Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
AppendixA.Where to Go from Here
Well, that concludes the topic! Thank you for reading it. If you want to see what I and my
company, Mammoth Interactive, are up to, you can go to
ht-
tp://www.mammothinteractive.com
.
We are always making new and exciting games as well
as other apps and content.
Let's talk about how to really make it big in the gaming industry. Now that you have
learned how to make a few games, you probably want to learn more. Learning game devel-
opment is just like anything else—if you want to get better at it, you have to practice. It is
very similar to how a musician gets good at using an instrument, or an athlete gets good at
a sport.
Imagine for a second that you were an Olympic weight lifter. The night before the competi-
tion, you decide to cram your studies in hopes of competing well the next day. As you
probably guessed, this is not the way to become a good weight lifter. It takes years of prac-
tice and dedication.
Even though game development is not physical strength but more mental strength, you
have to approach it in the same way. It takes a long time to learn how to do everything cor-
rectly and efficiently.
People often ask me how they can become good game developers. The answer is actually
quite simple—you just have to make lots of games. The more games you make, the better
you get. It sounds simple enough but most people never do this. They never make enough
games to make them better.
Let me continue with a story. When I was 12, I took a programming class at my local uni-
versity. It was Visual Basic and when I heard Visual Basic, I thought it meant "making a
3D game". Visual Basic is anything but that. I went home that night and planned out what
the game would be like when I completed it. It was a third-person
role-playing game
(
RPG
). I made some sketches and visualized everything I wanted in the game. I wrote a
story and wanted to program it. I genuinely thought that I would make an AAA game in my
bedroom with my 4/86 processor.
It was then that I was confronted with reality—this was not possible. Flash forward to my
early 20s and I still wanted to make a sci-fi game in my bedroom. It still didn't happen.
What's the moral of the story? Why am I telling you this?
