One of the first video game experiences I can remember playing was Chex Quest with a neighbor on a very advanced computer running Windows 98. For those of you not familiar Chex Quest, it was a reskin of the old Doom game featuring cereals and fruits battling against green slimes to save breakfast. My neighbor would handle moving with the arrow keys, I would shoot with the space bar, and together we made it all the way through the game to defeat the Flemoids and the Icon of Slime.

From that point forward, video games have been a large part of my life. I kept playing games and I grew increasingly certain that I wanted to make video games for a living. But my road into the industry was not a straight line, and there are a lot of things that people don’t tell you unless you ask. Except for me. I’ll tell you them, right here, right now. Because I care.

Having ideas for games is not the same thing as making games

This is gonna sting a bit, but it’s best to rip this band-aid off now: Nobody has ever gotten a job in the video game industry based on the strength of their ideas alone. Making video games is fun, but it’s also a lot of work, and you need to show you are willing and able to take that work on.

It’s one thing to say “I want to make a game like Pokémon in space with MOBA-like gameplay,” but it’s a different thing entirely to write out a game design document outlining major systems, mechanics, and aesthetics for the project. And that’s less work still than turning that document into a working prototype. Which is not the same thing as working on a project for a year, iterating on design, tech, and art along the way to deliver a polished project.

If you want to sit back in your chair and ruminate on what you would have done better in the new Final Fantasy game, more power to you. But don’t mistake your intellectual exercise for making games, and if you truly want to make games for a living, you will need to do much, much more.

You will start not knowing anything about anything. But everybody else starts there too.

Once you have decided to make the jump from wanting to make games to making games, you will soon face the unpleasant truth that you have no idea what you are doing. You don’t know how to create and tune tight gameplay systems. You don’t know how to implement a camera and render a scene. You don’t know how to model a character, bone a rig, and make a reload animation.

I taught myself how to program in high school, had an internship at a huge Seattle tech company, and got my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at university. I thought moving to programming games would be a snap. But it wasn’t. Because making games is not like making anything else. I knew how to implement a linked list, but I didn’t know how to pool objects to prevent memory allocation. I knew how to calculate the trajectory of a cannonball, but not how to distill that motion into an update loop so the game could show the ball travelling across a scene.

These are not things that get taught in standard high school and college courses. Making video games requires a lot of specialized knowledge about how to merge the axes of art, technology, and design to create a fun, engaging experience. Don’t expect to be able to jump in straight away and make your dream game. I wish it were that easy, but part of making games is learning that you are constrained by what is possible and by what you know how to do.

Luckily, there are a lot of people who will help you figure out what you’re doing

Making games is hard, but if you’re dedicated, it’s easy to find resources to help. Full, professional video game engines are available to you, right now, for free. Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, and a plethora of smaller tools can be found with a simple web search, and most won’t charge you one slim dime to start developing.

Along with these tools, there is a vast trove of tutorials to help you get started using them. YouTube tutorials, quick start guides, and blog posts about individual problems are all at your fingertips. There are also in-depth guides like the Handmade Hero series to help an aspiring game creator get their bearings and start creating simple content. If you are dedicated, you can find a description of how to do just about anything you’ve ever seen in a game you’ve played.

Beyond these static resources, I’ve found a number of game creators are very open to discussing their work with an enthusiastic amateur. I am almost certain I wouldn’t have a job in the industry today if I hadn’t repeatedly reached out over Steam to a AAA dev I met playing Dota, or if I hadn’t sent an email with my portfolio to a game designer I follow on Twitter asking for feedback. Your mileage may vary, but it is exponentially easier to build up your skill-set if you can talk to somebody who has already made the journey.

You will be judged on what you have done, so do something

This may seem like a catch-22: to get a job in the video game industry, you must have already made video games. It’s hard, but the truth is that anybody looking to hire a new employee wants to know what they are capable of. If you can’t show anything off, the message is that you aren’t capable of doing anything.

But there are ways around this barrier. Many game companies look at mods to judge a junior candidate, so if you make Halo maps or Skyrim mods or Civilization scenarios, take screenshots, preserve source files for download, and slap them on a portfolio. If you’re an artist, make unique, imaginative scenes and characters, and build up a demo reel. Even if your work is garbage, put it together to show you can do something and keep working to replace your early trash with newer, better content.

If you can find a team of people to start making simple games, even better. Very few people are capable of executing every part of a game concept as well as they like, so if you’re a programmer and you know an artist, team up and start making bubble bobble clones until you have better ideas.

I cannot stress this enough: having nothing to show for yourself except a dream and a degree is much, much worse than having a portfolio full of small, simple mods/art/games that you’ve seen through to completion.

Games are made by teams, so learn how to be a team player

Almost nothing you’ve ever played was made completely by a single person. World-class programmers, artists, and designers know where their strengths lie and know how to find people whose strengths complement their own. If you want to make a game you are proud of, you are going to need to work with other people, and they’re going to need to want to work with you.

Be humble. Be kind. Listen when others bring up their own ideas and concerns, and be considerate of them. Contribute your own ideas, but don’t become so attached to them you tear a rift in your team. Not every game you make is going to be your dream game, and some of them might not be games you would even play. But if you’re constantly negative about the work, people will notice and they won’t want to work with you.

And always give your best work. Every game you work on is an opportunity to hone your craft, to learn new techniques and methodologies, and to create something you can be proud to say you worked on. There will be times where you won’t be able to make something as good as you would like it to be, but there is never an excuse to deliver lazy or sloppy work, even if you can get away with it.

Your path into the industry may be simple and quick, or it may be a rocky mountain road full of cruel twists and dark tunnels. But if you’re truly devoted, keep working and learning and developing as a person and you’ll find yourself making the games you love.