Hello!

I have been working as an SEO for over 3 years and have been thinking about changing my job for a while now. What's the best place to start in order to become a game developer? I understand that it would probably be easier for me to go into web development, but I'm interested in more complex architectures and I have a couple of java programmers I know. Can you tell me where you started, how did you study and what would you advise me to study first.

Holy cow! You’re in luck.because there are WebGL and three.js to work with — it’s all JavaScript (not the same thing as Java).

i started ’game’ dev in BASIC, and then C, and then C++.

What courses would you recommend? It's quite difficult to learn on your own and I think it takes quite a long time.

If you wish to start from scratch, then you should learn OpenGL, Direct3D, or Vulkan. If not, then you should learn Unity or Unreal Engine. What’s it going to be? You’ll be using C++ or C#. Forget about Java; it’s a dead language.

Hey, a switch from the old one to new opportunities is always a great path full of new stuff. Congrats!
Do you have any ideas about what kind of games you want to create?

Regarding my experience with programming, I've started earlier with C++. Then I've tried a little bit of C#. It's the basic required item for UE.
Also, a friend of mine helped me with JavaScript and when coming to WebGL I was accustomed to it already.

On this, I'd strongly recommend picking which part of game development you're interested in as it can be absolutely massive. Once you have that, then you can decide what are the best steps to take to achieve what you want.

For me personally, I started by making small games on machines back in the 1990s, by trying to replicate games that I loved playing myself. Things are way bigger than they were back then, so it's not as easy as to make a game single handedly (at least not of any scope).

Being me, I decided to develop the tooling for the game first as that's what interested me. It's meant that I can scale up my game development if my games are ever successful, but it wasn't necessary the best idea if I was looking to be the most commercially minded. Once I had that (and it's really a lovely level designer :-) ), I then started work on the actual games…

For my recently released commercial games, as I'm a programmer by training / profession, I started off with placeholder graphics (I'm not an artist of any ability) and then after the game was largely code complete, I then went to freelancer websites to get someone to draw graphics for me (the difference between projects which were fun to play but looked awful and ones which looked nice and fun to play was a few hundred dollars - obviously depending on the requirements for your games)

If I were starting again, look at things like unity as you can get things working very quickly and that's enormously satisfying! Not to mention, they're in-demand skills and you can use anything that you create as a portfolio to get involved in bigger projects.

If you're looking for ideas to start with, replicate the classics, look at itch.io for asset packs etc. and then see what motivates you!

I absolutely agree with Steven, cause you may decide what kind of game development you are interested in.
There are plenty of niches to start from and all are full of experiments to do and practice a lot. If we are talking about programming languages you need to know, then you may learn Java, Javascript, C++ (kinda basic set). A game developer can't be the one without OpenGL, so I advise paying attention mostly to it and trying to create graphics and objects that will be eye-catching. You should like your own games ?