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Should I pursue game Development?

Robert Lawrence · 2016-10-30T10:06:31

Greetings and Salutations! First, a little background on me: I am a 28 year old college graduate. I originally studied computer science before switching to philosophy, which I graduated in. I dropped out of the CS major because they used Ada at the time. It was my first taste of programming and it was a serious struggle for me. I barely made it a semester. My interest in game development started when I was just a kid. I have always been very introverted and video games were my primary source of personal happiness during a time when the rest of my life was bullying and family fighting. I asked my father when I was seven how I could become a video game designer because it seemed like the best job ever. He made it sound almost impossible, and I never really entertained the idea again until after I graduated. Seeing the explosive success of games like Fez and Minecraft got me interested in the idea of developing my own games. Having said that, I know what you are all thinking. Games like those are the .01% of games developed by small studios. Most are unsuccessful or do not even get finished. I fully realize that. However, I have been playing video games my whole life and unbeknownst to me, perhaps preparing for my dream job! I tend to play games by game companies like Blizzard and Naughty Dog. I have been honing my eye for game design my whole life and now every time I play a game I am constantly appreciating the good design elements, and lamenting the bad ones. I almost look forward to inspecting the quality of the game design than I do actually enjoying playing the games themselves! A great example of this is Hearthstone. I have played magic since I was a kid alongside video games. It is a great game. I also eventually dabbled in magic online. Comparing and contrasting these two online card battling games was an early look at how to utilize the format your game is based on to your advantage. The prime example of this is Hearthstone leaning heavily on RNG mechanics like discover(the game randomly selects cards from a certain perdetermined pool, not necessarily cards you in your deck, or even your entire collection!). Such a mechanic is simply not possible in a game like Magic, but in a game that exists solely online it works perfectly. Another example is Diablo 3. I have played D3 since launch night and have gone from hating to loving it. After years of devoted D2 play D3's launch was a disappointing mess. Years later I have paid attention to every design choice the team has made and watched the game piece by piece transform from something mediocre to the greatest ARPG ever made. Having said all this, I personally believe I have the skills necessary to be a good and maybe even great game designer. For personal reasons I live in a small town that does not have any game studios. So my only option is to create my own. I began to study Unity and C# last year. I completed the 2D portion of a great online complete Unity course. It was slow going with so little programming experience, but I know have a basic understanding of C# and programming itself. I have started to work on a game inspired by one of my favorite DS titles, AlphaBounce. An open world space sim game with RPG elements and simple combat/mining in the style of brick breakers. My plan is to slowly develop the game in my off time and eventually release it to IOS and later to Android. I have had numerous discussions regarding my future with my family and I want to pursue my dream and continue to devote my time to game development, but my family is very skeptical that I can make a dime doing so. I have a day job and am not going to quit it anytime soon. So my choice is, should I spend my free time following my dreams? Or should I look into another way to provide for my family, going back to school, looking for some job training in a different field, etc. I can pursue a career in plumbing or refrigeration which are in high demand where I live, but I have serious doubts about how happy I would be in such a field. Am I being selfish entertaining this idea? In your opinion how good are my chances of making any money with my current plan? If it does not seem like a good way to break into the industry, is there a better way? I have read that making HTML5 games can be a good way but I don't know much about that. Thank you so much for reading. I sincerely appreciate your time and help.

Games Career Development Business

Started by Bobby Lawrence September 30, 2016 04:23 AM

19 comments, last by Tom Sloper 7 years, 8 months ago

Tom Sloper

17,210

October 30, 2016 10:06 AM

Relvlent code:

This board's focus is job advice. There are other boards on this site where you can post code and get
advice on that. To prevent further topic drift, I'm closing this thread. Bosor, if you want to ask more
advice about getting a job in the game industry, please start a new thread. This one has drifted too far
astray.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com