How Do I Become a Game Developer?

// June 7th, 2012 // Uncategorized

A fellow named Mike recently asked me this:

While looking around for nearby game studios, I discovered your website and I began to wonder if you might be able to help me a little and tell me about how you all got started doing this.

The “this” was “how to develop games and not have to live in a cardboard box by the side of the street.”

It’s 2012, and the good news is that it’s easier to get started now than it was in 1912. Here’s my most general, one-size-fits-all, step-by-step. Being one-size-fits-all, it’ll be entirely incomplete for everyone. But maybe it’s a start:

  1. What: Figure out, broadly, what you think you’d enjoy, and be able to communicate that. The following aren’t all mutually exclusive:
    • Are you interested in starting your own studio as a business? Do you want to join a small team? A bigger, AAA studio? An AAAA studio? How about an AaaaaAAaaaAAA– er– nevermind.
    • What’s your area of interest? Illustration? 3D modelling? Audio design? Tools programming? AI? If you say “game design,” be prepared to back that up with some development skills.
    • Pretend, for a moment, that you’re five years into your career. What does that look like to you? Sit there. Envision it. Taste it. Then be prepared to communicate that to other people.
  2. Immerse yourself: Spend a week straight just immersing yourself in game development resources online. Google for articles on game development. Leaf through Gamasutra. If you’re going indie, read Andy Moore’s blog and watch his devVlogs to get a sense for what indie development’s like (disclaimer: there are hundreds of billions of indies, and life’s different for each of us). Read up on all the various areas of game dev. Search through a stack of resources. Read, read, read, and read. You may feel overwhelmed, but that’s how everything vast and awesome is at first.
  3. Talk: Find people in the industry (cold e-mail people if you must — what’s the worst that happens?), tell them (succinctly) what you want to do, and ask them for their thoughts.
  4. Relax: Step back and breathe. Detach and let your brain sort everything out.
  5. Find Groups: If you do nothing else, do this: Hunt down groups of like-minded people. Find meetups and visit them regularly.
    • Major cities tend to have clusters of folks who want to create games, and things just sorta magically happen there. For example, here in Boston, we have Boston Post Mortem and Boston Indies.
    • People at these groups tend to be really friendly, so introduce yourself around. Talk about the games you like, and ask people questions about what they do.
    • Be consistent — it may take several visits before things “click.”
  6. Plink: Play around with the simplest game development tools you can. Something as straightforward as GameMaker will give you a taste. I’d avoid fancy-pants 3D engines at first, as you have to learn a great deal of technical stuff before you get to the juicy bits of game development.
  7. Rinse, repeat.

And that’s what I think an aspiring game developer should do.

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