Studying game design

[Soprah]

Hello,

In a few months, I got my official degree as a craftsman in "injection moulding" (plastic industry). But I am not sure if I want to continue this path. I could take the job of my father in a few years and make very good money but games have always interested me (mechanics, discussing with people like here on this forum etc). Perhaps I can even say it's a big place of my heart. Whenever I got a spare minute in my everyday life, I am thinking of ideas for my own game. From the story to the world itself. My brother keeps telling me "You will spend 3/4 of your day on work, chose it well".

I am considering to study "Game design" in Germany. Because If I truly want to create games, then it's better to spend your whole time on it. It's a more or less new study path and it looks promising. But before I decide myself for this way of life, I'd like to ask you about your experiences in this environment. From a "professional" worker within this industry, or just a hobby-artist.
One question might be (if you have no idea what to say): What do you think of becoming a "game designer" in these days? Or is there a realistic chance to create a "simple" game in 2-3 years with 3-4 people? If I find some guys (btw: How did Hylis find his first crew mates for the nadeo studio? )

I am very interested in your opinion! Can't wait

[Miss]

(Disclaimer; I am a game programmer in a small successful indie studio of ~10 people with already a couple games released.)

The biggest thing that you never really think that much about and probably aren't too worried about at all when you don't have much professional experience yet; Funding.

This is your biggest enemy. You mention wanting to have a team of 3 to 4 people to make a game with you, which is great, but there's a couple problems:

1. What's the incentive for those 3 to 4 people to help you? Will you pay them?
2. How much will you pay them?
3. How are you going to pay for this, where does this money come from?
4. After paying people to work on your game, how are you going to pay for food/rent/etc?
5. How long can you pay those people for until you run out of money?
6. How are you so sure that your game will make money when it's finally finished?
7. Have you considered money needed for publishing/marketing/etc?

Or, if you're going to do it with a couple friends, you already don't have the certainty that the game will ever be finished because eventually they'll run out of time to work on projects for free.

Maybe as a first starting point, I would suggest you start by developing games as a hobby. Mess around with free tools, maybe get a copy of Unity or Game Maker and start making some things in your free time.

Perhaps you could also look into just being employed for a studio rather than starting up your own studio. I don't know if there are many junior game design positions out there but it might be worth a shot.

There's a lot more I can say here but I'm gonna leave you off with this for now, I'm sure others will have things to say as well

[TMarc]

Perhaps apply first for an internship @ Nadeo or Ubisoft, to see if it is really what you had expected

[Soprah]

@Miss,

Thanks for this realistic answer. It gave me a clear insight about the daily struggle as a game studio.

Yes, it is the best choice to learn the developing environment first (= game engine like Unreal engine 4 etc) and experimenting a bit. Recently I downloaded UE4 and it's super duper awesome. Much potential. I am currently learning how to create landscapes.
My goal was to find people on the university where I would be studying game design. I am sure that they want to create games as well but can't find people. Then I would gather these people together, we brainstorm our ideas and put them all together into 1 game. (A simple game for the start of course). And once we get experience with the game development industry, we can create big stuff. How do we / they get paid? Students have "side-jobs"

@Marc,

I love this idea! I love France and one day I want to live there lol. But I am pretty sure that they won't take me because I haven't got the best french skills But now I got some more free time so I can improve my french.

@everyone

Feel free to share me your opinion about anything of this subject. I am very interested!

[MatheusKS]

I'll follow this topic. I have an interest in game development (however, focused on low-level tech and engines). I'm currently a developer working with business management systems

A good idea is reading about (game) development. There are several books about it and forums are also good for this. Forums can be more up to date however.

[DocRBP]

One thing that faschinates me is how some of the old sci fi vehicles i most games and movies are really just a bunch of simple shapes mixed together with some coherent texturing. Either things get smoother or if we take something like an ant hill and render each individual hole,indend, crevice instead of just slapping a texture on top of a conical volcano looking shape. I feel the extra detail wouldnt matter unless the game engine allowed you to mallform and use all the materials that composed the ant hill, otherwise adding a gif of some ants walking in and out is kind of enough to make it seem legitimate enough(depends on what year it came out though). Though a high detailed ant hill with real time lightning would probably look really nice.

[Soprah]

@Matthieu,
Glad to see that we have something in common
Ye, I am constantly researching about game development. It's such a fascinating topic.

@DocRBP,
Exactly! I haven't got that much experience with modeling and texturing but what I figured out: It's all about efficiency. For example if you are a level designer, then you wouldn't put much detail for the objects in the horizon. Low poly objects are absolutely fine. Or if you are really lazy, you can just use a picture for the horizon/sky. Why? You have to look from the player's perspective. "Do I pay attention to this certain object when I play?". For example when I first played Tm2 Valley, I didn't notice that some landscapes objects are just 2D-models (Please correct me if I am wrong!) It took me a while to discover it. But it looks absolutely gorgeous anyways!

For those guys who are interested: I just started studying "Informatik" (german term for "computer science") because I figured out that you have much more options after this instead of studying solely "Game Design" which is 1) much more expensive & 2) you don't learn anything about software development, creating an app or anything else which you can chose when studying "computer science".
I hate maths but let's go

Cheers!