Hey, what's up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got a question about game development.
I did a video on becoming a game developer that you can check out.
That was pretty popular.
A lot of you apparently want to become game developers.
If you know my story, you could check out my career story, I’ve got here, falling
over, but I started out in programming because I wanted to become a game developer.
I think a lot of programmers they think they’re going to make games.
I mean some do, but anyway, I don’t want to crush your dreams.
I talked about it in that other video how it is hard.
I got this question about game development and I’ve had some experience in it.
I’ve of course done some PluralSight courses and taught game development.
This question says, “Hi, do you think I need to know OpenGL and/or DirectX to be a
game developer?
I’ve been seriously studying C++ for over 3 years.”
My condolences.
“I’ve also used Unreal Engine/C++ for small projects with a team of one person.
I do want to become a game developer but I don’t like coding graphic applications with
OpenGL and DirectX.”
I don’t blame you.
That’s challenging and somewhat boring stuff.
“Is it really necessary?
Should I hardly engage myself to study that stuff or can I simply keep studying C++ and
everything else about game algorithms, problem solving and such?
Thanks very much.”
A great invention came along here which is this, this phone, the mobile device.
You know what it did?
Well, okay, so game development, remember back in the Atari days and then we had the
Nintendo Entertainment System which is the best system ever, then Super Nintendo and
all that and then also Nintendo 64 came out and then all of a sudden it was like 3D graphics
everywhere.
Every game had to be 3D, Unreal Engine and Doom and all this stuff, Wolfenstein 3D, all
this stuff even on the PC side.
Then all of a sudden the level for getting into game development the bar was raised so
high because you can’t do this as a one-person team, how the hell are you going to develop
a 3D game and make graphics assets and all this stuff and build a 3D engine, Unreal Engine
and stuff kind of lowered the bar, but still, it’s crazy.
But then the mobile device came out, we had our little phone and all of a sudden it was
like it was 1980 again, because we had these underpowered devices.
There was this coming of age, the 10 year olds that had the NES now are my age, in their
30s and they are nostalgic about these games so they started to rise in popularity again.
The reason why I’m telling you this is because now is a great time to be a game developer,
an independent game developer by yourself because you can actually build games that
are simple, have simple graphics that you could actually code up that don’t need DirectX
and 3D graphics and even complicated—I mean you can even write games in JavaScript.
I did a PluralSight course, you can actually check that out or you can check out my PluralSight
courses.
I did one on JavaScript game development.
You can do really simple games and you can actually sell them and actually make money.
Although, again, I don’t think you’re going to make a huge amount of money as any
developer unless you can strike it rich.
Heck, look at—well, Minecraft is 3D but it’s still pretty simple, at least it was
simple.
My point is this, you don’t need to know all that stuff.
The more important thing and what I think the whole gaming industry in my opinion is
coming back to is this idea of the importance of the actual story of the game play mechanics
because this is—now we’ve got, like I said, the 8, 9 year olds that are now my age
that want to go back and play games and they’re looking for those elements that existed back
then that sort of disappeared when the new 3D games came out.
Long story short, yeah, you can do it.
You don’t need to know all that stuff.
You just need to build a good game.
Now the graphics don’t matter so much because you can build an iPad or an iPhone or Android
game and you can build a more simplistic game that harkens back to the old—they call them
retro games now, right?
There’s actually a term.
Now you could build a retro game and you could do well doing that.
I know that a lot of developers out there have done that.
One good example on the Apple, if you’ve got an iPhone on the iOS store is Terraria
I believe.
You could check out that game.
Maybe we could throw a little clip up here of the game.
Yeah, that’s an independent developer that basically built that—I mean he’s making
millions of dollars off of that game and look how simple the graphics are.
You could do it.
But if you did want to work for a big company like EA or something like that, you probably
are going to need to go and learn DirectX and learn 3D graphics and do all that.
It just depends on what you want to do.
If you want to be solo, you could do it totally.
If you want to go and work on a big team you’re going to have to know all the industry tools
and stuff like that.
Again, I’m not the best expert to answer that question.
I haven’t worked professionally as a game developer on a big team.
This is based on what I know.
I’m giving you the best answer I can.
Anyway, hopefully that does help you.
If you have a question for me, email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com.
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I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.