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I'm a Software Engineer who has developed small video game projects in college and in my free time. I'm currently struggling with explaining video game concepts such as "health points", "level", and "experience" to an audience that may not understand video games.

How would I explain such things in a resume at a technical level that anyone could understand?

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    Explanations of concepts don't really belong in a resume, period. Whether and how you mention or explain these terms in an interview would heavily depend on what you're trying to say. It sounds like you might be trying to give a detailed explanation of how the game works, where you instead should stick to a brief, high-level summary and further focus on the technical complexity and challenges of the project (unless you're applying for a game dev role, in which case you probably don't need to explain these concepts, but being asked to explain it could be a test).
    – Bernhard Barker
    Feb 6, 2018 at 11:19
  • The resume should be a high level overview of what it is and include potential frameworks, coding languages, API, and maybe even how many people downloaded it or what review they gave it. Never talk about indepth details about what the game is about or how to play it. Just technologies you used and if it is a big hit explain that.
    – Dan
    Feb 6, 2018 at 14:11

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Short answer: You don't.

These particular attributes are excessive detail that don't add to the story you're trying to tell as a professional software developer. Explain the tasks that you undertook, the process you followed and the technologies you used. You can express in terms of having to manage variable configuration as players progress through your game, but the nitty gritty doesn't really give the reader any useful information in terms of your capacity to create a complex application.

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    Thanks for the answer! I see what you mean, it's more impressive to be able to explain it technically.
    – Scrungo
    Feb 6, 2018 at 3:58
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    @Scrungo It's simply a matter of focusing on what's important to your audience. You are trying to demonstrate your knowledge of software engineering, not video games :)
    – Jane S
    Feb 6, 2018 at 4:14
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    no, technical explanations are not more impressive, except maybe to you. Nobody looks at a skyscraper and wonders what type of sand they used in the concrete...
    – dandavis
    Feb 6, 2018 at 4:44
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    "explain it technically" Be careful with this. Focus on your accomplishments. "Published a game that got 10k downloads in the app store" is impressive. "Ran an online game with 500 concurrent users" is impressive. Even something simple like "successfully published 7 different games" is a definite plus. How you implemented hps and xp in those games is way too much for a resume. Even applying to a games company they don't really want that. When you score an interview, that is your chance to talk about interesting technical challenges that you overcame in those projects.
    – GrandOpener
    Feb 6, 2018 at 8:00
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    A non-game company won't care how you implemented hit points, since they have no use for it. A game company won't care how you implemented hit points, since they already know how you do it. The only exception is if you invented a completely novel, revolutionary way of implementing hit points, that is going to turn the industry on its head and make your potential future employer truckloads of money … but probably even then you wouldn't have to explain it because they would have approached you with an offer because of that. Unless you are the inventor of something like TrueSkill, just don't.
    – Jörg W Mittag
    Feb 6, 2018 at 8:34

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