Everyone has their own unique journey in game development. Some start by modding their favorite video games. Others are just curious to see if they can make their own video games. But most developers probably couldn’t tell you the exact time and place they got their start in game development. I can. And it’s a pretty cool story, I think. So I thought I’d share a little about how I got my start in game development.
My Trigger to Start Game Development
It was Thanksgiving Day, 2021. Everyone had fixed their plates and were sitting down to eat. I was at the kids’ table sitting across from my oldest nephew. He was 11 at the time and his two favorite things were sports and video games. The same two things I was into at his age.
While we were eating, he was showing me Retro Bowl (a football game for iOS and Android). It reminded me of the arcade/NES game Tecmo Bowl, so I showed him a video of that game. And we went down the rabbit hole of some of my favorite retro games.
At the time, I was working as a professional web developer (Drupal backend). My nephew knew that meant code, but probably didn’t know much more than that. And then the question came:
“Do you know how to make video games?”
I’ve been playing video games for a long time (25+ years). And I’ve been in software/web development since college (10+ years). But for some reason, it never really crossed my mind to try to start learning game development. I guess in my mind, game development and software development were two separate fields. Not sure why.
The question kind of surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it at all. But I told him the truth:
“I don’t know the first thing about it…
but I’ll look into it.”
CS50’s Introduction to Game Development
The weekend was coming up. I made a point to schedule time to start researching game development. Thinking back, I’m not sure how I actually started my search. But eventually, I came across the Harvard CS50 Introduction to Game Development on YouTube (highly recommend if you’re a beginner).
I started watching the lecture on Pokemon (one of my favorite games as a kid). With my background in software/web development, I understood most of the code. Certain concepts (such as state machines, entity component systems, etc) I was familiar with, but mainly in an educational setting. I had trouble understanding them in the context of game development.
Knowing this was a course, I backed up to the first lecture to see if I could wrap my head around them a little more. Once I did that, everything clicked for me. I learned the basics of the game loop, how to implement and refactor new features, and saw the game development process from start to finish.
I became almost addicted to game development after that. By the end of 2021, I had nearly finished the course.
Note: this is not typical. Most people should not expect to pick up game development in a month like this. I had a lot of tools and skills in my background that made the game development process much easier for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I was no expert at game development. Even now, I’m still not an expert. But that course helped me understand the game development process and be able to research the right questions. And with that, I was able to start my own game development journey.
Conclusion
A conversation at Thanksgiving Dinner with an 11-year old and weekend research session. That’s all it took get my start in game development. And my goal is that one day I can develop a video game, have that same nephew play it, love it, and be able to tell him he’s the reason I started game development in the first place.
This is my story and it’s a pretty unique one. And it makes me ridiculously happy just thinking about it. It’s amazing the things that happen if we just be open to new experiences.
Do you have a unique story about how you got your start in game development? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment down below and share your story with us.
