Career step

Isn't weird that a year ago I want to start the game development and then I started overthinking. I tried Java, C++, unity then stepped over to Android studio and then thought about doing web, because I see people getting a job in 3 weeks as a software engineer at Google.

Of course, I have no f*cking clue how they doing that, but oke. Do you know where I'm right now? Still at the same spot, and my mind is playing me again. It is like a rope pulling between, go earn money, go follow why you really start to learn to code, which was game development.

Did you guys struggled with this?

 

yeah its normal.

most the time to make a living, you have to do what you don't want to do.

if you have a passion, nurture it. But you can't do that if you worried about dinner. So the game is "how do I get what I need, putting in minimal time/effort, so that I can spend most time doing what I want?"

Couple things that have helped me have plenty of time to pursue my passions :

GI bill from military;
disability from military;
owning house as opposed to renting;
living dirt-ass cheap. waaaaaaaay cheaper than you are thinking when I say dirt-ass cheap;
being extremely lucky;
having best wife ^^^

If you want to make a career in making games, find a mentor who is doing that already. Just be careful because its real dog-eat-dog out there and it seems like at least half of game developers end up burnt out after five to ten years. Corporate world has its benefits but its not candy-land. Important to know what you are getting into and have the right expectations.

The quickest way to achieve a goal is by staying focused constantly. This means every second of the day you are making sure it is inching you towards your goal in some way. This doesn't mean you deny your humanity, it means that, when you are relaxing, the goal of the relaxing is so that when its time to work again you have a complete recovery. It's just mindset. You constantly thinking about the goal and assessing every thing you are doing. "Does this move me forward or not?"

Separate your time too. There is time for thinking and planning. THen there is time to do work. Ideally, the work is like 80% of the time. Doing the work is where the magic happens. Sitting around thinking too much does more harm than good.

Aside from that, you must have faith in your ability to learn and perform. If you don't believe in your ability to grow and develop mastery, just forget it. Quit now and resign to playing games. You won't get any further than you truly believe you will go.

 

Follow your dreams. I like watching Thomas Brush yt.

Spoiler

 

If you like to code then the best route is to get cushy web dev job and play with this stuff on the side. Hint: If you build it they wont come.

Unity/Unreal will be used more and more widely in the future/present outside of games.

So do boring web dev for money and fun stuff on side then you will be in best position for the future

Edit: PS I have cushy web dev job and work on my game at work all the time

 

Yeah I saw a couple of videos of him.

 

I think making a game takes insane discipline and having the ability to scope down your ideas. It also targets areas you don't really care for like marketing and getting a private limited company, working out all the ways to get it onto steam, app stores etc, copywriting, narrative, sound design, art style, programming, targeting different os's.

It is like opening a can of worms.

 

reality is I can't even get an m*th f*ck web dev job. companies greeding for a college degree.

 

During wkends after my study I work part time in supermarket and I'm saving. I would like to work in a AAA studio but I kinda know it ain't happening. Maybe you could save up with part time job?

 

Not even big tech requires college degrees anymore. First job is hardest you got to get your foot in the door. Just think experience and not pay check and prestige. I started after dot com crash and there was no jobs and everyone thought all programming jobs would be sent to india. Worked at some real stupid companies but it was experience so I took it.

 

The reason why you can't decide is because you have never gotten any real feedback from your choices, and you spend too long in them before putting yourself in a position to get that feedback, by which time your horses are off chewing grass in some other greener-looking paddock.

By feedback I don't mean other people's opinions, but money or satisfaction from a completed project.

This is what I did. I dabbled in everything except the art of getting stuff done. Now it's time to fix that.

 

If companies are turning you down due to a lack of a college degree I'm willing to bet it's because you have nothing in your portfolio that makes them want to look past that degree. You do have a portfolio right?

 

Not really, just a secondary vocational education degree. I got two small projects on Github. I'm working on expanding projects.

 

Enterprise software can be really fun and satisfying, but you need to get to a company that works with modern tools and agile mindset plus you need to get to a position were you are responsible for system architecture. Which take time.¨

But same holds for game dev, its fun first when you get responsibility and not just code monkey tasks.

 

This can be risky. Check your employment contract and local laws carefully, to make sure that your employer can't claim ownership of stuff you do on their time.

Only a minority of people get to hold those roles, though. If someone isn't going to be happy in a particular career unless they get a leadership position then I'd suggest thinking long and hard about whether it's the right career for them.

