First Steps to becoming a Game Developer - How to become a Game Developer

so you want to be a game developer but you don't know where to start what to do or where to go in this video i'm going to be talking about the first steps you should be taking on your journey to becoming a game dev i'm matthew from a gamedev channel and this channel is all about getting the next generation of game devs into the industry so if you want to stay up to date on all the tips and tricks on becoming a game developer consider subscribing for all the latest content in this video about the first steps in game development we're going to be covering the questions that you need to ask yourself what skills are worth investing your time in what you can be doing now that is going to benefit you in the future and how you can start learning the skills you'll need so to begin with we need to ask you a couple of questions on what game development means to you and what kind of game developer you want to be because there are so many different varieties of game development now that your idea of a game developer might not be the same as mine so the first question is what kind of game developer do you want to be do you want to be a triple a game dev do you want to be an indie game dev are you thinking you'll be working on the console games or pc games more or are you wanting to become a mobile developer an easy way to get the answer to these questions is to think about what kind of games you want to make do you want to make really unique small contained experiences where you'll have a lot of creative control then if that's the case you probably want to be more of an indie developer but on the other hand if you want to make big sprawling massive open world games then you're probably looking at aaa and it is important to note that just because you want to do one now doesn't mean that you won't end up doing the other later game dev skills are for the most part transferable but if you're at the beginning of your career then you want to try and specialize for what you want to do before you start thinking about specializing in other areas so question two why do you want to get into the games industry is it because you're passionate about games is it because you have an interest in game making game creation is it because game development looks fun these are all completely valid reasons for wanting to join the industry and there are countless other reasons that i haven't mentioned the reason i'm asking you the question is because i want to make sure that you're getting into the industry for a good reason and when times get tough which they inevitably will in game development the reason that you got into game dev in the first place is going to be strong enough to keep you going and push you through the bad times you may think this is a bit of a melodramatic question but there is an a particularly bad statistic in the games industry that 50 of people who join the games industry leave the industry within five years that means that within five years fifty percent that's one in two people have decided that game development is not the career for them that to me is a genuinely horrifying stat that means there is something legitimately wrong with this industry in that so many people leave it in such a small amount of time so that's why i just want you to ask that question to yourself do you think you will outlast those five years do you think you will be the 50 percent that actually stick around and make a full career and life out of this and now the last question that i want to ask is what is your definition of a game developer because in my experience this is never the same between two people to me a game developer is someone who writes code and makes the game run and they write the gameplay they write the physics they write the graphics to other people a game developer is someone who designs games someone who designs the levels comes up with what the gameplay should be and lets a programmer implement it and then to other people a game dev is other people who do the artwork who create all the assets that will be in the game again there is no right or wrong answer to this and it tends to be a mixture of all three if you're an indie developer you probably do have a hand in every single aspect if you're aaa or you want to be a triple a developer you probably stick to a specific role so what is it that you're thinking of what is it that you want to be on to step two what skills should you be investing in that are going to help you in the future now this is going to be heavily influenced by your answers to step one in particular what your definition of a game developer is so all these skills will be transferable apart from maybe the art skills and it's always good to get an understanding of what other members of your team will have the skills to do so we're going to start with the designers what skills should you be investing in if you want to become a designer well i would say the main thing you need to be doing is playing games and critiquing them you should be able to play a game and figure out what you like about that game or what you didn't like about that game what what about that game works well what works badly the game is industry is always learning from itself and it's really important for designers to stay current and up to date with what the current trends are another really useful thing to do would be to learn some kind of engine whether that be unity or unreal they're the two that i'd recommend because they are the most common and prevalent in the industry if you can find some source code online for a game that already exists download it onto your pc and just mess around with the design features that unity has to offer or unreal as a designer you'll be making subtle changes to objects that already exist to try and get a bit more polish out of them and if you use one engine you've kind of used them all there are subtle nuances between different engine types but if you can learn one then you can probably learn another fairly quickly my last tip for designers is create a game on paper get grab a notepad and design a game from scratch draw out the menus create the enemy types discuss the gameplay write it out all out and that will help get your creative juices flowing and get you into the mindset of being a game creator so this one's going to be a bit easier for me because it is a route that i took this is the skills that you're gonna need to be a programmer and the obvious first answer is you need to learn how to code now it may be a bit daunting if you've never programmed before and you don't really know where to start i would recommend starting with c-sharp if you have never programmed a day in your life you'll find that c-sharp is a great language for getting the fundamentals of programming down before you can move on to a more advanced language i would say if you want to get to triple a development or console development eventually in the