Developing games

[Apache]

My 14 year old wants to be a games developer when he grows up. How do you get into that? What should he be experimenting with now (other than girls ) to be able to get into that whan he leaves school? I'm going to have to buy it though, so nothing too expensive. I thank you all....

[Francko]

My 14 year old wants to be a games developer when he grows up. How do you get into that? What should he be experimenting with now (other than girls ) to be able to get into that whan he leaves school? I'm going to have to buy it though, so nothing too expensive. I thank you all....

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/

[AtW]

Don't.

I was developing games when I was young and even managed to get interview in Bullfrog where senior person there told me something like this - in that business creative new games are hard to come by, you won't get finance - Electronic Arts that owns Bullfrog (maybe they shut them down now) makes most of money on boring games like Football 2008.

To add to this - young devs will be exploited big time and salary is crap.

These days games are very expensive, so people who are lucky to work on a well known title will do a small piece of the job - there ain't even glory of being one of 3-4 people who made top game, he will be another name at the end of the titles that noone will ever look at.

[Apache]

Zx81

Ahhh, nostalgia. I had a ZX81 with the rubber keyboard and the stupid little RAM pack that you had to wedge in place with a box of matches - it stayed in place just long enough for you to type in 400 lines of basic then it would move and wipe the lot - happy days.

[Apache]

"salary is carp"

Strange method of payment - carp - Handy for tea though, or for starting a fish farm for when your development career grinds to a halt.

[AtW]

You can also say that salary is petals.

[Apache]

?

You can also say that salary is petals.

??? You'll have to explain, my aging brain has shut down for the evening

[AtW]

One of the old timers will explain, I am going to play a computer game now

[barry_abs]

i'd say there must be more job satisfaction coding in the gaming industry than your typical 9-5, even if it does pay peanuts.. horses for courses i suppose..

i used to love my games but have hardly touched them in 6 years.. however, one game has smashed that barren spell: age of empires 3.. how i love this game!

[swamp]

Games take something like two years to develop these days. I know people who have and do work in the games industry, and they all say they get completely fed up of the game before long.