I'm also super wary of anyone who just wants to be the boss.

 

Your not an actual boss, boss. You do not hold any salary negotiations and boring stuff like that. Also you do not need to be the one that hold the last say about architecture, a senior dev often gets to design alot of stuff as long as it does not derail too much from the main architects view.

 

I mean I build enterprise software for my day job, but I mananged to get a job using unity to do it. So im building up my gamedev skills as I go.

Unity is so widespread now you really dont have to pick between using it and making money. Why not use it to make money?

You need at minimum a degree and a strong portfolio. If you dont have a degree, then you need an even stronger portfolio than those that are applying who do have degrees. Bare in mind everyone who does a degree is going to have some sort of portfolio that they built up over 3 years, so you need to beat that. Luckily student portfolios are usually half-assed and lacking so its not difficult to do better if you dont procrastinate about it

 

I think @Billy4184 has the right of it. At some point you just have to knuckle down and make a real commitment to finishing things.

If you don't have a financial need to 'get a real job' then why not give the indie development thing a real shot? If it doesn't work out at the very least you gain experience that will help you secure a job.

 

Struggling with career direction is normal for everyone. Noone knows what they do when they grow up. Everyone is a best mildly dissatisfied with their work.

The good news is it doesn't really matter which choice you make. Pick a direction and run with it. You will be able to make a career. You will find mild satisfaction. Things will work out.

 

1 year is not much, I also don't have a college degree, so we need to prove somehow that we have the know how to get the job done. I started studying Unity in 2009 but I only started building a portfolio (finishing game projects) in 2012, at first I was trying to make games that would make some money but at the same time, if they didn't make any money, those would be in my portfolio, in the end of 2017 was when I finally got a job. A good one to be honest.

Finishing things is crucial, you get experience and portfolio.

 

Wow I have been having this problem for years.

Five minutes before opening this thread it occurred to me that pushing away certain thoughts is a crucial skill. This includes thoughts that begin with the words "I should..."; because really you should never be telling yourself you should do anything. Should implies that you have some obligation to it, the only thing you have an obligation to in your thoughts its yourself.

I say all that because after withdrawing from school this semester (insomnia really f*cked me over though I can definitely sleep now! yay!) and re-enrolling for the final semester (graduating this spring, double yay!!); it has just dawned on me that controlling ones thoughts instead of having your thoughts control you is an important step in ones own agency. The other thing is its given me clarity of mind. What occurred to me now fifteen minutes ago is that you must control your thoughts and to do that you must push away unwanted thoughts. If you don't, you will spend your life in limbo.

"I want to be this! No wait I want to do that!" //My switching tasks five times per day

Really be 100% honest with yourself. What have you willingly spent the most time on in the past year or so? Are you good at it? Scratch that, do you enjoy it? Then that is what you want to be doing next.

There's really no point in deciding on your future at any stage in life. You can always reinvent yourself and your career. The question's answer isn't permanent, the only reasonable answer is: "what do you want to do NEXT?" if you have that figured out then the only thing left to do is work toward it and ignore everything but the most essential things!

Good luck!!!

 

If I reinvent myself as anastronaut tomorrow, what chance do you think I have of that working out?

 

Better reinvent yourself as surgeon, because I trust you in programming. I am sure you will be good at it.

 

Oh I don't know that idea could take off, but honestly it seems like one small step for you and one giant leap for mankind.

 

There are 40 year old people who have successfully made it into the NASA astronaut program. So 50/50 .

 

Age isn't the real limiter here. You need an applicable bachelor's degree (four years) as well as at least three years of related professional experience with it. Oldest acceptable age is 46 but if you're lacking the above requirements then the oldest you can be is 39 since it'll take you at least seven years to acquire them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Astronaut_Corps#Qualifications

 

Yes these are commonly understood to be the requirements for NASA astronaut candidates. Ain't no high school or GRE graduate going to be an astronaut.

@angrypenguin I've always valued your input (yours too @Ryiah) but I never said one could reinvent themselves overnight. It seems you just want to debate.

 

We're not saying you did. We're saying it's not always possible. Just wanting to reinvent yourself is not good enough. You need to be realistic and look at what is within your range of capabilities.

 

@TenKHoursDev, that was a metaphor, what @Ryiah wrote few post earlier.

