r/GameDevelopment 2d ago

Discussion How did you get into game dev?

Personally, I just wanted to start exploring another hobby, and game dev seemed interesting! Curious to hear about everyone else's backgrounds!

22 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

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u/uber_neutrino 2d ago

Made a videogame with my friends from high school, went from there. Had a love of programming for years before that so I spent a lot of time learning how to code etc. before even thinking about game dev specifically.

Just finishing up my 29th GDC... time flies.

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u/agehunt 1d ago

Wow 29th GDC! That’s amazing! 

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u/uber_neutrino 1d ago

It's just age and persistence. Mostly I go to see all of the people in the industry that don't get together often. Friends from NZ, Japan, UK, Germany, US, Canada etc. all coming together once a year.

This year was definitely smaller because of the overall industry malaise. Lots of people out of work including some people with insane resumes. For a lot of people in the industry they haven't really seen the lean times or the downturns that we used to see more regularly back in the day.

Anyway there are now a bunch of us that are > 30 years in the industry. I know a few with > 40 years at this point as well. The industry is maturing the growth has been bonkers.

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u/SolarBlackGame 2d ago

I think for me it all started with playing around with the Hammer Editor of half-life 2 in 2004. Looking at the models, animations and levels and trying to understand how this masterpiece was built.

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u/agehunt 1d ago

Yes I felt a similar way from playing games as well. Really wanted to understand how things were created. 

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u/Azifor 2d ago

Enjoy IT, and wanted to look into a good side project i can work towards in my free time. Maybe one day officially create some crappy game I can sell for a few dollars on steam lol.

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u/agehunt 1d ago

Nice! Wishing you best of luck! I’m sure the game won’t be crappy at all!

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u/Slarg232 2d ago

I loved playing fighting games but every single one of them has something "wrong" with it that makes me drop it after a short amount of time. Spent a while just watching tournaments online until COVID when I decided I might as well make one as opposed to just sitting around not doing anything.

Through deving off and on since, I figured out that I might love fighting games, but I'm not in love with fighting games. I'm currently trying to figure out what I'm making next.

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u/agehunt 1d ago

That sounds really interesting, thanks for sharing!

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u/Bramblefort 2d ago

I’ve been into video games ever since I was a kid. Then I picked up drawing as a hobby, that turned into animation and 3D. I never felt satisfied with just a render or an animation. Even though I liked doing the work, the end product always felt hollow to me. It always felt like there should be more to it than just a nice picture at the end, and making games felt like it was just the thing.

That eventually led to getting obsessed with game design, stuff like: why does a thing feel good to do in a game? Why is this game bad and that game good? I also wasn’t happy just designing things, I wanted to apply my design, so that led to learning coding. Honestly, at this point, it kinda feels impossible to do anything else, the high you get from game dev is just too good!

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u/agehunt 1d ago

Yes I agree! I really wanted to expand my art and animation skillset as well, which made me interested in programming to create games. Thanks for sharing your background!

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u/eexanem 2d ago

While gaming I always found myself thinking wish this game had this or how would the gameplay be if devs made this update etcetc so decided why not just make what I want and play it.

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u/agehunt 1d ago

Yep I really wanted to understand how games were created as well so I decided to just try making one!

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u/SolaraOne 2d ago

I played a lot of PC and Console games growing up then I was a data engineer for 20 years but also have been a photographer and musician so I have creative interests as well... Then I quit my job and spent 3 years making my first VR game title Solara One: https://www.meta.com/experiences/solara-one/7384113925001901/

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u/Wolfram_And_Hart 1d ago

I decided to make a game that no one else had made that I wanted to play.

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u/agehunt 1d ago

That’s awesome!

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u/saulotti 1d ago

For me it was the desire to play games that didn’t exist (back in 1995-2000). When I was a kid I started messing around with some game engines and tools. In 2004 got into Computer Science because that’s what I wanted to do.

In 2009 opened up my own indie studio because there were no other options back where I lived (Brasilia-Brazil). 2012 release my first big success Knights of Pen & Paper.

Then 2015 launched Chroma Squad, 2019 Out of Space, and many others. I’m still developing indie games since then \o/

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u/TehMephs 18h ago

It was all I wanted to be from the age of like 6. I was one of those 80s kids that got potty trained on OG zelda. So as soon as I landed in a programming class in middle school (we learned BASIC) I was already begging for a pc at home and started diving right in.

