What should I learn as a beginner to enter into the game industry

[chilljohn]

Hi everyone, a post about bevy engine from reddit brought me here. I am currently studying cognitive psychology, specifically related to visual processing and typography. I play quite a few quality games and I am interested in combining my study with game development.

But I dont know where to step in as a beginner, specifically what programming is suitable for an entry. I had a little bit of coding experience from using Rstudio and python, but I wish to know and learn more about programming for games.

Are there any suggestions for me as a beginner?

Much appreciated!

[alice-i-cecile]

Hi! I come from a science background as well, and I gave a talk about the things scientists should learn from game dev.

That was focused on "things to take back for scientific simulation", but they're pretty solid tips for learning game dev in general.

In terms of "core programming skills", I personally really benefited from:

• basic git skills
• understanding how to handle project structure: modules, encapsulation, project setup, pulling in dependencies, publishing crates
• basics of references vs owned values
• writing simple unit and integration tests
• working with traits (and other tools for abstraction in other languages)

Code review (both giving and receiving) in open source was by far the fastest way for me to learn, but I'm sure that mucking about and getting feedback from friends and colleagues would be effective too. Make simple projects and polish them!

For game dev itself, the key lessons are:

• you have to be really good or well-connected to make a living doing this professionally, and even then you'll make less money than in sibling industries
• scope and complexity management is absolutely key: deliver something polished that is within the resources of your team
• you need to clearly communicate both genre and hook to your audience: How To Market a Game is a fantastic resource
• prototype and test your ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible: most of the time, that doesn't involve any code at all!

[chilljohn]

Thank you!!!

[SinsOfSeven]

My response ended up being a little long, so I've thrown it into a Gist.
https://gist.github.com/SinsOfSeven/79750a5182a905ba14ce140a30c85a3c

The Tl;Dr is, you'll want to decide what goals you have in studying game development, and then take a course of action which will help you approach those goals. Game Development is a large umbrella term, so choosing a small handful of things to focus on at once is going to help you a lot with learning part or all of it. You'll also want to equip yourself with the tools knowledge to use them.

Bevy is a powerful (modular) and performant game engine which simplifies many of the aspects of making a game for you, so you can focus on specific things you want to achieve.

[chilljohn]

Thanks for your suggestion, I am more thinking about playing around with the interface. I want to see possibilities of combining my study field and my interest; I agree with both of you, perhaps starting with a small thing to have fun with it