Hi all! I need to ask you a question.

The question is - how do i get to game development industry?

But don't try answer it just yet - I need to give you a little of background about myself, about what I want to achieve, and about what thorns I have in my side. It will be a lot of text, and it can be a bit emotional, but I need to explain to you all of it for you to have complete understanding of my situation. TL;DR..

I'm 26, and I lived all my life with that idea in my mind that I will become a game developer one day. I was excited by PS1 games, than i've got PC, and my excitement only grew up. My target goal is to do something special, something big enough, in team of people with same sparks in the eyes as it is in mine. It can be indie team, or AA, AAA team - I don't know it yet, but I think that this is not so important right now.

Who I am and what about my skills right now? Well, I have a degree in CS, specifically in discipline, that called Program Engineering in my university. My main language is C#, second is C++ (I know it not so bad, but fact that I've never wrote any middle-to-big project with that language tells a lot about my expertise in that field).

In course of my learning, we've created 3 game projects with a group of 3 people. This games was never released, was written on XNA/C#, and each consisted of one level with some amount of gameplay. I've learned a lot through this projects - a bit of physics (collision detection algorithms, such as GJK, EPA, Edge Clipping, SAT), a bit of networking (our game was multiplayer on sockets), a bit of math (ocean floor simulation with help of Tessendorf's paper), a bit of graph algorithms etc.

After my grade, I came to work in a local bank, in which I still work by today. In bank, I program in C#, most of the time, and learnt a couple of enterprise C# technologies - WCF, EF, Windows COM+; a bit of .NET Framework internals; worked with Oracle and PostgreSQL, wrote native (Xamarin) Android applications, practiced MVC, MVP, DDD, etc.

At my work I found a friend, who wants to do games too. We plan to dig together in this direction. Now we're learning Unity development in our free time - overall architectural principles, some cool features like VFX Graph, Shader Graph, NavMesh, Audio System, etc. Also we learn some other programs, like Blender, Photoshop, etc. We try our best to get deep understanding of things that we learn, but our knowledge is overall a little bit fragmented in my opinion.

We can't go university and get a grade in game development, because there is no one here where we live. We can't become junior game developers here either, because gamedev in our country is not existent. And I assume that we really need to relocate somewhere, because of many reasons. But, unfortunately, we have little to no financial backup from our families (in my case, I AM financial backup for my family), and we simply can't blindly jump in nowhere in hope of landing somewhere.

I know what you can say - gamedev industry isn't a place of stability, and you probably need to find another industry for financial stability, and remain gamedev as a hobby. But I can't.. this is my life's dream, and I refuse to give up.

So.. we need a solid plan, of how do we quit our job, reallocate and start a new career without big time lag. There is my thoughts on subject:

1. We will need financial backup for first time - ok, I think we can deal with that with our current job
2. We need to know if our skillsets is enough to be a competitive candidate - I don't know how to validate this, and I need your advices, preferably from real experience in interviews, and junior/middle requirements.
3. We need some “portfolio”- some published games? some technical demos? some innovational ideas? this is the point, where we need to remember about our fragmented knowledge - I feel that we lack “systematic” approach in game design, and currently we struggle with finishing something from start to end, because there is so many ways to do things, and the project overall, that we're missing ourselves in details every time. I think we need someone to teach us, how to do a game from scratch - not in a technical sense, but in game design and project management sense. Maybe, some comprehensive course in that field, or… something? I don't really know.
4. We probably need at least some courses completed - we're working on it, but here I need to ask you - if you knew ANY good and fundamental courses or other resources, that can help us with building core skillset in game design, game project management, and game development in general.

I know, that there is a LOT of text.. and I know that there is no concrete question - in fact, there is a couple of questions. But I really don't know how to distill it even more..

I will appreciate ANY help - usefull advices, resources, requirements, or validations.

Big thank you, in advance.

ok,

So you say you have a CS degree. That's a good start for a programmer What does your friend bring to the table?

Sounds like you need to just buckle down and work on a project. Decide what you want and can do, and then just try it for a while.

· “ There are moments in all our lives in which we are compelled to ask ourselves 'how far are we willing to go for what we want, how much are we willing to risk, to sacrifice, to endure, because It's one thing to yearn for something, but quite another to find the strength to achieve it.” (Forever S1 E20 Henry)

You definitely sound like you got the dream, but it's this amorphous thing in the future, and you don't know how your going to get there. You need to carve your own path out. If you think someone, or a book or a course whatever will find you, and tell you point A to Z exactly what you need to do to achieve your dream, than you're sadly mistaken.,

It's your responsibility to build your own life, and to go after what you want.

