Hello,
I am a boy from India and am a newbie to programming or whatsoever. I'm a hardcore Gamer of 15 years and would like to break into Video Game Industry as a Game Programmer (eg:- GamePlay Programmer)...

I started gaming since I was just 4, and have passion for them since. And I currently am an editor at PPSF. Let's move on to the topic...
I have started Programming in C++, just as a newbie. When I searched the career section of the big game studios like Ubisoft, Bungie, Crytek, etc...They mentioned that C++ is a must, so I want to select C++ as the language to go on with. (You can also suggest if you want me to select anything other or whatsoever) I really want to work in the studios that I mentioned above.

I need your help to guide me to be a Game Programmer. Please suggest me "HOW SHALL I PROCEED ? "


Thanks In Advance and for spending time.
Bob Ghosh

In my experience alot of hardcore gamers have a distorted view of what it's like to develop games (and what it's like to actually work at a game studio for that matter), so you should definitely consider whether you want to learn how to program games because you would actually enjoy the programming part, or just because you like games. Both playing and developing games can be quite fun and interesting, but both in a completely different way, and if it's mostly because you enjoy playing games you could find yourself quite dissapointed with what it actually means and takes to develop games.

Now, with that out of the way onto the technical part

Put the idea of learning C++ out of your mind for a while and consider something more beginner-friendly. C++ is a very powerful but very unforgiving language, and the general consensus is to stay away from it until you have a good understanding of general programming principles.
There have been loads of discussions on the topic of which language to start with, as you can probably see all over the beginner forum, but languages like Java and C# (among others) are always mentioned, so I suggest you start out with picking up one of those.
Maybe it would be wise to just start out with very elementary programming, maybe some extremely simple games (eg. small text-based games), and see whether programming is actually something you can see yourself doing for quite some time, and if it is something you actually enjoy.
When you have an understanding of some basic programming principles you can start out with programming more and more games, starting with simple stuff like pong and tetris.

It's good to have goals and dreams, but do try to keep your goals realistic and don't focus on "breaking in" just yet. See how programming goes for you, you're still young so you have enough time to figure this out and to practice and evolve before having to make an actual career decision.

Good luck

Going off what Radikalizm said I will give you a little boost in hope.
What he said is correct—playing games and making them are not the same kind of joy. You know you should be making them when you spend all of your spare time trying to figure out how they work, what ideas went into map design, etc. I watched Mario jump up and hit blocks and just thought to myself, “How does it know that when I hit this button he needs to jump, and then how does it know how to make him hit a block and give me a coin, and then on top of that how does it know how to draw all of this?”

I was mainly interested in game design, as most people are. But I realized that no one was going to make my ideas for me, so if I wanted anything to actually get done I would have to learn to program myself (read that as, “program by myself,” not as, “program myself to do things”).

This is where some people get turned off to the idea of making games.
But I ultimately found it more fun than designing. After having done both professionally, I later turned down a design job in order to continue my search for a programming job, at the risk of being exported from Japan should I have failed to find one within 4 months (and I found one just at the deadline).


I still have passion as a designer and I have some games on the bench right now, but doing it professionally feels like a waste of time compared to focusing my skills on the code rather than a large document. I basically felt guilty using my time as a designer because I always felt, “I could have a larger impact on the project and ensure my vision is met properly if I use my time on code rather than a design document.”


Being a programmer is empowering and you may very well find that you love it more than any other industry job. Especially because you can apply it outside the industry as well, making little utilities for yourself to handle menial tasks (such as Doxygen function headers or class templates, or anything you can imagine), etc.

Don’t be too disheartened by Radikalizm’s post; falling in love with game development more than game playing happens in practice more often than you realize.
I estimate that in the time I spend with games, 90% goes towards development and 10% goes towards playing.


L. Spiro