Where can I start with learning game design?

J

james s

New member
I was thinking of getting into computer science in college so I can get a job in game design. Problem is I'm not sure it's something I wanna do. Is there I cheap (or free) way to dip my toes in the process? Something simple, like with internet games, but something that will be similar to an experience in game design. At least to an extent.
 
There are about 40 graduates in game design for every one job. Developing games is extremely tedious work. Playing games is the finished product but that is nothing compared to developing a game. Too many young people think it is a fun career. They get done with college. They look for a job in that field. They find out they have to spend money to fly around the country interviewing. They are usually too broke to do it so they end up taking any job hoping that someday they can break into game design. You have to already have someone inside the game design company that has enough political power to hire you out of college. It is a rich kids career. Even those realize what a boring job it is after a few months. About as boring a job as software testing.
 
If you wanna learn some internet games, your talking Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flash.
If you wanna do PC gaming, your looking at C++, C# and maybe even some Visual Basic.
If you wanna do mobile games, for phones and such, Java is the way to go.

What aspect of the games do you want to design? The graphics, programming, art, story, etc?
There are so many aspects to game design.

For creating the 3D stuff, your talking Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D.

For some free content, just google some of the stuff listed above, and see if you would like to try and learn some it. When it comes to programming, VB is very easy to start learning, and can help teach you the fundamentals of game programming. For internet games, look at some Flash (actionscript) code to see if you wanna get into that.

Either way, games are not easy to develop, if you want to make a real game.
Simple games can be easy, like number games, tic-tac-toe and such.
 
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