer programmers criticism about game elements that stereotype people. She believes this is an area where African Americans working in the industry can be helpful, because of their unique perspectives on race in America.

Thomas says she once tested an educational game that had an African-American character whose movements, such as head-rolling and eye-rolling, were out of kilter.

"You would be surprised," Thomas says about things she sees in games. "You may come across a game that may be degrading. It happens in just about all the products. Some developers think it is humorous, or they might be ignorant because they believe that's the way that it is."

Market researcher Cole says the video games industry, particularly the larger, console segment, tries to stay as neutral as possible about ethnicity. Too many dollars are at stake to offend one group or another, he says. 

Cole adds that video game consumers closely mirror the national population, so minorities account for a representative chunk of industry revenues.

"It's very mass market. It looks like the way America looks, in terms of the demographics," Cole says.  According to "The Buying Power of Black America," a research report from Target Market News (http://www.targetmarketnews.com), a Chicago market research company, African Americans had $491 billion in earned income in 1999. Of that, they spent $1.2 billion on computers and related equipment; $2.1 billion on consumer electronics, including video game consoles; and $2.2 billion on entertainment and leisure.

For the Love of the Games

Testers and others in the games industry typically work on multiple projects simultaneously. Workers usually start as testers and then get proficient enough, over time, to create and develop their own games, says Thomas, 31.

"It opens up other avenues in the technical field," she says. "They start off being a tester, and they feel, 'Well, I want to make my own game.' It's like a steppingstone."

Brown says finding a job in the video game industry is like finding one anywhere else: You look for openings and apply for them. For African Americans seeking computer-programming experience, the video games industry offers a conduit for learning.

"Any kind of experience on this level would help not only with games but with application software as well. You get a chance to see somebody else's work. You get to see raw, compiled data. You get a chance to look at these products in their many stages," Brown says.

Jackson sees another fringe benefit in working in the industry: He likes his job.  "It's not always about making the top dollar.... It's more about getting paid to do something you really enjoy," he says. "It doesn't make sense to get paid $100,000 a year but to dread waking up every morning to go to work. It would be better to make $75,000 a year and actually enjoy going out to go to work."
Brown, who has tested games ranging from Wheel of Fortune to Battleship to Mr. Potatohead, during his career, says working in the industry gives him great satisfaction, also, because he gets to be creative. He only needs to be in a mall when consumers are checking out the latest games.

"When they go by and see the game being demonstrated in the front window of a retailer, and you go past and you look at that, and you hear them say, 'Man, did you see how hard he hit that guy! That guy flipped head over heels!'
"That's a good feeling," Brown says.