Job title: Chief creative officer

Companies that hire them: Companies in the small, but growing "serious games" business. These include WILL Interactive, Virtual Heroes, ExperiencePoint, and BreakAway Games, but the vast majority of companies in the $400 million sector create graphics-based games, not live-action films like WILL.

How to find out about openings: Contact the companies.

How much you can earn: $100,000 or more depending on your experience and talent, company size, and breadth of responsibility, says Jeffrey Hall of WILL Interactive.

Useful skills: Screenwriting or other filmmaking skills. Also, experience in instructional design and management, as well as the ability to create complicated nonlinear branching stories, which baffle most game designers.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: There are dozens of serious gaming companies in the United States, and most, if not all, have creative directors.

If you’re a bomb-disposal technician, a hostage negotiator, or a suicide-prevention specialist, Jeffrey Hall has a game for you. Hall creates interactive movies for WILL Interactive, the Potomac, Maryland-based maker of experiential learning programs, which he helped found in 1994.

But Hall’s simulations don’t teach users the intricacies of dismantling bombs; his games are focused on ways to manage feelings and behaviors to get through situations most people are never formally trained to handle.

One of the company’s simulations, Gator Six, written and directed by Hall and developed for the Army in 2004, puts the player in the position of a captain possibly on the brink of leading his troops into war. On his first day on the job, the young captain gets a phone call from a creditor saying that one of his soldiers is in financial trouble. That call is immediately interrupted by another. It’s the captain’s wife telling him that there is a huge leak in the house. Meanwhile, the captain is informed that a piece of equipment necessary for battle is damaged, and he learns of a rumor that his battery is about to be deployed. Finally, his superior notifies him that the captain is needed in a top-secret meeting immediately. He has time for only one decision before he has to go to the meeting. What would you do?