Where/how did yall learn to make games?

[Chuckerton]

I would describe myself as an amateur game developer. I have taken a number of programming classes in high school (including a game dev class), and I work on my own projects in unity somewhat regularly as a hobby. 

Im definitely not at the level it takes to make finished games though, at least, not good ones. I can come up with the ideas but I dont quite think i know enough to see a project through from start to finish just yet, i think i need a bit more experience first. 

With that aside, how or where did yall (the devs of this game, or you, reader, assuming you know how to make games), learn to make games. You mustve been new at one point, what was that like, and when did it change? Obviously, it takes years to get good at it, but where or how did you put in those years to get good? Was it at a college/university? Did you teach yourself how to using the internet or books? Im curious.

[Thorfinn]

As someone who fancied himself as a good software developer, the hardest lesson to learn was that I was not as great a coder as I thought. I was vastly better off providing the vision, and hiring people to do the coding.

My game development experience is limited -- my chief claim to fame is coming up with a game that was more or less 1E AD&D for a Novell network. As I would learn later in developing software for small to medium sized banks, I was too deeply invested in the project, and spent way too much of my time doing the coding. If you are good at coming up with ideas, you are better off doing that and hiring people to fill in the spaces between the dots.

Gaming might be different, though, if you end up with a core of people who are happy to finance your development process. For example, while I think there were a lot of mis-steps in the development of Dwarf Fortress, it is hard to argue that Zach and Tarn did fine. Nor that whomever the guy who did Gnomoria did well by going with a limited version of Dwarf Fortress, but produced deliverables. Those are both obviously viable options, even if  they both ended up on Steam anyway. Tim Cain has posted a few YouTubes about the things that went right, and the things that went wrong. Definitely worth looking into. You have to look a lot harder, but Rich Carlson and Iika Keranen also have some great advice, though they did not reach the level of success that their employers did, maybe because they continued coding rather than being the idea guys?

If you are good at game design, you might be better off hiring your programmers if you want an early payoff. If that's what you really want to do with your life, though, knock yourself out. There are plenty of examples of people who did fine with that.

[Chuckerton]

I'm more thinking of the programming side of game development. I can come up with good ideas but once I start working on it... well. I start off strong, but I start running into roadblocks, and then the project gets larger and more complicated than what I can really deal with. I'm sure I can make a good game if I just knew how to code a bit better but it's always just as I think I'm learning and progressing well, I hit a roadblock, take a hiatus, and then it feels like I'm looking at moon runes again. 

[Thorfinn]

Right. That was my problem, too. I'm a good enough programmer that I can get the first 80% or so no problem, but I'll run into something and end up rethinking modularity, or even my whole data structure. And then you are done. Or I was.

What a programmer needs is someone to say, "What you have is good enough. Work on this functionality. We'll come back to the stuff that's bothering you in MyGame 2." Without someone stopping the perfectionist tendencies, nothing ever gets accomplished.

[Chuckerton]

uhhhhhhhhh, i hate that. it sucks because i KNOW thats the solution but cannot handle it being not perfect. Graphics and models, fine, its ok if theyre ugly or placeholder, that doesnt need to be perfect, but the code must work well and be clean. Ive made many projects, id make very nice, clean mechanic(s) in the game and then i think "oop, this code is ugly, time to do it all over again" and then I end up not finishing it. Not to mention im constantly working on my workflow (im still a pretty amateur developer, mostly self-taught) and making cleaner more readable code, so then the stuff i wrote at the beginning of the project looks primitive in comparison to the stuff i wrote right now, so then i have to rework it. I am only an amateur programmer. 

[idiomcritter]

I tend to find higher education taking some of the fun out of a healthy interest.  That said, a number of colleges do offer courses and...

a quick google on game design internships: 30 Game Design Internship jobs available in New York, NY on Indeed.  Apply to Student Intern, Summer Intern, Intern and more!

 with all the social media/sigs (good/bad) out there network up maybe 

gl