Hi everyone I am just starting out in Game Design. I will be attending classes online at Full Sail University August 1st. I love games and have always wanted to be a part of the game making process, it's something that has caught my interest for a while now. I do have my doubts though because I know literally nothing about it. Is game design hard to grasp when you don't know anything about it? I'm a bit worried about doing this program online. Also have any of you graduated from Full Sail? How was your experience?

-TheGamerPenguin

I think that there are plenty of online resources to help you explore concepts deeper and differently whenever they are introduced to you through a curriculum. Anything that you don't fully understand or want to get into deeper should easily yield google search results that are useful.

I'm 100% self-taught by way of the internet. I got into making levels for the older games, like Doom and Duke3D, and then got into modding Quake when it was still popular. At the same time I was playing with qbasic early on and then migrated to C all while learning how to take apart and modify existing games.. Then I got into reverse engineering and learned some assembly and started learning more about the machine-level way that things worked. From there I started learning hardware rendering in 2001 and doing stuff with OpenGL. I still remember what it was like to finally get a texture on a triangle, it was a beautiful thing.

Since then I've just been learning more and more about all the related topics. I know how, and have above-average skill at creating anything for a game, from 3d model geometry, animations, textures, sound effects and music, etc.. all just by exploring them on my own out of a sheer passion for game development.

Where there's a will there's a way! However, I do believe that some minds are more suited for dealing with things like programming. I got lucky there, and also got an early start playing with qbasic as a kid so I have a lifetime of working within the paradigms programming entails and it comes very easily to me. I've only one friend who never programmed before and decided to learn in his 30's, and he had a bit of a rough start but he's picking it up - and he's one of the folk who IMO has a mind for it to some degree.

But, as I said before, there are plenty of online resources - which includes all sorts of gamedev communities where a lot of people can explain things to you in a more 1-on-1 fashion, suiting analogies and metaphors to your needs in order for you to better understand whatever concepts you struggle with.

Good luck!

I think that there are plenty of online resources to help you explore concepts deeper and differently whenever they are introduced to you through a curriculum. Anything that you don't fully understand or want to get into deeper should easily yield google search results that are useful.

I'm 100% self-taught by way of the internet. I got into making levels for the older games, like Doom and Duke3D, and then got into modding Quake when it was still popular. At the same time I was playing with qbasic early on and then migrated to C all while learning how to take apart and modify existing games.. Then I got into reverse engineering and learned some assembly and started learning more about the machine-level way that things worked. From there I started learning hardware rendering in 2001 and doing stuff with OpenGL. I still remember what it was like to finally get a texture on a triangle, it was a beautiful thing.

Since then I've just been learning more and more about all the related topics. I know how, and have above-average skill at creating anything for a game, from 3d model geometry, animations, textures, sound effects and music, etc.. all just by exploring them on my own out of a sheer passion for game development.

Where there's a will there's a way! However, I do believe that some minds are more suited for dealing with things like programming. I got lucky there, and also got an early start playing with qbasic as a kid so I have a lifetime of working within the paradigms programming entails and it comes very easily to me. I've only one friend who never programmed before and decided to learn in his 30's, and he had a bit of a rough start but he's picking it up - and he's one of the folk who IMO has a mind for it to some degree.

But, as I said before, there are plenty of online resources - which includes all sorts of gamedev communities where a lot of people can explain things to you in a more 1-on-1 fashion, suiting analogies and metaphors to your needs in order for you to better understand whatever concepts you struggle with.

Good luck!

Thanks for your input! I'm 20 right now so I don't think I'm getting too late of a start. I"m really glad to hear that this can be self taught that gives me hope! I started learning some basics online and It doesn't seem too hard to me so hopefully that's a sign that this will be for me! Thanks Again for your input!

-TheGamerPenguin

Hi everyone I am just starting out in Game Design. I will be attending classes online at Full Sail University August 1st. I love games and have always wanted to be a part of the game making process, it's something that has caught my interest for a while now. I do have my doubts though because I know literally nothing about it. Is game design hard to grasp when you don't know anything about it? I'm a bit worried about doing this program online. Also have any of you graduated from Full Sail? How was your experience?

I think a good way to understand game design is to just play a lot of games and then do your own postmortems for the games. I mean, write down everything that worked and didnt work, and why you think they did or didnt.

Also, just try to design your own games even if it's for board games or whatever. You can also get an engine like Unity and learn some C# programming, and start making your own small games.