Without any experience, you should start with indie or a mod. Try working on that for a while, and see how far you can go. As you said, games is not an industry where you can make a stable income, for most non AAA people.

You should look in the hobby classifieds section, and on game dev classifieds on reddit, and indiedb

If your dream is to just make games, than work for another company.

But if your dream is to make games that you want to make, you should start a company.

Both are hard. But that is how it goes.

It's taken me 10 years to get to where I am now, running an indie studio, and we are still not profitable. (And I still look and keep day jobs)

If your goal is to quit your full time job with benefits for games job, than you need to start a company. Or join one at the ground floor.

Expect to work on weekends and nights. Dedicating all or most of your free time to it, expect your social and romantic life to suffer. If you arn't willing or able to sacrifice that, then maybe games is not for you.

It's one thing to enjoy a polished finished game. An think ya I want to do that with my life, it's another to see behind the vale, and see the broken game that you have no choice but to work on.

The dream is to turn your hobby into your day job, but that is very hard. most people don't make it.

Games project management is just called production. and the people who do that are called producers. That's what I am.

Producers need to know about business, psychology, marketing, QA, Public relations, Human resources, management ,and other stuff.

If you have the time and the money, you can take an online degree in game development, but that still is not the golden ticket into the industry.

I interviewed Louis Castle a while back, and he said the best thing you can do to get into the games industry is just make something.

I'm Surprised that Tom Sloper, one of our veteran moderators hasn't showed up yet, plugging articles to his own website.

If this is your dream, and your 26, why is this your dream?

Why did you get a CS degree?

How did someone with a CS degree end up at a bank?

And if you need to financially support others, which you suggest,, maybe now is not the right time?

GeneralJist said:
If your dream is to just make games, than work for another company.

But if your dream is to make games that you want to make, you should start a company.

Both are hard. But that is how it goes.

It's taken me 10 years to get to where I am now, running an indie studio, and we are still not profitable. (And I still look and keep day jobs)

If your goal is to quit your full time job with benefits for games job, than you need to start a company. Or join one at the ground floor.

Expect to work on weekends and nights. Dedicating all or most of your free time to it, expect your social and romantic life to suffer. If you arn't willing or able to sacrifice that, then maybe games is not for you.

This says it succinctly. Either take a job with an existing company or startup, or start your own company. Your own company, if that's the way you go, needs to find clients willing to hire you to develop for them. To entice them to your services, you need to have projects to show (it's the classic chicken-and-egg problem). To get hired by an existing company you need to have a portfolio (projects to show). If you are going to stay in your current locale where there is no game industry, your company will be the start of the game industry in your area. Most game startups start with a brilliant game concept of their own, but often that project has to be put aside when a client wants you to take their money by developing the client's concept. It's easier to get a job, but “easier” does not mean “easy.”

Hey Tom,

I was wondering when you would show up and plug your website xd

But seriously, ya thanks for the back up.

I'm just a little skeptical of the OP, he says this has been his dream for all his life or so, but he hasn't worked on too many projects? or completed one? it just sounds a little weird to me.

But on the other hand, it is much easier to hold a dream in your mind, thinking just how perfick it could be, when it comes to taking concrete steps towards that dream people balk.

Hi!

You're right that I'm stuck in my comfort zone and think that something can be achieved from this position. Now I realize that.

Two days ago I've found an article from Reddit that talks about the same damn things that you did (https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/wiki/getting_started/​ in case you are interested). What I've learned from this article is pretty simple. A mantra that I knew long ago, but more importantly, some reasoning behind that. "Just Do It".

I've started to work on a small project (type of Asteroids/Aero Fighters), two days ago, and in process I realized, how much work needed to be done even for this kinda small game. And, in fact, I'm not scared by that - instead, I feel, that this realization gives me the strength to focus on the project and throw all procrastination stuff out of the window.

Thank you all for the support!

P.S.: My friend has CS degree too, he just got it in another university. As for now, he shows interest in 3D modeling, but overall he is interested in all kinds of stuff in game dev.

Good,

Glad we were able to help.

If he has a CS degree, and has interest in art. that's good. a diversity of skills is always needed in this field.

Good luck.