Howdy folks! Sloan, DEV Moderator and mascot, coming back at ya with another question submitted by a DEV community member. 🦥
For those unfamiliar with the series, this is another installment of Sloan's Inbox. You all send in your questions, I ask them on your behalf anonymously, and the community leaves comments to offer advice. Whether it's career development, office politics, industry trends, or improving technical skills, we cover all sorts of topics here. If you want to send in a question or talking point to be shared anonymously via Sloan, that'd be great; just scroll down to the bottom of the post for details on how.
Let's see what we have this week...
Today's question is:
My dream job is to be a game developer, but I'm worried that's not a practical, achievable goal to shoot for from the start. I'm just a beginner dev and trying to understand what I should focus on to make it into the industry. Is it realistic for someone's first developer job to be in game development? Is it better to work on other development skills first and then shift into game development from a different career? I'm trying to set reasonable expectations for myself, but am also eager to achieve my dream! Thanks in advance for any guidance. 🙂
Share your thoughts and let's help a fellow DEV member out! Remember to keep kind and stay classy. 💚
Want to submit a question for discussion or ask for advice? Visit Sloan's Inbox! You can choose to remain anonymous.
Top comments (11)
Coming from someone who has never worked in the field but is aware of some of it's dynamics I would say that the one major 'issue' for starting in game dev is that it is an industry know to have a poor work life balance. It's know for squeezing everything out of its developers and burn out is common. To that end it might be a bad first experience in the wider field of software engineering.
Second I would say that, somewhat unexpectedly, game dev can require much more traditional 'computer science' than general software engineering.
I'm head of UI for one of the most played driving simulators available on Steam. I landed the role with no game development background (I'm not even a gamer). I disagree with both of your points.
Not every game company is like that. The company I work for has probably the best work/life balance I've ever known, and really cares for its employees AND contractors (it treats both the same way)
Also, a surprising number of games these days use essentially pure embedded web tech to build their UIs within the game, so even just 'web skills' can get you a long way towards landing a game development job.
I’m glad to hear it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. I guess it’s a case of bad news being on blast while the good situations aren’t heralded.
I think it's perfect to start out as a gamedev if that's where you want to lead your career. Similar career advice as to getting your first job also apply to it, you should tweak it to match the game dev domain.
It's also possible to start in a different domain/industry, but you'd have to find extra time to build on game dev skills so you can secure a job.
Not really true. You can land game development jobs with just web dev skills. Many game UIs use embedded web tech.
I started in gaming and it all worked out fine. In hindsight gaming is very insulated compared to web-dev, in that the tools and programs used are often different. E.g. Perforce is used more than Git because Perforce handles big asset files better, and infrastructure is difficult when everything has to compile down to an executable, y'know? So there are a lot more homegrown and esoteric tools to learn.
I worked as a technical artist which was great fun!, and it meant dealing with various DCC apps like Maya, 3D Studio MAX, Motionbuilder, and an absolute metric ton of utility apps. It was a lot of glue-code and automation, and efficiently processing gigabytes upon gigabytes of all kinds of data.
Beware the pitfalls though: Amongst all the fun parts of making games, also know it's a great industry for anyone who wants to be paid significantly less than any other developer (literally my first web-job paid twice what I was offered in games), and you should want to work extremely long hours without compensation because artistry can't be estimated, and you're happy to work tirelessly on something for possibly several years that might quite conceivably get no attention at all when released and get delegated to the bargain bin a week after that.
Chase your dreams, but do it with open eyes.
I suggest roadmap.sh for the roadmap of a game dev
I like these (not seen them before)! They also demonstrate the differences / overlap between different career paths nicely - thank you.
I started out in game dev as a web developer after finishing a bachelor in Cognitive Science. I learned the skills I needed on the job. Granted, pay was not great, but my dream is not to get rich. I worked in Germany and Sweden so far and work/life balance is good. I only had to crunch / work weekends occasionally, like for 2 weeks every couple years or so.
I think game development has lots of interesting entry level positions, like QA and community management. I have seen people make careers out if starting there.
For game development, there is little classical education paths that you can take, so most people working in game dev learned something else. If you want to got the programming path, it’s useful to start with a bachelor’s degree or similar education, though.
As a programmer, with each new project I work on, I learn new skills, tools, and languages. It’s quite impressive how quickly tech develops.
As a tip: I would just start looking around for entry level jobs and internships and apply. You’ll at least learn what they are looking for. In the meantime, build a portfolio. There are lots of free resources to learn about game dev online. If that does not work out, sure working somewhere else first and switching to game dev later is always an option, too.
It is. You choose the field and there is no right or wrong option. If you want to develop games, be a game dev. If you want to focus on Java backend, do exactly that. Do you want to be a frontend dev? Go for it.
As for myself, I wouldn't do that. Game industry treats game developers poorly compared to other fields. There is this idea that game development is some sort of privilege so you should shut up and crunch for questionable amount of money. Not to mention that big studios often fire employees after the project is done. In my area, I can get a more stable, better paid job as a Java backend developer, that also maintains better work/life balance. Of course, not all gamedev studios are like that. You can for sure find one that treats employees fairly.
Game dev is hard so the person will be frustrated in the beginning.