Hello everyone, 

I am an experienced software developer from Germany working in enterprise industry, developing custom windows desktop applications using .net technologies. I'm 30 years old, married with kids. My salary is great but its not what I want to do the rest of my life. I want to get into the gaming industry. I realize that I need a portfolio to get a job so I started doing side projects in unity (as Im pretty familiar with c#). I have come to realize that I know nothing about game programming.Its toally a different beast to control. But I think im beginning to understand and change the way I think about software development. 

"So whats wrong ? " you might ask. I dont know if im having a mid life crisis or not. I feel pretty de-motivated doing this. So I figured I need a job in the industry so I can be pushed to my limits and learn new stuff. The problem is, I can not start a junior developer again. I have a living standart and need to support my family financially. As this is a Problem, what would you suggest me doing ? Im lacking motivation / know-how to build a portfolio, cant start as a junior developer, cant find a job without experience. I would appreciate any help as I am stuck figuring this out.

P.S.: my first post on this forum. Sorry for any mistakes.

appreciate your honost answer. 

I heard the same. Maybe Im better off staying away from the industry and do the side project. But I lack motivation time to time. Maybe I need to find people who have same programming experience and do things together. hmm. 

Shameless plug: have you heard of the Gamkedo game development club? https://gamkedo.com

It's a club where you learn to make games by collaborating with other people who are also mostly hobbyists/professionals working in other industries/parents/students/etc. Project roles include everything: programmers, artists, designers, manager-types/leaders, marketers (e.g., social media). The actual projects are whatever - anyone can pitch and lead a project. Generally, 3D games are developed with Unity; 2D games are mostly developed in JS (mostly from scratch, but sometimes also using Unity or other JS tools).

There are some mentors in the club, who are active game industry veterans, so you can get guidance from pros. And some members have parlayed their club experience into getting jobs within the game industry.

Full disclosure: I am a club member (I'm a working parent; my day job is DevOps in the financial industry), so if I sound biased, I totally am :D Also, the club is a paid membership (I don't paid for recruiting new members, or anything like that; just mentioning it so you can know what to expect).

It might be something worth investigating.

My suggestion is to try trading some of your salary for some time to dedicate game programming.

Going all-in with a game developer path is a risky choice for a young guy that has nothing to loose, let alone for someone with a family and a good job.

My advise is to find a job that allows you to program games for 15-20 hours a week (plus weekend you got something between the 20 and the 30 hours of game programming a week, which is enough to learn at a decent speed).

This could just mean a 30/week hours dayjob, or even less, depending on your country/company.

Did you talked to your employer about your problem? how much free time do you have at the moment?

Just to bring you my personal example, I have a standard day job (40hours/week monday-friday), I'm 26 with a girlfirend and friends:

At the moment I'm able to dedicate something between 25-30 hours per week to the game I'm developing, and I'm learning a lot white at the same time ensuring me and my girlfriend a solid future.

I absolutely don't feel the need to enter the game industry at the moment, basically because I feel like I'm already in the game industry

just to recap:

-find a "enjoyable enough" day job, that allows you to have something between 20 and 30 hours of free time per week

-be ready to sacrifice a little bit of social life (just a bit, it's still very important to be balanced in my opinion)

-start programming games (I started with handmade hero, I suggest you to do the same)

I'm doing this since almost two years now, and I love it.

Leonardo

8 hours ago, Zickig Zicke said:

I am an experienced software developer from Germany working in enterprise industry, ... I have come to realize that I know nothing about game programming.Its toally a different beast to control.

Many non-game programmers jump in assuming it is an easy field, but when restated in their terms it takes on a different feel: SLA is typically in nanoseconds for individual tasks. Soft realtime requirements where 15 milliseconds is a soft failure, 32 milliseconds is generally a hard failure. Output is roughly 300 MB/second. Roughly a half million major updates per second, billions of floating point operations per second. Many algorithms are pulled directly from cutting-edge research, advanced mathematics, physics, statistics, and other fields.

During the time a database programmer waits for high-performance latency for a single command, a major game typically performs over 20,000 major updates, has completed a quarter billion to half billion floating point operations, and has output several megabytes.

8 hours ago, Zickig Zicke said:

I feel pretty de-motivated doing this. So I figured I need a job in the industry so I can be pushed to my limits and learn new stuff. The problem is, I can not start a junior developer again. I have a living standart and need to support my family financially. As this is a Problem, what would you suggest me doing ? Im lacking motivation / know-how to build a portfolio, cant start as a junior developer, cant find a job without experience. I would appreciate any help as I am stuck figuring this out.

Don't apply as a junior developer, because you aren't one.

You've spent years doing desktop development in C#. That experience is transferable to tools. Apply to jobs as a tools developer.  

If you have done work on servers or database processing, that experience is transferable to back-end work and the business side of game processing, like accounts and user profile management. If you've got that experience, apply as a server or back-end developer.

There are jobs you can fit, but the professional game industry is relatively small compared to business software, openings are relatively sparse, and there is competition for work. Expect that it will take time to find a job in the industry. Since you are already working you have time to hunt around for a good company that will hire you at a reasonable wage. Some (bad) companies will low-ball you claiming that you don't have experience and therefore don't deserve full pay, don't accept that. Know what the prevailing wages are for your experience in that location before negotiating wages, since salary is whatever you negotiate.

I guess frob told it all. But I suppose having comments from people who already did it should help and shed some lights to people wanting to do it like this. I am not that kind of people, but would like to tell my two cents.

To give an accent to what frob told, I was recently proposed a job in the game industry as a back-end developer, but I was not using the same technologies than what they proposed. So there were no "perfect match" as they say nowadays. I also quite recently was asked if I was interested in entering the game industry in some specific region of the world. But since at this time I was 100% focused on some other region, I kindly refused. So there are possibilities.

