Becoming a game developer

Just a thought... I have an old uni friend from my CS course who is a games programmer and who has worked for Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios... I will see if he is free to chat to you...

Btw he started as a modder to a game as well.
 
Emphacy said:
Most game developers start out as modders for games already on the market.
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I wouldn't say that is true, not from my experience anyway. For most people it's quite standard now: do a comp-sci degree, do game projects in your own time to put on your cv, and then just apply. :)
 
AGD said:
I wouldn't say that is true, not from my experience anyway. For most people it's quite standard now: do a comp-sci degree, do game projects in your own time to put on your cv, and then just apply. :)
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It used to be more true - these days its become a lot more of a career and specific training looked for when hiring - a lot of the passion and enthusiasm has been lost and games have become much more stock and stale in general.
 
Spunkey said:
We probably scared him off :)
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people who want to be games developers are probably not the sort of people who would be any good at it...

additionally there are very few jobs in the industry so its not a good field to be in..

kids think developing games is just about playing games all day..
 
edscdk said:
people who want to be games developers are probably not the sort of people who would be any good at it...

additionally there are very few jobs in the industry so its not a good field to be in..

kids think developing games is just about playing games all day..
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You know, I would love to make games on this side when I graduate; but I could never work for a company. I think crunch time is mental and counter productive.

If I ever do anything with my tome of ideas it will be on my own time allowing me to be my most creative and focused frame of mind.
 
Im in a similar situation to you but with the addition of a basic programming background, Learning C# and using XnA, you could make a few little games such a pong snake, just to learn and go from there
 
If it's programming you want to do then really question why you'd want to do games.. Code doesn't resemble a game, in fact you can face similar when writing say a calculation engine for an insurance company or some shares magic for a bank.. In fact study maths hard and programming and go work for a bank, better money, better hours and a great country to find that kind of job. Oh and never approach programming from just one language, learn many, they generally follow similar logic.
 
Maths isn't as important as used to be in games, with game engines being the norm. All the geometry and so fourth is already transformed for you + built in physics engines. You'd probabbly need to know maths for some custom shaders.

I'd say the best bet is to get some experiance in the modder community and learn enjoy programming as an activity in its self.


Just start of making 2d games in python or something, that will get into vectors and matrices. You could then move on to OpenGL(What I did using NeHe Tutorials, which are outdated now) or DirectX and make some crappy 3d game(I made a space game).

I went from creating sprite objects and just putting them into arrays/collections, to building complicated scene graphs and rendering straight from the graph, to seperating the scene graph, and graphical data structures(Often spatial data structures) for my basic game engine I designed.
 
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Learn maths. Learn more maths. Then study computer science at a good university. If you still want to make games after all of that, you should be in a good place. Even if you don't want to, you should be fairly employable elsewhere.

I'm surprised that you say you're eager, but you're never tried any form of programming before. I vividly remember messing around in BASIC in my early years of school.
 
FerretBoy said:
If it's programming you want to do then really question why you'd want to do games.. Code doesn't resemble a game, in fact you can face similar when writing say a calculation engine for an insurance company or some shares magic for a bank.. In fact study maths hard and programming and go work for a bank, better money, better hours and a great country to find that kind of job. Oh and never approach programming from just one language, learn many, they generally follow similar logic.
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I heard that RBS may be looking for some new IT staff soon.
 
FerretBoy said:
If it's programming you want to do then really question why you'd want to do games.. Code doesn't resemble a game, in fact you can face similar when writing say a calculation engine for an insurance company or some shares magic for a bank.. In fact study maths hard and programming and go work for a bank, better money, better hours and a great country to find that kind of job. Oh and never approach programming from just one language, learn many, they generally follow similar logic.
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Working for a bank is dull and boring. Working in the games industry can be hard work but is exciting and full of passionate people. Plus you get the benefit of people (hopefully lots) getting joy out of something you have helped create.

Maybe I'm just not old enough to have become jaded? :p
 
From what I've heard from a few game devs I know, most game dev work is not exciting.

Sure If you're lucky enough to get in to Rockstar/IW then yeah, it'll be amazing. But most game devs will end up working on games which they have no interest in, like My Little Pony for the Wii or something.
 
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