hello everyone, i have recently graduated from college with a major in computer science. and having found it impossible to find a job in the field i have been working on a game in my spare time. i found this site while looking for advice on line. anyway. i am working with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 c++ on a windows xp computer. I am using a free graphics library that can be downloaded at: http://ulysses.carthage.edu/faculty/ewheeler/grafix/index.htm. while i am very familiar with the language and somewhat familiar with the library i have no training or experience in game developement. if anyone knows what it takes to get from 'recent college grad' to 'skilled games developer' i would very much love to know. i have read the 'for beginners' pages and found that the advice contained there in is to basic for me but most of the other stuff i have looked at seems to advanced. if any of you understand where i am at i would love to hear from you. thank-you.

Basically, keep studying on your own. Having a degree is a good starting point but it takes a bit more than that (as you know) to get into the games industry. The typical approach is look around for jobs which you can get programming experience in and then after a couple of years with some projects under your belt apply for a job in a games studio (all the meantime self-learning more about game programming). From there, work your way up in the company. (Alternatively you could try going Indie but that's a little more risky)

Check my post here for a starting point for your research:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=341003

thanks for the reply. the thread does seem to have quite a bit of info on it. more the type of stuff i was looking for actually. but your reply raised another question: what is involved in "going indie?" I understand the term but i did not know that that was possible in video games.