Turning the ship around...

Indefinite Integral · 2015-08-20T14:25:17

Hello gamedev community! I am currently studying Mechanical Engineering as my bachelor major, starting my second year. When I first started out, I was around 80% sure that this was the path I wanted to go. But due to oil market plummeting, my country's job prospect in the oil sector (which is what I was primarily aiming for with this major, apart from aeronatics and robotics), I've started thinking on other choices. I have always played video games for as long as I can remember, and it sparked so much of my imagination. My main drive to do this is not to simply create X game I've had on my mind for the last few years. It's the beauty of game development itself, the mix of heavily technical stuff and art, achieving the most complex form of art we humans have made. When playing games like Penumbra and Amnesia in high school, as well as the MMORPG Darkfall Online, I realized the beauty of this interactive media was not only in entertainment, but the ability to summon real life feelings so intense from the in-game content, bringing an incredible amount of depth to the narratives. I've never been more afraid of the dark than that time I had to sneak around in the cellar in Amnesia. I've never experienced such an intense adrenaline kick than the PvP battles in Darkfall Online, almost reaching the levels of death anxiety. And the level of self-satisfactory achievement feeling when I had run through all my 35 or so pirated Playstation 1 games was higher than any of my As in school or sports championship gold medals.In high school, I was really into the thought of game designing (duh, that's a first..). My high school course was basically multimedia production (got thought in every media discipline, from film production, photography, image editing, journalism, animation, sound design) and from this, I've always been thinking that I have some nice basic skills to bring with me into the game industry as a bonus... But the reason I didn't pick Computer Science or something similar after high school, was because I had literally zero advanced maths or physics knowledge, and the math I had at that time seemed so difficult to me (the most "advanced" maths we had was curved functions, no differential or integral calculus.)Time flies, and I'm now studying ME as previously stated, and I already finished the calculus classes and physics with pretty good grades. Already did some basic Java programming with eclipse, and some solidworks modeling (not really comparable to proper 3d-modelling in Maya etc. though). Prior programming experience is just ActionScript 2.0, a little bit of AS 3.0 in flash, and some HTML and CSS which bored the crap out of me at that point. In high school, I always liked flash coding more than web development. And now I'm stuck, contemplating to drop out of second year ME, and rather wait till next year to start on CS? Or just go all the way and finish my bachelor in ME first, and learn C# on the side of my studies, and after I finish ME, find a job and keep the C#/C++ programming on the side for 1-2 years, before eventually taking some proper game design studies? Perhaps see if I like ME out in the field? Anyone with any experience regarding any of this, that can give some tips on how I can get from ME to a career in game design/development? I just want some insight from people doing this professionally, if any of my ideas sound reasonable, and if there's some tips you guys can give. Not sure if this is the right section to post this in, my apologies if I missed the right one. Cheers!

Games Career Development Business

Started by Mar Tin August 19, 2015 11:22 AM

10 comments, last by Tom Sloper 9 years, 3 months ago

Gian-Reto

7,096

August 20, 2015 10:13 AM

First off, thanks for the positive responses everybody! Secondly, to the moderators, sorry for missing the section; I'll check out the FAQ asap!

Regarding some of the responses, I am from Norway. And there's alot of dark predictions for the oil sector in the future. A few months back, the first cut in Statoil involved around 2500 people getting fired, the second round will be approximately the same number. Other companies are no longer recruiting mechanical engineering graduates, not even petroleum engineers. Not that I'm so terribly sorry for my sake that this is happening, it's more dim for all those people standing without jobs in an already competitive job market here. The trend might turn in a couple of years, but I don't want to wait too long to find out if that path is the right one. Regardless of that, I think learning some proper coding would be invaluable anyways. I think finishing what I started with ME first is the best choice regardless.

The market for game developers ain't the best here either, although game companies get state funding usually if it's needed to kickstart a project. Apart from that, I am ready to move out into the world. I know around 3 start-ups doing game development, most of the people are friends I used to play with that just ended up starting their own projects. Might have a good shot there once I get some proper programming or 3d-modelling skills. I do have some minor "modding" experience, creating custom maps for Age of Mythology, the PS2 game Shinobido, some CS:S maps, but none of them really involved any coding.

When I did some basic java coding at my university, I didn't really find it that hard. But I don't think java is the best option either long term, which is why I'm aiming at C#. Not sure if that is too much water over my head for the time being though... Is Java worth sticking with for the time being?

Lucky you, you are living just next to sweden, which seems to be in the top 3 when it comes to europes game dev hubs (Sweden, UK, Germany, at least that was the list when I looked last).... so you only would need to relocate to a country right next to yours, most probably.

Having said that, taking into account your fears of not finding a job as ME and Code Fox' quite grim outlook on the job market as an insider, why don't you check the possibility to switch to an CS / Software Engineering degree? Programmers and Software Engineers are always in high demand in all industries, and at least for the next few years that will most likely not change (as opposed to oil as a finite resource).

With a general degree you still have lots of doors open should your game dev career aspirations not take off, or you find it not to your liking some years down the road.

Be aware that for game development, C++ will be most sought after (followed by C# because of the popularity of Unity, then a whole host of other languages for all the smaller engines out there), so if you can decide on courses to take for your CS degree, favour C++ over Java (which is most popular for business programming) and C# (which is second to Java in the business world, and second to C++ in the game dev world)... but this is way too early to talk about yet

Tom Sloper

17,252

August 20, 2015 02:25 PM

tips on how I can get from ME to a career in game design/development?

You have some options to choose from. You can switch majors, or you can finish your ME degree. For the immediate time being, those are your big-picture options, it seems to me. You can get to game design either way. You can get to game development either way (game design and game development aren't necessarily the same thing - don't conflate them). Now to choose between those two options, consider the pros and cons of each. Consider ALL the pros and cons. I recommend you make a decision grid. http://www.sloperama.com/advice/m70.htm
As for how one gets into game development, there isn't one magic way to do it. Every person has to find his own way, and people have done it in a myriad of ways. So the "how" is an unrelated question having very little to do with your decision.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com