Create Your Own Game Without a Degree
With the game industry riding high, an education in video game design or programming is now a sensible career step. But outside of the typical route to mass-market game making, individuals and small groups are forging impressive projects of their own and distributing them online through services like Steam. With the available tools for game design, all you need is creativity and time to get in on the action.
Instructions
1. Make basic choices about your game. Will it be for family and friends, or do you want to distribute online? Will it be a retro game (text-based, point-and-click), or do you want to realize a 3D adventure? Look at Steam's Indie games page for an idea of the limits to which an individual or small team can go.
For detailed chronicles of the game-making process, look at the Gamasutra articles on the games The Path and The Graveyard by two-person studio Tale of Tales. There the team outlines the creative process, their tools, the collaborators they worked with, and the grant funding process.
2. Choose your development software. There are many options, free and otherwise, from programming languages to user-friendly programs for creating 3D shooters and 2D role-playing games. A Digital Dreamer lists just a few of these.
Alternatively, you could look for a program to ease you into the game-making process, regardless of your creative goal. Adventure Game Studios is a friendly and free program for making point-and-click adventure games, while Mac users with a computer able to operate OS9 may like Worldbuilder.
3. Learn your development software. Whether you choose a free or paid tool or opt for a programming language like Python, there should be documentation in the form of Help, Tutorials, and a forum on the tool's web site. Learn the standard skill set necessary to make a full game without running into major snags.
4. Design your game. Depending on your chosen genre, this may only involve choosing the game mechanics and goal (as with a game like Space Invaders), or for adventure and text-only games, writing a script. Other important design elements might include characters, items, and rooms and locations.
5. Build and test the game. After completing a first version you're satisfied with, run the game past friends and family to find bugs, awkward gameplay, and holes in the storyline you were otherwise unable to spot.
Tags: Your Game Without, Create Your, Create Your Game, development software, game design