But you need to work hard and focus on what you would like to do in the game industry (3D programming, front-end programming, back-end programming...), make a good portfolio and once you feel ready, start to spam recruiters, companies and job-oriented websites. Don't be afraid to spend some years in order to reach a decent level prior any applications. You'll of course never reach what frob was talking about since you are alone, but personal projects matter a lot.

Don't be afraid to leave Germany which is not a country known for its gaming industry (except maybe Cry Engine), I will soon leave my birth country with my family. It can be a bit stressing, but if this is for what you really want to do, then do it better than feeding regrets.

And for some other information I'm more old that you two (first posters) and had some possibilities. So I believe there's no way you can't achieve this.

Sorry, but I'm confused by the idea that Germany is not known for its gaming industry. At least it feels like they have a gaming convention every month in one city or the other (starting with GamesCom). I don't know if that should correlate with a strong industry... Well, anyway, if it is, the point is that in that aspect the OP is fortunate.

14 hours ago, frob said:

Many non-game programmers jump in assuming it is an easy field, but when restated in their terms it takes on a different feel: SLA is typically in nanoseconds for individual tasks. Soft realtime requirements where 15 milliseconds is a soft failure, 32 milliseconds is generally a hard failure. Output is roughly 300 MB/second. Roughly a half million major updates per second, billions of floating point operations per second. Many algorithms are pulled directly from cutting-edge research, advanced mathematics, physics, statistics, and other fields.

During the time a database programmer waits for high-performance latency for a single command, a major game typically performs over 20,000 major updates, has completed a quarter billion to half billion floating point operations, and has output several megabytes.

Don't apply as a junior developer, because you aren't one.

You've spent years doing desktop development in C#. That experience is transferable to tools. Apply to jobs as a tools developer.  

If you have done work on servers or database processing, that experience is transferable to back-end work and the business side of game processing, like accounts and user profile management. If you've got that experience, apply as a server or back-end developer.

 

There are jobs you can fit, but the professional game industry is relatively small compared to business software, openings are relatively sparse, and there is competition for work. Expect that it will take time to find a job in the industry. Since you are already working you have time to hunt around for a good company that will hire you at a reasonable wage. Some (bad) companies will low-ball you claiming that you don't have experience and therefore don't deserve full pay, don't accept that. Know what the prevailing wages are for your experience in that location before negotiating wages, since salary is whatever you negotiate.

Great answer, thank you for that. To be clear, I dont want to be a graphics or physics programmer. I want to be a gameplay programmer. In my daily job I use complicated algorithms and technologies but I dont need to dive in to their details. so I assume I can do the same with game play programming. Not interested in the technology but the game mechanics itself.

I want to thank you all for your great answers. But I like this advise the most.

13 hours ago, _Silence_ said:

I guess frob told it all. But I suppose having comments from people who already did it should help and shed some lights to people wanting to do it like this. I am not that kind of people, but would like to tell my two cents.

To give an accent to what frob told, I was recently proposed a job in the game industry as a back-end developer, but I was not using the same technologies than what they proposed. So there were no "perfect match" as they say nowadays. I also quite recently was asked if I was interested in entering the game industry in some specific region of the world. But since at this time I was 100% focused on some other region, I kindly refused. So there are possibilities.

But you need to work hard and focus on what you would like to do in the game industry (3D programming, front-end programming, back-end programming...), make a good portfolio and once you feel ready, start to spam recruiters, companies and job-oriented websites. Don't be afraid to spend some years in order to reach a decent level prior any applications. You'll of course never reach what frob was talking about since you are alone, but personal projects matter a lot.

Don't be afraid to leave Germany which is not a country known for its gaming industry (except maybe Cry Engine), I will soon leave my birth country with my family. It can be a bit stressing, but if this is for what you really want to do, then do it better than feeding regrets.

And for some other information I'm more old that you two (first posters) and had some possibilities. So I believe there's no way you can't achieve this.

I havent talked to my manager about this as I dont want to risk anything. They will not be happy to hear about this. Because I am the team leader. I think I can take one day per week off and dedicate that time to my project. If it blows, great. If not, i will have something to put in my portfolio. 

Again, thank you all for your great answers

2 hours ago, supermikhail said:

Sorry, but I'm confused by the idea that Germany is not known for its gaming industry. At least it feels like they have a gaming convention every month in one city or the other (starting with GamesCom). I don't know if that should correlate with a strong industry... Well, anyway, if it is, the point is that in that aspect the OP is fortunate.

Well yes. You are probably right. I must admit I don't really know the German game industry except for Far Cry and Crisis. With known for its gaming industry, I was mainly meaning countries with a background and wide possibilities to hire. So I believe USA is the first, followed by Japan, Canada, then France and GB. And from my understanding, which can be wrong, game programmers will have more chance in East Europe, like in Estonia or Ukraine than in Germany. Again I can be wrong. Just talking from my own experience where I never had proposition neither found any job offers in Germany except for Crytek but had several possibilities in East Europe.

16 minutes ago, Zickig Zicke said:

I havent talked to my manager about this as I dont want to risk anything. They will not be happy to hear about this. Because I am the team leader. I think I can take one day per week off and dedicate that time to my project. If it blows, great. If not, i will have something to put in my portfolio. 

No you should not stop your work for that purpose. I was not precise enough. I was meaning doing it after work, during your transport from/to work if possible (like I did).

And to conclude from what I could give to you, you are the only one who has the keys. Here people could tell you that whether this is a bad dream or whether you have chances to succeed. Now you know you have.