Porter's World

Becoming A Game Developer

Becoming a game developer is hard work, really hard work. There are however a few advantages to becoming a game developer that other careers in the world just can’t offer. In order to become a lawyer, you have to go to school, lots of school. In order to become a doctor, you have to do the same. To become a game developer however, you just have to be passionate, have an internet connection, and have the occasional motivation boost.

In the previous chapters of becoming a game developer, I spoke of what abilities will help you excel as a game designer, as well as gave some tips on how to analyze games to further yourself as a game developer. By now you may be wondering what it takes to actually get the job, to actually enter the industry and get a paycheck for your hard work. Sure you can make games, but how do you sell them? How do you get hired? When it comes to flash games, you’re good to go from the start. Unlike other careers, you don’t need credentials, you simply need to know how to make games, and do it well. Anyone in the world can start creating games in flash, selling them, and earning some very nice cash. It takes a lot of work, and I mean a lot, but it is within every single person’s grasp to do so if they choose. I started by making games for fun, but I soon found out that I could get paid for what I was doing. Bottom line is this, you don’t need a college degree, you don’t need to find a boss to hire you, you can self teach yourself and become your own boss overnight.

As I said, I began creating and selling games when I was 18 years old, back in the days of living in my first apartment away from home. One of the greatest things about entering the flash game industry is that you can do it at any age. You can be 13 years old, have a passion for games, take the time out to teach yourself, and instantly hop into making games. You won’t succeed with your first game, at least not on the level you would like to, but practice really does make perfect, especially in the flash gaming industry. I really do wish I had been into this when I was younger, I can’t imagine how evolved my skills would be had I started doing this at the age of 14 or so. Granted I was messing around with flash 4, getting an understanding of the time line and flash IDE, but I never actually touched code until much later. If you’re a younger reader and interested, don’t get discouraged, keep trying and I assure you time and patience will bring you to a very nice place once you get things down. In fact, if you’re a younger reader, I encourage you to start your career early, even if just as a hobby. One of the hardest things I find in trying to make this a full time job, is the inconsistency of pay. Start while you’re living at home, or at the very least get a few thousand dollars to sit on before you go and pour yourself into the job, it may take longer to pay off than you anticipate.

Alright, so you don’t need credentials, your age doesn’t really matter, so how do you actually get started? Adobe Flash is a rather expensive product itself, a great tool, but a bit expensive. I suggest using FlashDevelop if the price of Flash it too high, it’s an amazing program that is better suited for your programming needs than flash itself, not meant for animating, but that can be done in other programs. If you read up on the FlashDevelop page, you’ll find instructions for downloading Flex and other programs in order to compile your projects, in the end, creating a completely free set up. Once compiled, you can either play the swf in the browser, or you can download the flash debug player. All in all, that’s about all you’ll need to get started.

There you have it, you’re ready to start programming games. You don’t need to be any specific age, you don’t need a $600 program, and you don’t need to go to school and earn a fancy degree in order to secure your position. You will need determination, more common sense than the average human seems to carry these days, and a lot of free time, but if you’re reading this I have confidence that you can pass the above prerequisites. Enjoying your job and becoming financially stable doesn’t come easy in this world, and most of the time your caught within the system of going to college and following the rest of the cycle. In the flash industry the opportunity is up to you, you choose how far to go. If you really want this to be your future, get to work and make it a reality, it really is entirely up to you.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3