Being a Game Developer
I was intending to start off by writing an article about game development, explaining all of the reasons why I think its an amazing job to have, but then I thought that might be slightly misleading, so instead opted to focus purely on the facts. I am going to talk frankly about what game development is whilst also going through some common misconceptions
Game Developers solve problems with code
So, to get started, let’s look at what game development is. I tried to come up with the most dull and uninteresting explanation that I could think of here because if I said hey you, do you want to work on the games you’ve spent your life growing up playing I am sure most of you would be like hell yeah, regardless of what that even meant doing on a day to day basis. I would describe game development as:
Helping to make video games by solving challenging technical problems through code
That’s it. Well not quite. But that’s most of it. Whether you are wanting to be an indie developer, or work in the gaming industry, being a game developer, at its core, involves coding, and problem solving.
More broadly it means being a great software developer, being good at maths, usually knowing C++ and being interested in one of the following fields, although this isn’t an exhaustive list: computer graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, networking or gameplay. Don’t worry about all the specifics now though we will talk more about all the above later.
Now that we are all on the same page, let’s look at some common misconceptions around game development.
Playing games doesn’t make you good at making them
Given that we have just learnt that game development is about solving technical problems, we can get an understanding of why playing games won’t necessarily make you good at making them. They can certainly help, having a large wealth of experience playing games from all different eras and genres, but they don’t help you develop the problem solving and programming abilities that you are going to need.
At the same time though, if you haven’t been playing games all these years then you probably wouldn’t be here now looking at wanting to make your own. I myself was drawn into the world of video game development because of my interest in video games and technology.
Making games isn’t fun
Making games can be fun but it often isn’t. That doesn’t mean that I hate working on games, I would just describe the act of making games with other words such as interesting, engaging, or challenging. In the same way that you probably wouldn’t find going to the gym and exercising fun, but you may still enjoy doing it.
They may not be fun to make for most of the time but there is a sort of elation you get when you finally see the solution to a problem you have been trying to solve working. What the problem is, doesn’t usually, matter, but the bigger the problem, and the longer you spent on it, the greater the sense of relief, happiness, and achievement. You probably aren’t going to be rich
Game development isn’t likely to make you rich. Getting into something just for monetary value is never a good idea but even if that was your reasoning, I can think of many alternatives to game development that would make you a lot more money.
There are stories for sure of game developers who spend 2 years making a game and become a millionaire, or in Notch’s case a billionaire. These people are few and far between, and you never hear about the 1000s of developers trying to make games for a living and making no money.
In fact, I am confident that salaries in the gaming industry are often lower than that of typical software development jobs, and the industry has kind of a bad rep for unpaid overtime. So definitely don’t look to game development to get rich!
You should love games but love coding more
Leading onto my final point, that might have become painfully obvious by now. I think for anyone looking to become a game developer I would make sure that you have a passion for games but above all else you should be interested in code and solving problems. If you are not sure if this is something, you’ll be interested in then I would encourage you to try it out anyways. I figured you must want to for you to be reading this post.
To summaries this rather cheery first article then, game development is all about programming, and solving problems. If you thought playing games meant it was going to be easy for you, or you thought it was going to be fun, and make you rich all at the same time, then you might be in for a shock. But if you think that writing code is something that you could be interested in doing then you should carry on reading my future posts to find out more about getting started.
To read me more check out my blog at: www.gamedevunboxed.com
