Ronbert,
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Thank you for the kind words and input! I should mention I currently couldn't construct a game unless I was given a project kit similar to UDK were all the programming is done and you just place tiles and such. That's why I'm going to school for programming I've always wanted to be a programmer but over the last few years I've realized I know longer want to "dream" it, I want to study it learn it, learn to take something I love and construct it from scratch. Turn those visions in my head into working living creations.

@BlindAttitudeGames

Someone to hold my hand is just a tad extreme... the rout I want to take is the one I'm already working on schooling and such but I'm looking for someone to give me information about I guess applying for the positions the type of degree game companies look at when considering hire. As far as learning the languages go that's not something I want a "mentor" on that's something that will take practice for years and a lot of study.

You seem to have a good road started to getting in, in my honest opinion. You've chosen to take a conventional degree in computer science instead of working towards a specific game design degree(which professionally I don't agree with). Taking a conventional degree will allow you to look for other work besides game development if the need should arise once you graduate. While this may not be what you'd like for your future (working outside the game industry), a lot of technical jobs out there can be directly translated into the game development process. Having a specific degree in *just* game development has the likelyhood that if you can't find work in the industry, you have no other knowledge to fall back on other than entry level technical positions, if that.

While there's no definite, it's likely to say that a game studio with any type of credit will not hire you unless you have some type of portfolio to show with work that you've done in the past. Even if it's your own silly programming projects that you do by yourself, those can go a long way into showing what you're capable of doing. While in college, I'd look into starting this portfolio much like you would a job resume, continue to add to it and find things to make it better. In 4 years, that portfolio could show some interesting promise.

The degree-less approach is in many ways quite simple, and is this:

The easiest way is to make something useful. Useful things are inherently easy to show off, and can also spread themselves around for you. The next easiest way is make something creative instead to show off. The creative bit is also harder than the useful approach because it has subjective components, as the person looking at your art or hobby code project might not find it visually pleasing, or they don't like your personal coding style. From there it goes off to a cliff of 'the hard way' which is to convince the interviewer/HR person that you know what you are talking about, and this is the step that degrees try to give credibility for (and fail miserably IMO).

Now the weird part: due to the absolutely insane number of under qualified applications that fly by our HR and programming department, we have instituted a very basic programming test to programmer applicants. Its extremely hard to explain how big of a problem this is, that HR sees say 1000 resumes over a few months and you only end up hiring 2 people when you wanted 6. And a lot of times its because about 985 of them couldn't get past a very basic programming test. Unless you have some connection (friend of someone working there, are well known etc), you really do need to take the test. So if you see one, try not to feel insulted or feel its beneath you. Completing the test puts you in the top 10% out of the gate. This also means if HR says 'not interested' before giving you a test, fire back and ask if they have one, so you can prove what you are talking about.

As for myself, I started working on making the Half-Life map tools a lot better in my spare time. Luckily for me both Carmack and the good programmers at Valve left a very large number of bugs in the tools to fix or improve upon, especially in the very visual area of lighting quality. Nearly everyone making Half-Life 1 maps was using some version of the tools after a year or so. Eventually Gearbox tracked me down, as they were also using the tools to make Opposing Force. They called me up and asked if I was interested in moving to Dallas area and working for them. My answer was NO!. I had just found a new job at an upcoming .com in the early spring of 2000. Four weeks later, and six weeks after starting said job, the .com's imploded and they fired everyone and closed up shop, and I had to call Gearbox back to see if they still were interested