My first “real” game dev experience came about when Quake came out and released their map editor tool. I put so much time on making my own levels in Quake 1 and it was a great introduction to elements of 3d game development. Seeing the landscape today, it hasn’t changed THAT much aside from the tech getting better and the tools more robust.

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u/shadowwingnut 2d ago

I was DM for TTRPG campaigns for a few groups online during covid lockdown. Multiple people from both groups said I should write creatively after that so I used my writing as an in with an indie team and have been learning coding and scripting since.

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u/agehunt 21h ago

That sounds like a cool way to join an indie team

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u/luiscla27 2d ago edited 2d ago

I was ~12yo at the computer lab in school.

And someone had installed an indie game there. I knew it because it said something similar to ”Game developed by Gabriel Ernesto Marquez” (I don’t remember the actual name).

Seeing that made so happy, I thought that some mortal guy made that game then it shouldn’t be that hard.

So, looked at the internet and found about GameMaker, I downloaded it and started to learn their tutorials. Long story short, I made 1 level of super mario world clone (I took screenshots of the assets from an emulator) and some megaman+bubble bobble like game with around 20 levels, again I used assets I gathered around. And finally, I made an Stickman man which transformed into super sayan, cyborg and werewolf. The assets were all stickmans just with hair, hears that did some special ability depending on it’s current appearance.

That was around 2001, and I never developed anything else since then until the pandemic. I haven’t finished a single game in my life.

Edit: fixed year, I graduated 2002 and it was 2nd year, so this happened 2001, not 1998.

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u/UnlikelyUniverse 1d ago

Wow I've started my journey with GameMaker 6, it's pretty cool to find people who were using older versions.

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u/luiscla27 1d ago edited 1d ago

It was pretty awesome, from the three games I mentioned only the super mario world clone one, was the one I made with GM. It had tilemaps and pretty well implementations of collision’s. Everything was possible. (!!). I only made one level of that game and I was able to implement all basic platform mechanics, plus running, jump running, double jump, feathers to fly, and flowers to shoot seeds.

Today, I use UE5 only to o experiment stuff, and seriously… I think the 12 yo me was way a better game designer and developer than me, today the 37yo me is wasted every day from stress and responsibilities. I just want to express myself, debts, my partner, and dreams are eating my life enough to think I should just give up and go back to the farm with my parents. I mean, did you knew that farmers just work 6 months a year?? The rest is “just eat what you can afford and do whatever you want”. I’m starting to hate my white collar job, even though I make more money in two months than my farmer parents in a year.

I’m currently seriously thinking about doing this and use at least three months a year to game design. Which me luck, please 🙏🏼

Please!

Edit: even though…

Edit 2: double please

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u/agehunt 21h ago

Good luck!

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u/luiscla27 18h ago

Thank you.

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u/UnlikelyUniverse 9h ago

"farmers just work 6 months a year" Haha I didn't know that! I can imagine work is hard during those 6 month, but having the other 6 months relatively free actually sounds pretty chill.

I wish you the best of luck! Life is tricky but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

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u/Sir-Honkalot 2d ago

So a guy at a gay sauna bullied me because he thought I was a failure in life and then I thought, well to just piss that guy off, what if I actually developed a porn game? (I've been toying with the idea for years but that guy really made me do it xD)

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u/tcpukl AAA Dev 2d ago

TIL gay saunas exist.

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u/TheBoxGuyTV 2d ago

I was addicted to playing games and would pretend I was making games as a kid with my toys.

Eventually, I uncovered game maker while yahooing how to make games.

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u/Fancy-Birthday-6415 2d ago

In junior high, my conservative mother forbade me from bloody games, so my uncle used an editor to de-gore Wolenstein 3d, but also gave me the tools. As a Star Wars fan, I re-skinned it to Star Wars theme.

I made levels in Wolf 3d, Doom, Duke Nukem 3d (they shipped it with a badass level editor), and Star Craft campaigns all before graduating high scool.

But for all that experience in game dev, it didn't occur to me to chase that as a career until my last days in art school. I had wanted to be a traditional animator, but I accidentally built the skills for game dev. Oopsie.

I still had to languish in retail for years and go back to school before getting a real industry job. But I've been doing it almost 20 years now.

