Final Brick, #10: So, how do I start?

You have made it this far, congratulations, you are now ready to fly on the world of game development, whatever your choice may be. You have now learned what you will go for, you know what are your tools, your weapons of mass destruction to use in the war of game creation.

But there is still one question... How do i start?

The good news is, that once you clarify what you want and/or like, getting pretty damn good with it is only a matter of time, practice, effort, talent and skill.

So, you Programmers, go out write some apps! You always start with a "Hello World" program, and keep climbing up to calculators, to desktop apps, to mobile apps, to designing your own database and hosting your website and web services or even on a custom made cloud platform, you could get into your scrap metal and code how it works, and then eventually start writing your own game logic code..!

Go buy books, read them all, study online, view tutorials, write programs, applications, libraries, everything you possibly can until you get familiar with intermediate to advanced programming paradigms and design patterns.

Artists, go and study online for a specific 3D/2D asset creation toolkit, Sound Engineers, do the same with your virtual composition creation software, and become experts with the software itself. Then all you have to do is  create, create, create, create and CREATE stuff!

Make models, animate them, texture them, plan out your UV mapping, and keep doing the same, learn from your mistakes, keep getting better, and study design paradigms online. Same principle applies to Sound engineers.

Designers, ought to spend some time thinking about what makes a game fun, what do the players want from it, what's the experience they need to pass through a custom home-made virtual world which is consisted of its' own culture, background, religion, beliefs, characters, villains, sidekicks and pets, animals props and everything you could possibly think of.

Try to get in sync with your brain while you sleep. When you manage to befriend your subconsciousness, you now have divine and infinite inspiration for your games. Try to hear what your players hear, see what they see, feel what they feel, act like them, and keep designing game prototypes, get your ideas straight, keep an archive, always stay on the lookout for new things, try everything, listen to music, play an instrument, see a movie, read a book, study social science, do whatever to broaden your horizons and capture as many feelings and essense as you can!

QA Testers, you must keep doing what you already do, play games, and play a lot, and be skillful at it! When you are able to try out everything in a single game and possibly sum up all possible achievements / trophies you are on your way to becoming a great tester and the ideal person to ask for finding bugs. When someone has done everything in a game he is the ultimate being of discovering everything in a game. It's pros and cons, everything!


Generally, what a game developer must always do at all times, leisure or not is to have a lot of creativity, will to go from one edge to the other, he must experiement, try out new stuff, and keep studying and reading and researching for life! And the most important thing:

"They must never cease to be gamers and should keep playing every possible game they can get on their hands. Without passion for games, the game dev biz is not for you."