games industry you are going to need to learn c plus but if you are completely starting a fresh use c sharp as your first language other skills that is really useful to have and this is just basically generic programming skills is you want to be good at physics and maths if you're going to be writing gameplay we tend to base gameplay in physical reality so having a good grasp of physics is a strong skill to have being good at maths is very important to programming generally so anything you can do to increase your mathematical ability is going to really help the last thing that i would suggest and this isn't something that i see done very often is learn how to debug and read other people's code people are great at debugging their own code because they wrote it so they know they can figure out what the problem is fairly quickly but if you're trying to find someone else's co like a problem in someone else's code that becomes a lot harder and i would say probably 70 of my job right now is currently debugging code that i didn't write so being able to read other code and debug other people's code is a really strong skill to have and will set you really far ahead of any of the candidates for an entry level job and last but not least what skills you should need for an artist well there are so many different types of artists in game development now so whatever you want to specialize in i would aim for that obviously go for the basics like 3d modeling um 3d modeling software as well there is such a wide variety of software tools for this that if you can just have like a good base level knowledge for everything that would be really good because it will open a lot more doors for you other things you should look at is animation 3d animation 2d animation that'll be really useful for you texturing would be a great skill to have and then think about what niche artist things you can do so for example there seems to be a real shortage of vfx artists right now maybe that's just in my experience in the industry but they seem to be a really sought-after commodity there so if that's something that interests you maybe get a get a jump on that hopefully that's a good overview of the skills that you should invest in and i hope that last segment helped out but for the next step we're going to talk about what you can do now what you should do now is try and do some research and figure out the path you need to take to get whatever your dream role is is your dream role even just that specific company you could go to the company's website or look for youtube videos on developer vlogs from that company and see what others did to get where they did the skills that i mentioned in the previous step are probably the skills that you're going to need in the future but i can't pretend to be an expert on every single game developer job in the world i only know from my own experience and what i've learned from others game making is a huge industry and there are so many different ways to do things now so don't take my word verbatim so take some time to research exactly what you want to do and exactly how to get there and then take the first step on that journey the other thing that you can do right now is start making some content the best way to learn in my opinion is by doing so download unity unity is free download the unreal engine unreal engines free and just get making things they're not going to be world beating things straight away but actually putting your skills to use and getting some kind of understanding of the pitfalls and the common traps of game making is going to be really really useful for you the other thing i'd highly recommend you do now is play games and try and play some games that you wouldn't normally play mix up the genres a little bit obviously everyone has their favorites and you should always play your favorite games obviously that will keep your passion going but if you have anything like xbox game pass there are a huge amount of games on there that i wouldn't necessarily have tried or i definitely wouldn't have bought if they were just standalone but because i already have access to that content i thought hey i might as well try this and i've ended up loving them and it's really expanded my kind of knowledge or portfolio of the games i play so the last step is to figure out how you start learning the skills that you're gonna need and the good part about this is that you have actually already started the fact that you've come across this video means that you're searching on youtube you're searching on google or wherever you came across this video from you are taking that first step into figuring out how you get these skills what you need to do now is maybe write a list of the skills that you think you need and then just one by one start going through them and start researching and there's so many books and tutorials and youtube videos and articles out there for you and now is where it comes down to you to carry on with this drive to become a game developer one last little extra tip before i leave this video is that start networking there are loads of events on for aspiring game developers and with the current situation of the world they're not all currently active but if you go on twitter there are groups for you to join there are facebook groups there are loads of communities out there that are specifically made for game developers and that just because you're not a game developer yet doesn't mean these communities won't accept you in as one of their own it's quite a friendly industry gone are the days when people were keeping games behind closed doors and refusing to share information every game developer i've met has been very open and has talked really positively about what they're on and the projects are on and they've enjoyed working on and they're all so happy to give advice and offer inspiration where people need it and there it is so i hope this video was useful for you if you have any questions please feel free to drop a comment below this channel is all about getting the next generation into the industry so i will take any questions that come through consider subscribing to the channel if you want to stay up to date on all the latest tips and tricks i'll be putting out there give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed the content and thank you very much for watching i shall see you next time

Channel: The Game Dev Channel

Views: 22,524

Keywords: How to become a game developer, How to become a game developer first steps, How to make games, what kind of game programmer should i be, Game developer career, Game developer career 2021, How to become a game developer from scratch, Game design, game career first steps, Game Developer, The Game Dev Channel, Game development beginner, how to get into game development, game development for beginners, game industry, game industry jobs, games, video games, video game careers

Id: fsEwtkEBXmo

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020