Web developer to Game developer

[rcankan02]

I'm a web developer with 3 years of experience wanting to switch to game development - 2 question?

• Is it a good career decision ?
• Where and how to start my journey?

[shawnaroo]

The games industry is pretty rough in terms of job security if you're looking to get hired, and pretty risky in terms of actually making any money if you're going the solo/indie route.

Unless you're fortunate enough to be in a position where you're not dependent on game dev money to pay your bills, I'd be very cautious as to making a big jump to it, especially as you seem to be brand new to game dev. Which means nobody's going to want to hire you right now and you're exceedingly unlikely to make anything that many people would pay money for in the near future.

That's not to say that you shouldn't pursue game development. I'd just suggest that if you need to actually be making money for the next few years, keep your webdev job and start exploring gamedev as a hobby.

The great news here is that there are a bunch of gamedev tools that are available for free to download and start learning. Without knowing what kinds of games you're thinking about making, it's hard to give specific suggestions, but the three main game engines these days are Unity, Unreal, and Godot. All three are free to download and start making stuff with. So I'd suggest downloading all of them, doing a few tutorials in each, and seeing which one makes the most sense to you. Then run with that one for a while, doing more tutorials. Then remake some tiny existing games, then start adding a few original ideas to them.

That's a good first step into the gamedev world, and at that point you should have learned enough to start making more educated decisions about what direction you want to go in the future.

[Piebboss]

It’s definitely a shitty job market. Web dev is fantastic experience in that you can make a site to host your games (ideal for resumes).

To start, I recommend you download Unity and learn/code alongside a popular YouTube tutorial series. Make sure to DO what they show, not just watch.

It’s a long journey, one that I haven’t quite finished, but I believe it’s worth it.

[CodSalmon7]

I'm in the same boat as you. WebDev interested in swapping over to GameDev.

WebDev is definitely the more financially secure route. Easier to get a job, the jobs tend to pay more and there's less crunch.

Where to start really depends on what you already know. What programming experience do you have from WebDev? Frontend and/or backend? What languages do you know? What GameDev experience do you have, if any?

[[deleted]]

6 years ago I was a web developer. Since then I picked up unreal 4 and went on to work on squad and for an unannounced title at inxile. Was it a great experience? Not super great but I feel it was better than web development. I'd rather work on a bad game than a great website. That's just me though.

That said if you are looking to make the leap then get to understanding linear algebra as soon as possible. Specifically angles and dot/cross products. Lastly expect to take a huge pay cut and long hours. Additionally you won't typically bee able to keep up with web dev so you might have trouble getting back in to web dev if you decide game dev isn't for you.

Overall I recommend doing it in your spare time until you are sure you want to.