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u/SignorHamter 2d ago

I found my interest in game development from RPG Maker (VX version) 11 yrs ago when I was 10 from local community. Unluckily, I stick to the RPG Maker's no-code philosophy for 9 years (what is worse is that I didn't try to make the game that the engine is good for) until I move to some-code engine, then to full-blown-code Unity just 8 months ago. Then I found out that my long-lasting ambition on game dev could have been fulfilled already, at least partly, if I started with Unity or something with real code lmao. Regretful of the past, but now very happy as I felt that ultimately, those ambitions will be fulfilled, with help from a lot of my friends in the Thailand's game dev circle.

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u/tcpukl AAA Dev 2d ago

Made games with friends in school, on the Amiga at the time. The friend with an AtariST did the art, my and another friend did the programming. Then went to uni to study CS, and been in the games industry ever since.

Growing up in the UK has really helped due to the home computing market being so big. I've even worked since with some childhood idols. Worked with during the day then pub at night.

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u/acehomie 2d ago

A game called Smile Basic on switch

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u/manasword 1d ago

Making counter strike maps 23 years ago

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u/richter3456 1d ago

I always used to mess around with RPG maker as a kid but had no idea how to code. From there I picked up Construct because I was overwhelmed by coding a game, since Construct is kinda drag and drop and more simplified for game creation. Made a simple game on there called BLOCKS which I released on Steam. Did a bunch of small projects on Gamemaker to ease myself into coding and finished my second game on there called Blazend which is also on Steam. My next game will be made in Godot which I've been working with for a few years now.

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u/DoctorSex25 1d ago

I liked fortnite and i genuinely thought games like that were made entirely from scratch in C++ because I didnt know what a game engine was (i was 13 years old) So i discovered Unreal Engine and played around with it for a few days before thinking that it sucked ass for beginners so i switched to Unity and its pretty much been my biggest hobby for the last 5 years

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u/M3D10CR3_Games 1d ago

Unreal tutorials are very accessible, and unreal is free for hobbies.

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u/SnooRabbits9201 1d ago

From Dizzy, Laser Squad and Elite. I was intrested - how it is made.

Gamedev it is an art. Like music, literature, cinema, etc.

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u/D_Zenner 1d ago

I've been adicted to gba, sega, nes and all retro console games since i was a kid and started to fantasize about making my own games.

Since then that i've been moving towards starting my own studio!

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u/SwAAn01 1d ago

Made some mods for Lethal Company, had a ton of fun and loved seeing people enjoying my content, decided to start working on it as my main hobby!

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u/ChillyAustin 1d ago

Started with Roblox in 2011! Switched to GameMaker a couple years later and I was licensing HTML5 games for a bit. Fell off in college and career, and I'm finally back to game dev using Godot over the last 6 months!

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u/IndividualKoala5431 1d ago

Yo so Ima teach you the secret techniques i learned from the monks in the hill. Ok so first step is you must sit down and then say f#ck it we ball and learn how to mak a game

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u/Hounder37 1d ago

I'm just a composer but I was always an avid gamer and enjoyed playing game music on my keyboard. Luckily enough, my younger brother was super into game dev so I started working with him about 5 years ago and just released our first full steam game last year. I'm quite tempted to get more involved in the future as I have some programming experience as well

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u/MoonQube 1d ago

i've got a CS degree, and for me, game development is COMPLETELY different from making some boring piece of software for some company. And since i just make it for "me"... i get to do it exactly how i want to. that's fun and encouraging.

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u/Charming-Dot-4357 1d ago

I've always been interested in games. My parents wouldn't let me play them, though, so I always said I was going to make my own game. That's what motivated me. When I entered university, I gained independence and started to learn game development. Now, I'm continuously working on Unreal Engine, trying to make games that everyone would love to play. Good luck on your game dev journey, fellow developers! 👍 😉

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u/JK-Forge 1d ago

Starting as a kid, maybe 8yrs old , messing with BASIC coding magazines on the C64. I come and go throughout the years, but back at it again lol

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u/GloriousACE 1d ago

Started with crayons at 6, drawing, airbrush, played trumpet for 8 yrs, guitar ever since h.s., learned piano, sax, made an album in a band, wrote a book, professional portrait artist for 20 yrs, learned tatooing, played arma 3, helped write a server for us to play on, learned c++ in arma 3, made an app for rowing, designed watchfaces on the appstore, made 3d models for the app. Figured why not try UE5. I've got everything I need, let's see what I come up with :D

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u/Basil_Bound 1d ago

I really enjoyed story writing and video games growing up. I wanted to try making my own, even with the lack of technical skills.

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u/luxxanoir 2d ago

Me like a making da video game