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Game Developer or Software Developer

kalvinl8

I will be attending college next year but I cant decide what course I want to pursue. I love playing video games and I also love computers in general and in my mind I think because of this, I would also love the development of either games or computer software but I may be completely wrong and hate the development process.

So I want to know, what do you do in the two courses: games development and software development. What would your job entail? What qualities/interests should you have prior to entering either course.... BASICALLY HOW DO I MAKE UP MY MIND

Also is there a difference between software development and software design?

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Genghiz Cohen

Software development prepares you for a broad range of potential jobs, you will look more at Databases and web dev and stuffs, I didn't do Software Dev so someone else might be able to give you more advice.
Games dev is much more focused on just games (obviously) but you learn a whole slew of things that Software Dev won't touch. Physics, Applied Math, AI, Graphics, sound, and specialised Human Computer Interaction.

Day to day the jobs will be pretty similar, you will still work in an office, some are casual some are formal. You will have deadlines and a spec to work to. You will be constantly pleading with the IT desk to give you more than 4GB of RAM. The designers will still be clueless about what's possible, what's easy to implement and what is very difficult. Testers will still return nonsense bug reports and demand they be fixed.

witnessmenow

I think going the software developer route is a safer bet. There is a lot of good tutorials online for picking up the game development side of things.

I think a guy with a software engineering degree would have a much easier time getting into game developemnt than a guy with a game dev guy getting into a regular software company.

EDIT: For context I did Electronic and Computer Engineering, and now work in "regular" software development for a finical services company

kjl

I've been a developer for 12 years now. What you learn in software development gives you the basic understanding of how everything works, when you introduce game development after a really sound foundation of development it is much easier to understand.

It's not like you can't still do game development in a software degree, there are plenty of options to do anything you like at college. I did information and communications technology in college and in my final year we had an option to do a game development module. Back then it was a lot more difficult than it is now.

I only recently got back into game development with the release of the oculus rift and learned unity in about 2 weeks. Once you have a good understanding of methods and objects you can apply it to anything development related.

Game development is good crack and all, but it's hard to make a lot of money in it when you are not a good artistic designer, and by that I mean using programs like 3d studios or milkshake to create models from scratch, otherwise you will have no real originality in your game. Game studios are looking to hire these types more than the code developers.

You will have good crack doing the gaming degree, but you should look at coding like a trade, its the language computers work in and until you understand it everything will be a struggle. But I have to warn you, not everybody gets it. Out of 100 people I was in college with maybe 6 of them know how to code, most people just scrapped by learning off code without understanding how to write it. They got away with it because there are many courses in a computer science degree and most of them just teach you about theory of computers. But the real money is in software development. Plus all the perks, I work as a consultant now and get to fly all around the world and get about €700 a day + expenses for not really doing that much work.

I would recommend you see how you like programming, download a python interpreter and try write some simple methods. If you want, I'll give you a basic task to do and see if you can work it out.

Either way good luck with your choice.

kalvinl8

Wow, thanks for all the info!
It's good to hear form an actual dev.
Since reading your comment I have looked up some tutorials of coding in C and I think I could see myself doing it as a career. And since you said it would be easier get into gaming development through software development I am quite confident in doing the software development course.

One question that may seem a little ignorant and isn't really relevant, but, are people who work as developers... "nerds" or are there some who actually go out and enjoy life. I know it sounds like im generalising developers here but its kind of the impression I get from those I have seen and it probably wouldn't change my mind but it sure would be a downer if I were to be working with ... downers haha

Really appreciate your reply.

Kilgore__Trout

kalvinl8 wrote: »

One question that may seem a little ignorant and isn't really relevant, but, are people who work as developers... "nerds" or are there some who actually go out and enjoy life. I know it sounds like im generalising developers here but its kind of the impression I get from those I have seen and it probably wouldn't change my mind but it sure would be a downer if I were to be working with ... downers haha

Really appreciate your reply.

Can't speak for anyone else here, but I'm a fat bearded guy, and I only care about 3 things: 1, 0, and Star Trek. I'm even in a developers' club whose members are routinely ejected if they are seen to be having too much fun :rolleyes:

abnr

kalvinl8 wrote: »

Wow, thanks for all the info!
One question that may seem a little ignorant and isn't really relevant, but, are people who work as developers... "nerds" or are there some who actually go out and enjoy life. I know it sounds like im generalising developers here but its kind of the impression I get from those I have seen and it probably wouldn't change my mind but it sure would be a downer if I were to be working with ... downers haha

Like everything else in life you will have to strike your own balance. I'm a developer for 13 years and its definitely possible to go out and enjoy life if that is what you want.
Just keep in mind that a developer role, in any area (commercial/gaming) is something where you never learn all of it. You will have to keep learning through your entire career.
That is actually what makes it fun for me.

Good luck

ChRoMe

Kilgore__Trout wrote: »

Can't speak for anyone else here, but I'm a fat bearded guy, and I only care about 3 things: 1, 0, and Star Trek. I'm even in a developers' club whose members are routinely ejected if they are seen to be having too much fun :rolleyes:

While kalvinl8's post is untrue and unfair, I do believe there is a disproportionately high amount of people with poor social skills in the software development industry. I say this as a software developer myself, and I believe there are several complex anthropological factors contributing to it.

AzKai

As a current student of games development I can honestly say it's much tougher than I though it would be. After the last few years I have come to the conclusion that game programming is not the chosen career for me. A lot of people assume the course will be easy if you play a lot of video games. I can assure you it does not. It'll give you only the slightest insight into technologies you can implement but that's about it. The implementation and logic required to build a good game is really long and very annoying to implement if you're not a sequential thinker.

I personally would recommend another of the computer courses if you're not up for huge projects and intense work. On the upside you do learn a lot more about computers as well as several more languages than some of the other courses which could give you a basic knowledge of how to apply those languages in other majors of computing than just game so you won't specifically be trapped working in games.

Kilgore__Trout

ChRoMe wrote: »

While kalvinl8's post is untrue and unfair, I do believe there is a disproportionately high amount of people with poor social skills in the software development industry. I say this as a software developer myself, and I believe there are several complex anthropological factors contributing to it.

Pay no heed to me, just having some fun

Guessing that a lot of introverts might find their way into software development, but beyond that, haven't thought about it much. What's your take on these factors?

kalvinl8

yeah, that's what I mean I got the impression a lot of devs seem to be socially awkward. Didn't mean to offend but just wanted to know out of curiosity if my hypothesis was at all true :P