Hey there, I hope this is the right forum for my post. 

My name is Hazem, 20 years old and I live in Egypt. I really love video games, I've been playing for a long time now and recently I thought about getting into video games development but the problem is that I have no experience or skills related to the field. I'm currently studying mechanical engineering which has nothing to do with games development but I'm hoping you guys could help me out on how to get started.

Like what are kind of skills do I need? How can I learn them? 

I read that starting as a Quality Assurance tester would be best since it's doesn't need many qualifications but still I need to learn other stuff and I don't know where to start. 

Thanks. 

Hi,

at least in my country you have some programming/coding lectures if you study mechanical engineering. So you might have some programming knowledge already. If not, that is actually the stating point.
If you learned, at least the basics, of a programming language already, grab a game engine that supports this language, a tutorial and get started.

If you don't have any prior programming experience I personally would recomment to start with C# and if you learned the basics of it, to have a look at unity. But that is just my opinion. Any other language and engine combination works probably just as well.

For advice how get a job in the industry as tester/QA, this is better answered by someone who has more experience with that.

sent u a PM...just so u know as ur a new member

i can teach u if you want

Hi OP,

while studying mechanical engineering, you'll surely learn things that are at least somehow useful for game development:

• they'll force a lot of math upon you
• physics, numerical methods, simulations, electrical engineering
• basic programming
• CAD / modelling
• Matlab, Mathematica, Excel
• economics, company finances, law
• foreign languages

For the start, do you have an idea whether you'd like to do technical stuff (programming) or artistic stuff (modelling, animation, ...)? Or all of it?

The most obvious advice is... obvious :) Start making SMALL games. Go make snake. Tetris. Asteroids. Space Invaders. Go. Make. One. Now. You'll figure EVERYTHING out while making a small game. Good luck!

.P

Thank you all for replying. I'll look into your recommendations. 

To answer pcmaster's question, I took lots of courses for math, physics and programming. I don't think programming is the right thing for me so I'm gonna start in the more artistic field and see how things go out. And I think you're right that I should start with making small games but I'll need to do more digging. 

Tom Sloper, I didn't know about your site but I'll definitely check out your FAQs.