Learning Game Development Seems Daunting

Does anyone have any words of wisdom or suggestions about how to go about learning game development? Is Unity the way to go? I'm a complete novice and am trying to figure out if game development is what I wanna do. Any help would be appreciated.

Unity is too complex for beginners and might scare you of. Why don't you start with simpler 2d enigines first like RPG maker.

If you just want to start making a game without knowing a single thing about it before hand I highly, highly recommend giving a shot to Tom Francis's (developer of Gunpoint) excellent YouTube tutorial about making a game in Game Maker without any prior experience. Game Maker Studio is a completely free software that's even available on Steam for you to download. Here's the first part:

Unity will seem daunting if you go right into it. It's not actually hard, but if you've never programmed or made a game before it will look like gibberish. The UI is not immediately apparent or user friendly to novices. I honestly would argue the same for GameMaker, but some think it's UI is more understandable so it is a place to check out if you really want to dive right in. There's tons of videos on making games in GameMaker.

I personally think you should start with the basics and learn a programming language first. Either try a simplistic one like Scratch, Quest, or any others if you want to google around. I recommend these ones in particular to beginners because they're a good way to start figuring out how to make computers do what you want with super simple interfaces. For example, I know Scratch is made for kids, but Harvard seems to think it's a good place to start because it helps you understand the thought process behind programming which is very important if you've never done it before- and what I've seen of it I tend to agree. If you find that too simple, though, you can check out various other places to learn actual languages you will want to use like C# (which I recommend if you really want to learn game development because it's one of the most used languages professionally, and one of the easiest to learn).

If you prefer guidance there are various places online that will teach you programming for free. For example Harvard posts their CS50 class online for free. Codecademy is ok, although I don't like how codecademy holds your hand and does a lot of the work for you a lot of the time, but some people seem to prefer the way they do things.

There's also various online courses that you can pay to do, but I recommend staying away from those until you feel it's something you want to do regularly, and that you enjoy.

I do recommend, though, if you've never done any programming or coding before to start very very basic. There are many places to do this, and it's easy to study basic programming for free (technically you can study advanced programming for free too, but it get's a lot more fragmented because at some point programming, like all sciences, becomes a lot of theory, testing, and trying out stuff).

The reason I recommend this first is because so much of game development is the coding and/or programming. While there are many engines that try to take this aspect away, to be completely honest you'll never finish a game the way you want without any coding or programming so I personally think it's important to look into it first. If you refuse to do it, and don't have a best friend to do it instead, you may already know that you actually don't really want to make games.

Anyway, I hope these tips help, and it's just my opinion. If nothing else you will at least know if you want to learn how to make games using any of these methods. At least I think so.

^ Yep what @maginnovision said regarding what part of game development do you want to do? If its programming then there are a lot of people on this site that are programmers (not necessarily in games) who can help you.

Another question I would ask is have you tried Unity or are you simply looking at where to start?

Thanks for the help guys! I have tried Unity a little and it doesn't seem confusing to me. I just don't have enough knowledge to know what I can do with it. I've never tried Game Maker but it does look easier. My concern is that Game Maker seems more limited and I wonder if I would be wasting my time learning it when eventually I'd end up moving on to something like Unity or Unreal. Would it be better just to start learning an engine more capable from the start? I would like to learn a little about the art, design, and programming to see which I would like better. Then I could focus more on the one I like best. Programming seems like the best choice if I'm looking to get a job in the development industry. Any other suggestions would be much appreciated.

It IS incredibly daunting. Probably the most daunting thing you could get into. I think it's important to know that practicing a skill or using a program or language that you end up not using for your first actual game, is not useless, it's pretty much necessary! You can't know right now what you will be using 10 years from now, and everything you do will help you better understand every mechanic involved. The people writing new tools and languages have that experience too and you will understand their mindset.

You need to cut it down into (somewhat) surmountable Himalaya mountains or you won't get anywhere at all. None of the aspects of game design come easy, and they can all take a lifetime to master. So, pick your battle and just get gud. Pick one, see where you can get with a year of practice or until you feel comfortable with it, and then look at a next step. Set LONG term goals. There's no magic involved, just hard work.

My personal first step was learning a programming language. For that I totally looked at the syntax. I wanted a syntax that liked me. For me that was C#. I used 'Head First C#' to learn the basics.
But there are a hundred things that are valuable and great first steps. Such as:
Learn to draw or paint. Learn how to make digital art. Create a texture mod.
Learn to write. (Dialogues, story patterns.)
Learn to make music. (Learn how to play an instrument?) Learn to make sound effects.
Learn about game design mentality. This book called Fundamentals of game design by Ernest Adams is a nice book for that.
Install the recently released Unreal Tournament thing, to learn about 3D modelling and level design. Check out animation and shading.
Use a game engine, any game engine. Personally, I am waiting with that step because having learned any other aspect like programming or textures, game engines are kinda where all those things come together and it emphasizes anything you have learned.

There's a lot to learn. And that's kind of the problem, right? Just pick a thing that you are interested in right now, and stick with it until you get good. That's how I do it. Maybe it'll take 10 years, well then it'll take 10 years. It is what it is.

I always wanted to get into game development but I felt like I was wasting my time when I was learning things like Game Maker and RPG Maker.. No matter how good you get at using those programs the games are gonna have severe limitations. I wouldn't recommend anyone starting with those unless they really can't wrap their head around the more powerful engines.

When Unreal Engine 4 went free I finally felt like this was for me.. I had a wonderful time learning it, every bit of progress felt like a major success and once I got into the more complex things I really enjoyed the amount of processing my brain had to do. UE4 has a "visual programming language" called Blueprints, so you don't need to know any proper programming language. There is a lot to learn but there's plenty of content examples and youtube tutorials.

About 2 months in I felt like I had enough knowledge to experiment by myself and figure stuff out without any help. I had no prior experience of programming before UE4. And I guess I still don't, but the visual programming probably helps your brain to get used to the way of thinking required in proper scripting.

One great moment I had was when I did this third person shooter project just to learn some basic AI programming. When alerted, the bots would find cover which the player couldn't see, then proceed to peak in and out at random intervals while firing a couple shots. It very much resembled the behavior of some Counter-Strike players. I felt so proud.