Unexpected Journey to Game Dev: How I Knew Nothing about Coding 1.5 Year Ago to Landing a Publisher’s Deal to Release my First Game on Steam
Undeterred, we spent a few days researching the publisher’s industry and collecting their contacts before sending them a vertical slice of CAAO, along with a deck outlining our vision for the game, our understanding of the market, and the estimated budget. I cannot thank the GameDev. tv course.
Read how Chris stumbled on his passion in the game dev craft, and went on to publish his first game
BACKGROUND
In June 2019, I handed in my resignation letter, quitting an office job in the soul-crushing financial industry. To make my dream video game, you think? No not really. At the time, game dev was the furthest thing on my mind, which was already occupied by a busy plan to team up with my brother to run an e-commerce business. I did, however, always have a desire to learn programming, and expand my personal skillsets beyond Excel sum-if functions.
So I looked around and bought a course called “How to program Ethereum smart contract with Solidity for Beginner” on Udemy. I have always been a blockchain enthusiast, and a voraciously reader of the industry news so I know what a smart contracts and the language to write them (Solidity) for the Ethereum blockchain. Nevertheless, while the course was intended for a beginner programmer, it was clearly not suitable for an absolute beginner like myself. This was me attempting to solve differential equation before I learn algebra. I quickly gave up after a couple of lessons.
Disappointed but undeterred, I started searching again for another programming course that is more suitable for my skill level (or complete lack thereof). I stumbled upon GameDev.tv and found the “Complete C# Unity Developer 2D – The World’s Most Popular Unity Course”. I double-checked this time and confirmed it didn't require any prior knowledge in coding. I love video game, and definitely play more indie games than I care to admit, so this seemed like a fun way to learn. It would give me a solid foundation to go back to finishing the Ethereum course, or so I thought!
A NEW GOAL
Fast forward 2 months and I consumed the entire GameDev.tv course. Did every instructor’s challenge and finished every project to 100% completion. This easily has been the most fun I ever had since that time I loaded 200+ mods into Skyrim. In fact, I stopped playing video games during this period and dedicated all my free time to writing C# in Unity. And I still wanted more. I did not want to go back to the other blockchain course. I need more game dev in my life!
At this point I could either take more lessons, or learn from doing a new project from scratch on my own. I chose the latter, feeling confident with the foundation taught by the GameDev.tv instructors. I fully expected to run into roadblocks, but believed I had enough knowledge to research a solution. I also heed the advice that “finishing a game is a skill”. I wanted to prove that I too can master this skill, and not getting stuck in endless unreleased prototypes. I started planning for my first game idea!
CRYPTO: AGAINST ALL ODDS – THE GAME
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