Three years since I joined and posted on this forum. My old posts are here. Thank you to Simian Man for linking to them. I was 13 three years ago. I wanted to be a game designer, or a game developer, or a game artist, or anything to do with making games. So I once stumbled across here, and I posted a thread about wanting something easy to use, with "no programming". It was such a pathetic (and badly typed out) post that people thought it was a joke, and actually laughed. I reacted pretty badly, but that event stuck with me for a long time. Even back then I was trying to learn to program. I went about it all the wrong ways, trying to learn C/C++, or &#106avascript. I failed in all attempts (even the &#106avascript &#111;ne), and I know the reason: I was trying to make a game. I failed in all attempts because my sole goal was to create games, and no matter the language, that takes a slight bit of time, at the least. Time which I wasn't ready for, I wanted to make games <i>then</i>, the <i>now</i> of the moment. I failed, in all cases, because I didn't have the patience to try anything but game design. About two years after this, I'd changed a lot. Hell, after &#111;ne year I'd changed a lot. But after two I had gotten my first TI-83+. I learned to program &#111;n this, and not making games. I learned by making little utilities and such. I soon progressed, moving in the first few months to VB.NET (to make games), to C# (there was better support for games), and then a couple months after to Python (far better support for games, and cross-platform). During that time I also developed my first fully functional game, Pong, for the TI-83+. Since then I've learned a couple new languages, I've progressed a lot more after learning python and starting up a project for a text rpg, and changed my career goals vastly. Even though I'm relatively new to programming, I do think I have &#111;ne piece of advice to give out to prospective game developers: to not develop games, but programs for yourself. <i>I'm not sure which subforum was the best fit for this.</i> <!--EDIT--><span class=editedby><!--/EDIT-->[Edited by - scorchsaber on March 26, 2007 9:35:03 AM]<!--EDIT--></span><!--/EDIT-->

Moving to For Beginners, so others may see this.

I agree this would probably be more convincing to beginners than when "experts" say it.

By the way, you can see your old posts here.

I agree with your piece of advice. Too many beginners here jump straight into the next big game and it often barely gets anywhere. The ambition is great though, you need the desire to work to succeed.

You have clearly understood the point of starting out small. This was the type of thing I though I was going to post, but I will make that as an article on my new site. That's experience you are talking about.

I have to say I'm surprised that the reaction was so overwhelmingly positive. I vaguely suspected that I was weak-willed in my first attempts.

I've admitted a lot of faults here that I don't like, namely, the previous posts of mine. I'm not sure how to respond, other than with the fact that I'm smiling, and have been since I read the replies. Thanks! :D