 

Reductio ad absurdum. You have zero chance of becoming an astronaut no matter what age you start trying. NASA currently has only 38 active astronauts. The program peaked at 149 back in 2000. Globally there have only been 553 people who have reached earth orbit total. There have been more humans who have won the super bowl than there are who have been to space. Heck, there are more currently active professional e-spots players then there have ever been humans who went to space.

If you pick a more realistic career, say a computer programmer, teacher, lawyer, engineer, accountant, politician, you will find people reinvent themselves all the time.

 

For the record. I still think you're wrong @angrypenguin and @Ryiah. I also never said you could do freakin' anything.

Did you even read my post except to start a debate about one line?

 

It's the vibe of about half of the post. The sentences I quoted were just the most strongly indicative of that vibe.

What you did say is that there's no point deciding on your future at any stage. That is going to significantly limit the scope of your options, because some options - such as getting a chance of becoming an astronaut - have prerequisites which necessitate making a decision and committing to it years in advance. In turn, that means there is a good reason to tell yourself what you should, or rather must, do in order to achieve those goals. So my point in raising the astronaut thing wasn't so much on the "reinvent yourself" part, it was on the "no point in deciding" part of the quote.

Definitely. In order to do so, they typically make a decision and stick to it for a significant duration. To propose a varied question, if I were (say) a lawyer rather than a game programmer, how long would I need to stick to a decision or goal to become a game programmer before I could start drawing income from it as a new career?

 

Ah, I get you contention now. I agree.

Reinvention isn't a quick process, I'm currently assessing switching careers in a major reinvention. If I just do reinvention and nothing else, I'm looking at two or three years before I start getting paid in the new profession. If I do it part time while keeping my current profession, I'm looking at four or five years before I can make the transition. In either case its probably another five years once I start to hit my current salary and responsibility levels in the new profession.

Those numbers would get worse if I was going into an industry where I couldn't leverage my existing degree and experience.

You can change your career trajectory. But it does take several years to do it. Not committing to a career trajectory for at least several years between changes is a recipe for financial disaster.

 

My question was poorly designed. I definitely see why it didn't make the point I intended.

 

And then there are careers where having the prerequisites only offers you a chance at getting in. Continuing with the same career example, according to NASA there were 18,300 applicants for 2018. Only 8 to 14 of them become candidates and then the actual astronauts are picked from among them.

I wasn't able to find anything saying you couldn't repeatedly apply so I'm willing to bet the best way to become an astronaut is to plan early and apply every year (or whichever period they have between needing new astronauts) until you reach the point they no longer accept your application.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/record-number-of-americans-apply-to-beanastronaut-at-nasa

One year to learn Unity. One year to make four games (twelve weeks per game @Gigiwoo-style) that you release on mobile platforms. From there each additional year is a combination of making games and applying for jobs at studios using the games as your portfolio. Modify the time periods by how much free time you have to spend on it all.

 

Guys, who cares about NASA. When I grow up, I'm joining Space Force. Nerds.

 

I just play video games hoping SG-1 recruits me.

 

And you clowns claim that I go off topic

 

I was thinking about, if I build a small portfolio do you think I can apply for Junior Unity Developer positions?
And if so, what are the requirements for a Junior Unity Developer?

 

Yes. Having a portfolio is essential if you want to apply for game development positions because people want to see that you're able to stick with a project to completion in addition to seeing you have the knowledge. Once you've made one you'll have a far better chance of getting your application looked at.

 

What is a "Unity Developer"? That might be what people advertise for, and definitely tailor your applications to what's being asked for.

For yourself, though, know about your role rather than the tools you work with. I work with Unity, but I'm a programmer and I'm a designer. If I apply for a job I'll be applying as either a programmer or a designer, and Unity will be just one of the tools I demonstrate skills with.

Personally, when I'm looking for team members, if someone presents themselves as just knowing one particular tool it's a red flag. Are they good at their role, or can they just follow steps with a specific tool?

 

What it should mean is a skilled developer that also has a deep understanding of the Unity echo system. Sadly that is seldom the case. Its more like a junior dev that do not have deep understanding of system design and have hacked a few things in Unity

 

Trying to develop my programming skills better, unity is just a motivation thing where I can practice game programming. What would you suggest, on how to improve unity system usage?

 

I always thought you needed to have tinkered with making a game engine from scratch to apply for a unity dev pos, but hey I dunno.