Originally Released: November 2nd, 2013 ------------------------------------------ As most of you are probably aware by now, I've been a game designer for most of my life. Not a financially successful one mind you, but I've been at it for so long that I know all kinds of intricacies and details about how to go about getting into making games. The two things personally holding me back from being successful is that my greatest skill is Design, followed by Programming, and it's difficult to enter the commercial game industry in either of those fields without a college degree and previous AAA experience to back up your skills. The other thing though is that I grew up mostly surrounded by people who didn't share my game making enthusiasm, or did for awhile but not past our teenage years, and in many cases the more people who contribute to a single project, the better it will be and the faster it will be made, but as it stands, I primarily work solo, thus everything takes exceptionally long to make. Those curious about the game I'm playing, it's a very old freeware game I made in 2000 called PixelShips, which is what my website URL is derived from. You can find more info and downloads from here: http://www.pixelships.com/pxs_details.html ------------------------------------------ Additional Information and Corrections: * Things have changed a lot over the years and since I made this video. While it's significantly more difficult to get into AAA games nowadays, the tools available for indie devs are far more powerful than they've ever been and crowdfunding is also a possible option to be able to pay others to do the work you're not capable of doing yourself. * PixelShips is actually pretty old by this point and it's a wonder I was able to get it working at all on my Windows 8 system. This is a big part of the reason why I need to get more games out: All of the games I've made up to this point are VERY out of date, the last one being from 2007, and fixing them up to work on modern systems is something I've been delaying until I get something new released. * If you must know what software I use, I primarily use Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express for programming, Deluxe Paint 2E, Paint Shop Pro, and Inkscape for graphics, Impulse Tracker for music (and some sound work), Audacity for sound editing, and I lay out my design documents in Wordperfect (though any word processing software will do really). * I mentioned there were a couple approaches you could take to learning game design but failed to mention the second approach, which is: Modding. A good way to learn more about how games work and how to make them is to learn how to mod existing games. Modding is easier and much faster to get into than making games from scratch, but the trouble is that under most circumstances, modding is a dead-end for making money off of your design efforts. Eventually, if you want to profit from your skills, you need to make 100% original content. ------------------------------------------ Pixelmusement Website: http://www.pixelships.com ADG on Pixelmusement: http://www.pixelships.com/adg Alphabetical Index of ADG Episodes: http://www.pixelships.com/adg/index2.html