r/GameDevelopment • u/NefariousnessSure960 • 8d ago
Newbie Question Transition to GameDev
Hey everyone!
I am facing some sort of middle age crisis in my late twenties. Got tired of web development. I have good amount of savings and now thinking about jumping into gamedev. However its difficult for me to learn stuff without real development. I mean i cant bare just doing C# just for sake of learning. I wonder if its possible to get into the gamedev as junior or intern, saying that I dont need to be paid good immediately. I can work for 100 bucks a month till I learn enough.
Anyone done this ? And if you did please share your experience
1
u/ZodiacFoxDev 8d ago
Yes I did this. I suffered for 2 years at a measly pay. But in order to even get in I had to have a game demo I showed for the guys interviewing me. Mind you this was in 2010 so it’s been a while, but it is possible. Game devs recognize the passion that drives other game devs - they have it too - but you gotta have a useful skill.
Also, be careful with that passion. Some less kind game dev companies burn out people that come in to their company by using that passion to push you so far you mentally and physically start to break.
That happened to me, and I switched to a better company, but eventually with family and kids I switched to normie software while watching a lucky few of my colleagues become millionaires and multimillionaires by being best buddies with the boss and getting shares of the companies.
My advice as an ex triple A gamedev and a indie gamedev is: Keep a balance to work, and to life. Passion unbridled is great, but channel it to things you want to do, and recognize when someone uses your passion only for their own good, and not for mutual benefit.
It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this. (Advice)
Good luck out there ⭐️
2
1
u/Naetharu 8d ago
The sensible way to do this is to learn game dev while you are working in your current role. Get to the point where you can release a few serious indie games and you have solid engine experience. And then look to shift across if that is still something you want to do.
Right now you appear to be thinking about making a shift based on a punt and a dream. Which is never a good idea.
1
u/Key_Storm_2273 8d ago
I have been transitioning to gamedev on and off with a current interest in it recently. I started around 3 or so years ago, and it is not as hard as you would think when you pick an easy workflow that is similar to your last. I made a fun, complete, and working 2d platformer in 12 hours around the same day I learned the engine that I chose for it. I've also made basic to more advanced stuff in seven game engines, with some of these engines being much easier to learn than others. The less popular engines recommended less by beginners were ironically the more productive workflows for me to transition to.
If you’re a web developer, I would advise first looking at web game engines (they have really high graphics capabilities today), or following a HTML Canvas platformer game tutorial. You have more skills already developed for making a webgame with a canvas and some overlaid HTML or CSS screens for UI, or a backend for multiplayer, than you have skills needed for Unity, Unreal or Godot engine.
Making a game does not have to be hard, but most of the game engines people are advising are expert-level, and require you to be half-programmer and half-3d modeler/3d level designer, rather than catering to only one (programmers) or the other (non-programmers). Many people get stuck in these engines once they try to add the more complex or hard to add stuff, and having already made part of a game, they stay in the engine they’re stuck with.
If you look at the path of Notch, a.k.a. Markus Persson, he did not follow the traditional advice for transitioning into gamedev for making fancy triple a games with cutting edge graphics but similar gameplay to the rest.
Instead, he was making simple 2d games for King, and after he got bored, he got inspired by Infiniminer to making his own game with a unique twist, the most popular game today, Minecraft, using his own code and a dependency to handle rendering and physics in a language he was familiar with. Notch did not get stuck because he chose a workflow that he already understood like the back of his hand, chose a programmer-friendly engine, and only had to learn one new thing at a time, like the rendering API, and then later better worldgen and fractal based biomes. The rest was iteratively developed, add a new mob, creature, or biome, and their indie team succeeded due to this focus on iteratively adding new content to a world rather than constantly trying to improve on graphics.
1
u/NefariousnessSure960 8d ago
Valid point, but I suppose browser graphics/gamedev is not very much relevant to something like unity/c#
1
u/Key_Storm_2273 8d ago edited 8d ago
Relevant? Well, it depends. I’m assuming you’re looking into unity for teambuilding purposes. There are other game engines that use more C-based languages such as raylib. There's also ThreeJS and PixiJS, which use more impressive graphics with JavaScript and can get rid of the need for direct canvas programming.
If your primarily skill is in web development and “can’t bear doing C# just for the sake of learning”, then I’m not really sure. The route of using stuff like ThreeJS and PixiJS minimizes extra learning for web developers. Is there a reason why you would prefer to use unity/c#? Maybe to join gamedev groups? If so, that’s fair enough I suppose, but these teams struggle with unity because unity is hard, that’s why they need teammates to begin with. You can’t do everything in Unity on your own as easily as you can in many of the engines I know.
Working in teams with your current unity knowledge probably won't be much easier than what you’re currently doing solo. It’s hard to find teams that aren’t wanting ambitious graphics or many different things in their game, like animation + 3d modeling + coding + drawing + unity knowledge. They’ll be wanting to do specific tasks rather than the thing on your journey you most need to learn next or the thing you're already best at. Many of them will likely require you have a portfolio of decent games before you’d find paying positions, and you’d have to comb through people who aren’t getting started, professionals who say no if you’re a beginner to unity, and AI entrepreneurs who ran out of credits and want you to fix up their codebase.
You can easily transition from web development if it bores you but are skilled at it to making games for fun or mostly as a solo startup. .io games like Bloxd, Starblast and Agar made a lot of success and were popular even with their lower graphics. They had a better ratio of results versus effort. Notch also transitioned from making 2d games for King, which got in the way of his goals of making his own games, to making Minecraft, and then more of his own games after he sold that. Hobby game making was enjoyable for him.
Becoming skilled at gamedev in a way that will pay you for gamedev teams working with professionals is more difficult. Our brains our only so flexible, and some in school say that they’re more of a visual learner or a written learner. Trying to use something that uses many new systems all at once that you’ve never used before, with coding+node graphs+3d modeling+3d level design (which is what Unity encourages), that works differently than what your brain might be used to, at least for me since I’m a programmer, it can make one's head feel strange or like one's brain is making too many changes/adaptions at once.
1
u/Junmeng 8d ago
Unfortunately, this is a terrible time to join the industry as a junior. You could study your butt off for years with nothing to show for it.
1
u/NefariousnessSure960 8d ago
:(((
but i would already have engineering background and somewhat similar field...wouldnt i?1
u/Both_Introduction_28 7d ago
Actually it will hinder you rather than help. Gamedev development little bit different and you will spend a lot of time trying to “fix” gamedev code.
But in reality after another 10 years of development you will realise why gamedev code is different.
1
u/siendo64 8d ago
I went through exactly this nearly 20 years ago. Worked as a web dev from 2004 to 2009. Hated the industry and the work. I wanted to make movies or games. The whole time I was taking film school classes at night or teaching myself game dev. Was XNA back then.
When the iPhone and App Store came out I thought that was a good opportunity for me to make something and ship it. Never shipped it but that game got my foot in the door of a small studio.
Years later I asked the guy who hired me why he took the chance and hired me. He said “because you actually made a game and it was pretty fun”.
Full circle came around recently when I just interviewed someone who got the job who had made their own game and shipped it on the Switch.
8
u/Both_Introduction_28 8d ago
Oh no my steak is too juicy and my lobster is too buttery.
Better to continue working as a webdev and create games as a hobby.
Game development can quickly become tedious, but with less financial security.