career path into making games for a living.

[paulytrick 10]

Anyone got any advice?

[Sennacherib 0]

find a CG school :)

[paulytrick 10]

find a CG school :)

CG School? Whats a CG School?

[MehMan 0]

A school that teaches in the arts of computer graphics.

What do you want to do exactly? Model, code?

[paulytrick 10]

Design and code.

[Maddmatt 1]

Modding is one way to learn the skills. If you've done modding, you have something to show off your abilities with.

By code I take it you mean programming? C++. A computer science degree would teach you that at many universities, but there are easier courses that focus mainly on the programming courses (I don't know much about them though).

I think there are places that have courses specifically for game development, like courses in game design and the like. Not sure how useful they are.

Be aware though, it doesn't usually pay much. The same skills usually pay more at the more 'boring' jobs. It's something you should only do if you're passionate about it.

[max power 21]

If you want to program, it helps to have strong math skills. I don't know how old you are, but start taking all of the math you can.

Historically in video games, game designers have been programmers. For very complex games, sometimes games have entire design teams, junior designers designing subsystems and being directed by a senior designer.

[Serclaes 0]

Oh yes the math, indeed. :rolleyes:

Informatics is half math, half programming. And most the programming is math too xD

[jakerod 254]

I used to want to (and kind of still do) be a video game designer. I have several links that may help you.

Game Career Guide

GameDev.net

Gamasutra

List of Links

List of Articles

Game Career Guide is a great source of information. I haven't used Gamasutra or GameDev.Net very much but they seem good. I haven't really looked at the list of links yet but the list of articles have a lot of good reads in it.

Edit: Game Career Guide has a list of schools that specialize in it I believe.

[Sith 0]

I'll be giving a workshop on this exact subject in a few weeks from now, so I guess I could drop in my 2 cents and a bit :p

First try to figure out exactly what side of game development you'd like to focus on. One-man studios are not unheard of, but you have to be quite the "homo universalis" to pull that off on anything bigger than a small mobile game these days. There's so many facets to design and programming alone, it can already take quite some time to figure out what to love and what to hate :)

Here are some basic pointers though:

- First of all, education isn't the answer to all your hopes and wishes. The most important thing is your personal drive. Your passion that enables you to stay up late at night to figure out how to UVW unwrap that Autobot you modeled in class, even if it's not a part of the courses this semester. Your will to rewrite your entire collision code, just because it had some bumps and niggles that no one else in your project group really noticed. Education offers you a platform to kick this drive into a higher gear than you could ever achieve by yourself. But going into it entirely blank, void of a sense of heading out there to do "your thing", is likely to result in a whole lot of disappointment. Making games is NOT easy, NOT fair in hours vs paychecks, and NOT at all like playing games ;)

- As an aspiring designer or programmer, try to get your hands on a functional development environment as soon as possible, and get them dirty. This is AFAIK the only proper and productive way to get a good sense of what it takes to build a game.

- Fire up OFP/ArmA/ArmA2 and start editing. Seriously, it's a very good environment to take your first steps in gameplay design, modeling, texturing, scripting and interface logic. There's loads of documentation out there, and the game allows you to almost instantly test everything you build.

- Joining a mod team allows you to easily focus on a very specific part of the design process, such as level design, modeling or interface scripting, and has the added advantage of showing you how hard it is to get people to work efficiently in a team.

- Environments such as Flash, Unity, or cheaper alternatives require you to put some more work into coding/scripting a basis to work with, but from that point on they'll offer you a virtually unrestricted sandbox for your own prototypes. This is the way to go if you want to take things up a notch after modding other games.

- While these engines tend to be only a small step away from the work environment of a full time developer uses, make sure you don't limit yourself to just one engine/language. Just like in "real world" languages, the more variants you study, the easier it becomes to pick up new ones in the future.

- Create LOADS of diverse portfolio material. Honestly, go wild. Having a lot of variety in the things you create not only builds up your skills, but also allows you to compose customised selections when applying at different developers. Lionhead might not show a significant interest in an entirely mechwarrior-based portfolio.

- Make yourself heard. Get your work is out there for people to see and make sure you build up a big network of contacts. Try to think of every person you meet as someone who might help you get that dream job one day. You'll be surprised to find out how easy it is to get around in the world of developers once you know a few good people here and there.

- Good luck :cool:

[Commando84 0]

there's some really good advice there from Sith! :)

[paulytrick 10]

I used to want to (and kind of still do) be a video game designer. I have several links that may help you.

Game Career Guide

GameDev.net

Gamasutra

List of Links

List of Articles

Game Career Guide is a great source of information. I haven't used Gamasutra or GameDev.Net very much but they seem good. I haven't really looked at the list of links yet but the list of articles have a lot of good reads in it.

Edit: Game Career Guide has a list of schools that specialize in it I believe.

Thanks Jakerod for the resources.

Thanks Sith. Inspiring words indeed. I feel I have that sense of drive to go the extra mile and prove myself and if I ever feel I'm losing it I'll come back here and read your post again.

Thank you.

Paul.