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By far, one of the most common questions I am asked, is just how do you get started making games? To someone who is just getting started, there is a lot of information out there, and it can be confusing. In this newsletter, I am going to show what I think the best way to get started is.

In the game industry, the position of "Game Designer" is one of the most coveted roles in game making. It is also one of the least defined. At one company, a designer could be, someone who quite literally, sits around and writes out gameplay designs for programmers and artists to implement. This kind of job is quickly becoming extinct, there are plenty of people out there with "great ideas", and ideas that haven’t been backed up with solid execution are of little value.

At other companies, Game Designers are people who, come up with a design, then put in the hard work to get it implemented. They have to be both creatively and technically oriented. This means that it’s important for Game Designers to have two core skills -

• Having an eye for fun gameplay, and to think of new ideas for gameplay that could be fun.
• The ability to implement, and test, their new ideas.

How do you develop an eye for fun gameplay? The best method, is to develop your own game, and then test what works, and what doesn’t. The best way to do this, is to have other people play your game, and give you feedback on what they liked, and disliked. Only once people have played what you have created, and deemed it fun, does any game design have any value. So this leads us to -

How do you implement a game design? To do this, you need to learn to program. A common question is, what is the best language to start out with if you are a beginner? For anyone who hopes to one day become a professional in the game industry, the answer is C++. Even though the learning curve for C++ is steep, there are number of good reasons for this -

• Virtually every commercial game in the industry is written in C/C++
• Once you have learned C++ it’s relatively easy to learn another language. If you start with another language however, learning C++ can be quite difficult.
• It makes you more valuable, C++ is used in many different industries outside of the game industry. If you learned one of the game-making languages out there for instance, there will be little use for what you have learned outside of making games.

How do you start learning C++? My first suggestion, is, if you are running Windows, is to go to Microsoft’s site, and download Visual Studio Express C++. It’s free, and is by far the best C++ environment for windows.Second, there are a number of places on the internet where you can get free C++ tutorials. I’m working on my own C++ Video Tutorial as we speak, which will have you up and running with a 2D game, written by yourself, in under 2 hours. However, I’m not quite ready to release that yet. So in the meantime, I would use Google to see what’s available, and get started writing simple programs.

While you are getting started, here are a few tips that will help make the learning curve easier -

• Get used to debugging. One of the dangers of following programming tutorials, is that, ideally, if you type everything in correctly, the program will work. In the real world, this almost never happens. Even the absolute best coders spend at least as much time in the debugger, as they do programming. When you are learning, if what you written doesn’t work initially, it’s important not to freak out, and to think that you have failed. Very rarely does code work perfectly(or at all), the first time you run it. It’s important to learn to accept this.
• Experiment, and play with what you are learning. Typing in code from a tutorial online, or an example from a book, is better than just reading, for sure. However, it’s a slow way to learn. One of the keys to learning, is to be able to take other peoples ideas, and make them your own. So have fun with what your learning. When you are following tutorials, after initially typing it in, and seeing it work, think of a small change you could make. Then guess what the result would be. Then do it. Did you get the result you wanted? If you did not, then find out why. By doing this constantly, you won’t just learn the material, you’ll be on your way to becoming an expert.

With this information in mind, you should be taking your first steps towards becoming a game designer, and turning your game designs, into actual realities.