Gaming career?

I know this is going to be an incredibly silly post and maybe a bit scatter-brained but I welcome your feedback. I love video games, I love playing them, watching them but almost more than those things I love talking about games. I don't have a ton of experience writing, programming or have any artistic skills whatsoever. I am just trying to figure out a path I can take to get myself into the world of gaming. I've done some random streaming and even tried a few times to make an actual game in things like stencyl and gamemaker but not getting very far. I'm trying to find the thing that sparks my brain and makes me want to learn but I have never been able to find that thing.

Now being the best time for me as I think, I have overcome years of depression and living basically in isolation. Giantbomb really scratched the itch I had for socializing about games, even though I am just watching the videos. I really enjoys Jeff's encyclopedic knowledge, Vinny's humor and video production knowledge, and everyone else on the crew having their own niche. I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions, resources I could look at or maybe some people specifically I could ask in the industry. I can see myself doing anything I can to contribute to gaming I just don't know what those things are. Maybe I am just being naive, I am 24 and I want to be in the gaming industry and simply don't know how. Maybe 'not knowing how' is just the fact that I have no discernible skills for this industry and the part I need to focus on or find out what skills I do have are valuable.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

have you thought about what it is that fascinates you about games? is it the mechanics? the way people interact with them? the narrative elements, or the more technical components? do these things give you creative impulses? or are you more of a critic- someone who enjoys consuming them and thinking about them, more than one who seeks to improve or create your own?

have a good think about WHY it is you like games- beyond "i just like em!"- and that will begin to give you direction. once you have that direction- you can begin to think about more finite ways of perusing games (school, attending GDC, game jams, etc).

@mellotronrules: This is a very good question I'm going to chew on this for a bit and come back. Thank you.

Honestly, I think you just need to set a goal for yourself. Like you said, you seem a bit scatterbrained here, but I think that's more you not necessarily knowing what you want to do in the industry. It doesn't help that, as far as the media side goes, it's extremely difficult to break into (especially on the editorial side).

If you want to stream or report on industry happenings, do that. Make some videos; hope for the best. You most likely can't rely on it, but if you enjoy talking about games as much as you say, it should be more pleasure than business. As far as resources go, you said you already streamed, so you should have the gist of it. Get a good mic and nothing is stopping you.

If you want to make games, make games. There are so many (free) ways to do so. Unity, UE4, Gamemaker (which you used), Construct 2 (I really like this one; it's HTML5, but very beginner friendly). And, the best part is, most of these engines have tutorials online (some from third parties, but that hardly matters). I was actually able to make a simple, 2D platformer using the Unity Engine in three days starting with no prior knowledge. The resources are there; you just have to look for them.

Now, again, I think the trickiest part for you is just how indecisive you are. If you had something to work towards, you wouldn't be asking such an ambiguous question; you'd be finding a way to make your project WORK. That's why the conceptualization process for any creative endeavor is so important (to me, at least). If you choose to make a game, you have to want to say something. You have to make the game that you want to play. I think if you're forcing yourself to learn something for the sake of learning it, you might find yourself with a helpful new skill, but the end product will always suffer.

Speaking of skills, if you feel you are so deficient in them, work at them. Again, don't learn for the sake of learning; learn because you know this is what you want to do. Otherwise, you're right; it would be extremely odd for someone within the industry to blindly accept you into their ranks. Have something to offer the industry. Whether you do that yourself or with a team, that's up to you. But make sure you have something to say.

Any skills you have can "help" in the game industry. It doesn't have to be linked directly to games. Any company, a game studio needs all kind of people and I'm sure you could fit in.

You need to find what you are good at or interested enough to get good at. Don't expect to be the best, obviously, because that will discourage yourself. Then you can think on how you could work in the game industry.

You said you lived for a while with depression so I feel like you might be too harsh on yourself. I'm sure you have skills enough to get in the industry, you just need to develop them.

QA is kind of a shit job (I did it) but if you're looking for something to get a feel of game production, it might be a good window if you don't care about having a bad job for a while.

Why did you stop working on your gamemaker project? Was it too hard or you just didn't care about programming?

@fear_the_booboo: Like many things in the previous years I gave up on things pretty fast.

I recently watched a youtube video that I can't find right now. The guy said basically what you are saying @nonused think of a problem you want to solve and not what language you want to learn. And I think this translates to anything beyond programming as well.

*edit* so basically what I've been thinking the past couple days is "What problem do I want to solve?"

Alright you guys have given me a lot to think about and some ideas to get me started getting - getting started -- again. I'm going to do something I've never done, I'm going to make a list and I am going to give myself a time to complete said list. I am going to plan out all the parts of my list then execute it one thing at a time. I think my main problem is I think almost exclusively BIG PICTURE so everything seems impossible and will take forever. So maybe if I break up monolithic tasks into small bite-sized chunks I think I will see some success gaming or not.

Gaming could just be a hobby and that's fine but I am at least going to give it one real shot.

Thank you!

I thought this was pretty good for starting on game development. I went through the whole series of Hack&Slash RPG. Its on Unity, which is very important. http://www.burgzergarcade.com/tutorials

You may not think you have any relevant skills for the games industry but (as has been previously mentioned), much like a film, it can take all sorts of jobs to create a game ( just look at all those names and the surprising variety of job titles that scroll past in the credits of many games) so your "in" to the industry could come from the most unlikely of sources not just creative or engineering/programming.

Sometimes it can end up being all down to a matter of recognizing and seizing even the smallest opportunities you see coming, knowing your strengths, being enthusiastic and not being afraid to let people know that you could actually be a helpful asset to them in whatever manner you think of.

Also don't be afraid of being "rejected" either. You may find that you could have made enough of an impression on that company that didn't have a use for you right now that they keep you in mind for the future or they recommend you to someone else.

Who knows, you may even have made the first step already by putting your mind to it and making that first post.

Anyway, whichever way you decide to go, good luck.

@bahmirk: I mean if you want to try making games, game maker is a good easy place to start, Derek Yu of spelunky fame did a pretty good first timers tutorial over on the TIGsource forums that you can do without buying the main version of GMS. There's is also unity which is actively trying to teach people how to use the engine and completely free.

Before you pour your soul into a code base, I'd recommend making a card/tabletop game.

Focus on your design, mechanics, rule set, etc. See how it breaks and how all that comes together. You'll learn a lot and get great feedback that you can take forward to a computer game.