So ever since I was around 12 I've wanted to make Video Games. Not stuff like FarmVille or stuff similar to that, but an actual game with a story and such. Well I'm 17 now, and I feel like I'm way too late to start learning how to program.

Basically, I just need to know if I'm too late to get into Game Development and if not, some direction on where I should start.

Maybe some general information on what I should know getting into this, and how to motivate myself to actually follow through.

Also one more thing, do you need a fancy degree and a lot of education to get into the industry? Like, I'm not completely opposed to working for a big company, but I'd rather do stuff my own way. So any information regarding Education, and whether or not you need a degree and stuff would be helpful!

Thanks,

Wesley

You're definitely good on timing. Try it for yourself, for fun, and see how you do. Just the usual two important things:

1. Start simple! Make a number guessing game. A pong game. Whatever. But definitely start small.

2. Know that it will take a while. You can learn a programming language like C++ as most people do but you can also make games with game making programs where you don't even need to code. (The tradeoff is that you have less control over things but usually this is ok for beginners.)

Look around this site for beginner articles and it's also worth starting here:

http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/faq.php/_/for-beginners-r1

When you say that you'd rather do things your own way, that suggests that you'd like to run your own studio. Having your own studio means your running a business. To be succesful running your own business you'll need every advantage you can get. That means you should probably want to start with the best education you can get. Even then, there's no guarentee you'll be succesful and if your business does run into trouble you'll want something you can fall back on. As such, if you have a degree that is in demand by industry, you'll be in better shape than if you don't have one.

So you want to make a game but "not stuff like FarmVille"? Can you draw well? Can you make good and fitting music? Can you write? Making a demanding game takes a lot of time and various talents. You can compensate a little in those areas with public domain assets and/or hiring artists but if you want to make something "better than FarmVille" you either need some budget, a team, be multi-talented and/or have remarkable endurance.

So my advice is as follows:

1. For get about great games. If you have a well-working and a little creative version of pong you've done a great step

2. Get a book and learn C. You can start with others but C has few features and gives you good insight about how programs work

3. Make a calculator, sorting algorythms and some console-input programs

4. Get into any programming language you like and make pong

5. Make better pong

6. Re-evaluate game development, ask yourself if you enjoyed the process and decide from here

if you're late to learn programming then i have to give up now cuz i'm 21 and it's only been 5 months i try to learn c++ and SFML

Well I'm 17 now, and I feel like I'm way too late to start learning how to program.

Most people don't know what to do with their life at age 17. You are perfectly fine.

I suggest you start with PlayMaker so you could have an idea of how game logic works. I started with this too. It was an all nighter very small project but I really learned a lot from it. After you get that motivation from PlayMaker, start learning a programming language. I suggest C#. Create TicTocToe text-based game. Then from there, you can start figuring out what next "simple" game you can make. Start small, and finish every project. After you have, maybe, like 3 text-based games done, try making a 2D game. You can convert your text-based games into 2D if you want. I can keep going but you probably won't follow every step anyway so....