I am finishing up my Game Programming and Design BS and am excited to start working in the field.  My biggest concern right now is that I live in a city with almost zero game studios and will be here for a while longer as me and my family have just bought our first house a couple years ago.  We do plan on moving in the future just for the purpose of change and experiencing something new and my girlfriend wants to move somewhere I can at least have opportunities to work in, but for now we are staying here while she finishes up her masters program.  What I am curious about is how to go about trying to get into the industry as a remote developer.  I am interested in any kind of work in the field to start off as I have been working on many different areas of game development since I was a kid in the early 90's but have finally decided to go for it in a serious way.  I guess I'm just looking for some advice and harsh reality checks about breaking into this highly competitive field as a remote developer.  I am new to the forums as well, so I hope I didn't break any rules I missed with this post.

Thanks

Game jobs are relatively rare, and breaking in is difficult due to the few openings for raw beginners. Remote work is relatively rare.  I have known a few game developers who were able to work remotely, but they are a single digit number, versus over a thousand in-office developers.  They exist, but they are extremely rare, and usually started with strong connections to the studios before becoming remote workers.

As a fresh college graduate a company will not be paying for relocation or allowing remote work unless there are some unusual circumstances, like you developed your own amazing game as a senior project or something that gets you recruited specifically.

Hiring a worker without industry experience is a big risk for a company.  There are plenty of people local to the company that they can take that risk with, they won't want to add the risk of a remote worker on top of the risk of an industry beginner.