🎉 Celebrating 25 Years of GameDev.net! 🎉

Not many can claim 25 years on the Internet! Join us in celebrating this milestone. Learn more about our history, and thank you for being a part of our community!

Navigating the game development world as a teen

Started by
4 comments, last by khawk 7 years, 6 months ago

Hello!

I'm a 14 year-old looking to get into the online game development community. I am mostly self-taught and work with Python and Pygame, although I do eventually want to learn a more advanced language, such as C++. I've been involved in coding for multiple years, but have never really worked on any one consistent project until now. My current game is pretty simple 2-D platformer (see attached pictures), kind of like Super Meat Boy, which I've been working on for about 2 months now. My long term goal is to get it onto Steam Greenlight, and then perhaps even have it Greenlit, but that's obviously a very hard thing to do. So if anyone has any tips on how to get to get to that point, I would really like to hear them. Thanks!

Advertisement

You have been doing the right thing. You just need to continue doing so for several more years. Keep making games, keep expanding your knowledge, and don't be afraid to try and fail.

Wow, good work! I started making games at 16, and they really sucked. But I never gave up and I eventually got better and better at programming and software development :)

I had my game greenlit on steam. My advice is to make your game as good as you can possibly make it. Worry about every detail until you get it just right. Then, have your friends play your game. Don't tell them anything about how to play the game, let them figure it out. If the game doesn't teach them how to play it, then its not ready for the public yet. You won't be standing over everyones shoulders teaching them how to play your game once you put it up on steam. You can design your game levels in clever ways to ensure that people can't progress unless they've learned how to do a simple game concept :)

Lastly, everything that you learn in school can help you become a better game developer! Math is super important. You use that all the time in programming and physics! Art is super important because you have to create art assets. So is music! And games are really about building new worlds and understanding how those worlds work, so science is super important too! Science is all about creating models for understanding reality. And let's not forget English and writing! If your game has a story, you need to write it, and writing is something that takes practice, and even if you don't write stories for your game, you will have to write design documents to communicate clearly with other members on your team. Don't forget to have fun and work hard :)

I totally agree that the game has to be in top shape before it an be released.

But what about more of the marketing side of things? I've heard that getting people in the know about your game is just as important as its quality. More specifically, how would I use this forum and perhaps other social media platforms to 'advertise' my game, without being to blatant about it?

how would I use this forum ... to 'advertise' my game


You can advertise your game in the Your Announcements board.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com

More specifically, how would I use this forum and perhaps other social media platforms to 'advertise' my game, without being to blatant about it?

As Tom mentioned, the Your Announcements and Indie Showcase forums are made for this. Also, if you're disciplined enough to maintain a blog you can use the Developer Journals - several indies have done this for years.

Admin for GameDev.net.

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement