hey all, A little info on me. I am23 and have always played video games but recently decided a career in games is right for me. it will be hard for me to start anytime soon though as I do have a son and am married (yes i was young) i work full time as an insurance salesman so i cant go to school right now as of yet. When my wife graduates then ill go. anyway, what i want to know is would it be smart to go to one of these trade schools that will get me done in about a year or is college best? They have a two year program at my community college. What do employers look for as far as education? Do you have to work nights? I am so sick of working late nights going all over the place! What steps should I take now to be ready for school waht should I be learning and doing right now? Any help would be greatly appreciated i did use search and couldnt find much and there were like 1700 pages to look through on the threads and the articles were not specific enough for my simple self!! BTW I have no knowledge whatso ever about computers or anything of the sort my experience is limited to playing fight night round 3 on xbox.

You might want to actually try to make something before you decide what's "right for you" or shell out thousands for education. The commercials they show on TV make people think game development consists of playing games all day, but that's not it at all.

Anyway do you want to go into art or programming? You can probably get by not knowing much about computers with the art side, but good luck with programming. That's something you should probably be experianced in before going to school or you'll have a rough time.

Quote:
BTW I have no knowledge whatso ever about computers or anything of the sort my experience is limited to playing fight night round 3 on xbox.

I think your first step is learning of computers themselves. Video
game development *requires* heavy exp in computers.

The Start Here page might be able to help.

Thanks for the reply, im not entirely sure which i want to do, all i know is want to make video games or somehting of the sort. When you say art what do you mean i cant draw anything but stick people!! I think the programming is really the part im looking for

You will need to learn a programming language. Pascal or BASIC are
usually recommended for beginners.

Java is also used alot, espically for online games (Java applets)
Heres a nice tutorial

C/C++ are "industry standard", but are very complex languages to learn.
Click here for tutorials and articals.

I recommend starting with Pascal. Heres a nice tutorial that will get you started

Dont worry about video game programming until you learn the programming part.
Video games are very complex software-take it one step at a time.

START HERE section will answer alot of your questions[smile]

Quote:Original post by Crypter
You will need to learn a programming language. Pascal or BASIC are
usually recommended for beginners.

Java is also used alot, espically for online games (Java applets)
Heres a nice tutorial

C/C++ are "industry standard", but are very complex languages to learn.
Click here for tutorials and articals.

I recommend starting with Pascal. Heres a nice tutorial that will get you started

Dont worry about video game programming until you learn the programming part.
Video games are very complex software-take it one step at a time.

START HERE section will answer alot of your questions[smile]

Pascal and BASIC are great for procedural languages but really OOP is the best way to go find a good book on java or you could use one of the newer but buggier langauges out there. I learned c++ first it wasn't bad but since c++ allows the programmer to choose oop or not I am now struggling with some of the oop design issues.
Hope this helps,
Durfy

One thing you might want to do at the outset is to check out a book or two to see whether you even like game programming, before you invest any dollars in a training program, certificate, or degree. Thompson Course Technology has a number of excellent starter books for programming beginners that use simple games to teach basic programming principles. Among the titles of the series "For the Absolute Beginner" are books like "Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Programming for the Absolute Beginner", "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner", and "Visual Basic.Net Programming for the Absolute Beginner", and so on. All books in this "Absolute Beginner" series use simple game strategy to teach programming. Some of these titles could probably be found in a local large bookstore like Barnes and Noble or Borders. You can also check out some of the book titles at Thompson's own website:

http://www.courseptr.com/ptr_catalog.cfm?group=Programming

Dave FF

Go take an intro course in C or C++ at a local college and see how you like it. It's usually a one day a week evening type of thing that will cost a couple hundred bucks. Then go from there. This course will tell you a lot about the work required and your aptitude towards the material.

I would tell you to grab a book and teach yourself, but if your computer knowledge is minimal, this may be too painful.