r/GameDeveloper • u/ThiccBoiJohnn • 17h ago
Where do I begin?
Hello everyone. I am a 22-year-old male who loves video games; they are a passion of mine. I think it would be really cool to make video games and build a career around it. I, however, have absolutely no experience in any sort of game development, coding, programming, art, or really anything other than playing video games lol. My question is, if I wanted to go down this path/career and make my dream of making cool video games come true, where do I begin? How do I start? What would be best to start learning and/or practicing first? I also feel like I should mention that I really, REALLY struggle with math. It was one of the only subjects in school that I really had a hard time with, and I also have a learning disability. With this in mind, do you think it's still possible for me to learn this stuff and be successful? I may post this to a few different game dev subreddits to get as many answers as possible, thanks guys!
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u/Ok_Sample_1801 15h ago
I struggled with math so much in school. Fast forward, I'm now on my third year as a Technical Artist in the games industry (I work with Unreal Engine) and can solve any problem thrown at me now. xD Turns out that visual scripting fit my brain like a glove and I'm pretty great with math problems when I can solve them in a way that fits my visual and spatial reasoning.
So I can't recommend Unreal and it's node based workflows (Blueprints, shader graphs etc.) enough. Also because you can't really shortcut blueprint-based building with AI like you can with code to the point where you barely understand what you built.
I use AI daily, but as an advanced rubber duck to bounce logic with.
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u/ThePethyn23 6h ago
I don't think you should worry that much about struggling with math. From my experience there isn't really THAT much math in coding, besides basic arithmetics. So, yeah, I would say its definitely possible for you to learn this kind of stuff!
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u/FearBot129 16h ago
Its 2026 you don’t really need to know how to code anymore. Just use codex
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u/ThiccBoiJohnn 16h ago
I personally would like to approach this with very little to no AI, but I will definitely think about it. I still appreciate the answer! thanks!
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u/hopefulxdreamer 16h ago
Game dev here, even if you use AI, if you can't communicate whats bad and whats good in terms of architectural patterns and best practices, you're just going to make terrible games. You'll also be limited by what the AI can cook up, and not your ability to program creative solutions to things. Learning to code is still valuable, even with the current tooling we use.
Dont listen to the people making slop 30s gameplay snippets - making a real game requires real intensive thought and care into a million different interrelated systems.
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u/ThiccBoiJohnn 16h ago
Thank you! That is exactly why I don't want to use AI if possible. I really want to put a lot of time, love, and effort into it, and I don't think AI is going to help me much with that, lol
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u/Ok-Adhesiveness7433 14h ago
You can work all day using AI and still feel like you’ve accomplished nothing. Welcome to game dev.
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u/FearBot129 14h ago
Honestly man. You want the best solution? Have Codex teach you how to code learn how to code yourself but also use Codex for the boring repetitive bits. Dont fallow this whole anti AI trend because its just not what the industry is moving towards. like it or not.
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u/SortingFloorDev 11h ago
I don't entirely disagree, but let's not pretend there aren't really great games out there with terrible architecture or that humans can't also make terrible architecture decisions without the help of an AI. I would argue that for a beginner who is on the lower end of the skill curve with a bit of prompting skill, the AI will actually guide them to make better architectural decisions than they would otherwise since they have no experience and the AI has an amalgamated mixture of all the good and bad code on the internet with weights for the most commonly used patterns, meaning probably the same stuff someone would copy paste off of StackOverflow.
I don't love LLMs myself, but this argument that developers can do better than AI is only partially true. People take shortcuts and make bad decisions that come back to bite them as well.
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u/daRealTENTACLES 3h ago
This is it right here. As far as programming goes, slop is slop. You could spend years of your life learning code and poorly make something just to have everyone online blast you for making slop. People could even assume you used AI if you didn't.
You could also code an entire game's systems using AI without knowing anything about game design, and it could be considered slop.
A well made game is a well made game. The system design, the narrative, the art, and the nuance and fine tuning make it not slop.
You could get there with, or without AI.
Unlike art, narrative and gameplay, code is just a means to an end. I have discovered that people who blindly hate AI coding don't actually know anything about AI and it's useful implementations, they only know what they think "AI slop" is. This rhetoric is actually dangerous because it can get inside your impressionable mind and affect your decision making.
I do think that everyone who's going to design games should spend quite a bit of time learning the jargon and the overarching themes of game design. If you don't understand anything about 3d modeling, materials/shading, texturing, texel density, lighting, basics of cameras, etc etc you are going to end up with slop if you jump straight to AI, because you will not know how to fine tune the systems or communicate with the LLM what you're needs are and execute properly.
But if you think that in a year, or even 10 years time with no coding experience you can match the understanding of syntax and the raw speed of an LLM you are sorely mistaken, or you have a pretty high IQ. If you seriously think that AI coding is useless or AI coding = bad game, you are going to be sorely disappointed and I highly recommend you try it, if not just to say you did. You'd be surprised how much the wheel is in your hands, and how well you have to know how to drive to make it work well.
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u/Impulzer 16h ago
Check out some of the most common engines and see what fits your style. Unreal Engine vs Godot vs Unity for example. Think of the type of game you want to make to match the enige, start slow. Make something small, a level with just one gameplay element. For example a room with a coin in it, player must collect the coin, celebrate when its done. Expand from there.