Hello,

I don't know know how much of this is seeking advice and how much is seeking reassurance, but here goes...

Long short, I'm 35, went back to school a year ago after a layoff to study coding with intentions of going into game development.

I can find all the answers to all the typical questions newbies ask but I can't seem to find this one.

If I land a job in the business, where are the more likely areas I will be living?

I ask this because I'm not a young 20-something out of college but I have a family and won't be able to change states on a whim. Also, some companies I had my eye on years ago either no longer exist or have relocated - in some cases a significant distance.

What about the indy rout? There are 100 folks out there for every job opening so I have told myself this might be a reality when I'm first starting out. I have seen a couple of job ads in that realm that are essentially telecommuting.

Anyway, any advice would be great.

Thanks,

Jeff

http://www.gamedevmap.com/

I haven't used it and I don't work in the industry yet, so I can't tell you how up to date it is.

I would also consider cities that have a game development conference. The game industry here in Ottawa has recently taken off, so we just got a game dev conference.

I am turning 35 this year myself, and I also live in an area that is basically a game dev wasteland (At the moment, at least... ).

Only difference is, I still have a job, so I have the luxury to treat game dev as hobby while I get into it... still not sure wheter or not to go pro or go Indie at some point, but I'll do it the "product first" route and try to come up with some nice game prototypes before I dive in head first (old fashioned, I know )

Before you decide on game dev as your next career, do some reality check... I am not the expert, but this is what I gathered from what the pros share:

1) Landing a job in an existing studio is hard. You need to be exceptionally talented / good at selling yourself to land a job as a game dev anyway, as Code Fox wrote, more so as an older dev.

2) creating an Indie game that makes a reasonable profit is hard. Lots try, most seem to fail or fail to make the money they invested back. Very few seem to land a big hit, and they will end up in the newspapers, making youngsters believe it is easy to be the next notch.

So going with the asumption that you don't have the needed work expierience / degree / portfolio for landing a game dev job, or you really want to bootstrap your own business:

If you have no obligations / family / rent to pay (which you seem to have), enough savings to live some years off it, or can scale back your living expenses enough to survive on what you have in savings (ramen noodles and all that), and you have a REAL passion for game dev (just make sure you "try before you buy", so to speak: see what game dev really is like before you dive in), go ahead, learn all you still need to learn, become an Indie or build up a CV and Portfolio that might land you a game dev job.

Just make sure you and your family have enough to survive until you get a payout from your game dev career, which might take a while.

If you do not want to take the risk, first look for a job in another business area before you build up your bussiness as Indie or your CV for a Game dev job. It is hard to shine when you and your family have to starve.

Other lines of work also look for programmers, business dev can be a well paid job, and there are much more job openings usually.

And at least where I live, more and more technical jobs are also offering the possibility of going part time (which is what I do).

On relocation I think others can help much more than me. As an european, I would find it even difficult to really place the state names on the right spot on a map (besides the well known ones like Florida or California)

Just my 2 cents