A Guide To Starting Your Career In Game Development

Billions of people play games every single day, but for some, playing a game isn’t enough. They want to create games for a living.

While game development may seem like an easy job, the truth is that it’s incredibly hard work. That being said, if it’s your passion, there are ways that you can start your career in game development. We’ll be walking you through four steps that you can take to help you.

Decide what you want to do

So, you’ve decided that you want to go into game development. That’s a good start, but you need to be more specific. The gaming industry is massive, which means there are many routes that you take if you want a career in game development.

Do you want to create storylines? Or are you more into the artistic side of things? Perhaps you want to work on putting the game together – in which case you may want to learn more about programming.

Knowing which direction you want to go in will guide you when it comes to deciding what to learn. For example, if you specifically want to focus on AR or VR games, then learning more about C# Unity might be a good start.

Study for your career

Many people are under the impression that working in game development is a lazy job that requires no skills or qualifications. However, that’s not true.

In fact, you’ll likely struggle to get a job in game development if you don’t have at least one related qualification behind your name.

You can study something generic that will help you with your gaming career – such as software development – or you can study something specific, like how to program games. If you’re worried about paying for your studies, taking out a student loan might be helpful.

Start networking

While hard work and patience will help you a lot in your career, there’s no denying that knowing a few people in the industry will be helpful.

Try to get to know other people who work in the game development field. Another way for you to connect with people who have similar interests is to join the gaming community via the internet.

You can connect with people on social media, and you can even start your own YouTube channel if that’s something you’re interested in.

Keep practicing

The odds are that you won’t get your dream job in game development as soon as you’ve finished your qualification. But that doesn’t mean that you should give up!

In the meantime, keep practicing and honing your skills. You can also try to learn more skills such as different kinds of software development. This way, you will be gaining more knowledge that you can put on your CV.

Keep in mind that it’s also helpful to stay up to date with the latest games and gaming systems since this information could help you land a job. It’s also okay to take an entry-level job; the more you work in the industry, the more opportunities you will have.