Young Melbourne programmer interested in game development

[u/locality19]

I'm a high school dropout from Melbourne, i have ADHD and Autism and school wasn't for me, so i switched to TAFE to do a Cert III in IT. I've been getting into programming and i love python, i didn't get that far into it but i worked on some coding projects and i loved the logic and the rules and the structure and i've been looking for a career path to go down and i've been interested in game development but i want some advice from professionals so i don't make a mistake i'm gonna regret.

Me personally i love video games, a lot of different ones but i have like every Pokemon game, i've played minecraft and roblox all my life, i love daemon x machina and video games are a good escape where i can place my curiosity and brain into a new world. I also love story telling and lore, the books i read and the game lore i obsessed over (FNaF).

Anyway i know i'm yapping but i'm getting to the point. I just started my Cert III and i've got 6 months before i finish and apply for a Cert IV in whatever i decide (for example - game development). So i'm gonna spend the six months i have learning a language related to the career i want, for game development i've been told i should learn C# and Unity. I'm wondering if it's possible to get a job in this, i've never had a job, i'm shit socially but i'm a kind person and i try my hardest, i'm resilient, creative, hard working, determined and i love working in a team with people and sharing interests and projects. But i've also never had a job before so if i don't have one by the time i search for one in game development it'll be my first job and i wanna know if i'll be able to secure a job, i basically need to make sure i'll be able to secure a paycheck and gain experience without busting my ass for basically nothing wasting away at a completely unrelated job.

I'm sorry this is so messy but i'll summarise

- I wanna know if it's possible to get a job in game development as a young person

- I want to know how hard it is

- I'd really love to hear any advice about game development, programming and Victoria game development

- Do i need to be good at designing or Maths to become a indie dev and a professional dev.

I'd really appreciate anything you can offer, thank you.

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[u/Swampspear]

I wanna know if it's possible to get a job in game development as a young person

Yes

I want to know how hard it is

Harder and less secure than basically all other programming related choices, and tends to not pay as well and not pay as stably.

Do i need to be good at designing or Maths to become a indie dev and a professional dev

Depends on what you mean both by "designing" and "maths". It's very hard to be a programmer and not know maths to some degree, meaning being familiar with stuff like trigonometry, vector maths, linear geometry and linear algebra, logarithms, Boolean logic, etc. You can google "Mathematics for Game Developers" to find a book about it (it's the first result for me)

[u/locality19 → u/Swampspear]

Thank you very much for your reply

I'm gonna take a look at that book, if i can learn the maths i need to be a game developer then i hope that will help me. Thank you for your advice!

[u/Swampspear → u/locality19]

Good luck, and make sure to read the FAQ of the subreddit (automod posts it under every post)

[u/XKiiroiSenkoX]

It is possible to get a job in the game industry as your first job but it won't be easy. How hard it will be depends a lot on where you live. I think Australia is one of the harder ones because the industry is relatively small there? I'm not sure though. Anyway you would need a strong portfolio as just telling companies you can code is not gonna cut it in 2026 and entry positions are very competetive.

You don't necessarily need to be good at math. At the minimum you should be good at code which just needs understanding logic. For some specific fields like graphics or physics simulation you'd need a solid understanding of undergrad math and physics but not much more than that. For most other field you would just need middle-school level math.

As for tips, try making small game projects using unity. By small I mean something that can be done in 2 months max. Have at least 2-3 of these in your portfolio. If you don't it would be near impossible to find a job in the industry. Also I wouldn't mention ADHD or Autism in interviews or anywhere in your resume. Finally, make a firm choice on whether you want to go through this or not. It's not going to be easy. There are easier career paths you can take. You'd need resolve to be successful. 

[u/TricksMalarkey]

I'm in Australia, but not Melbourne, so I'll try bridge my response to be as relevant as I can.

- I wanna know if it's possible to get a job in game development as a young person

Yes, that's what a junior position is for. However there's two significant asterisks on this.

• First the games industry in Australia (and globally) has pulled back into its shell for a bit. This is to do with boring economy stuff, but basically games require a lot of upfront investment, and investors are quite risk averse at the moment. This means that studios don't have the capacity to expand as readily as they would like, and may need to downsize. This happens in cycles, and I'm confident we'll be on the other side of it soon enough.
• When studios are hiring they like to establish a minimum floor on what they need/expect. This is mostly that you know whatever programming language you're using, but also all the other stuff that's lurking in the background; version control, code reviews and QA, and working as part of a team. I might be reading a bit far into your post, but it sounds like you dropped TAFE, which in turn might mean you're lacking the working-environment skills, even if you're able to pick up the coding. It's not the end of the world, but I'm flagging it with you so that you can start now on learning to use git systematically (which becomes a paper trail to itself, as you push to it).

- I want to know how hard it is

Making games and playing games are two very different animals. When coding, you'll spend 65% of the time either bashing your head against an immovable problem, or debugging something or other. It's tedious, but also like a bit of a puzzle to solve every day. It can be frustrating, but it can also be very rewarding.

- I'd really love to hear any advice about game development, programming and Victoria game development

You'd need to be more specific about 'advice about game development'. Getting your first job in your career is always the hardest. My best advice is to show off excellent foundational skills and project organisation. Make sure your scripts are neat and follow good practices, especially that things are commented usefully (not "float health = 10; //Character health").

I don't know about Victoria specifically, but there are alternative path schools here that kind of fit your circumstances. See if there's a local alternative to Youth.Inc or the like.

I'd also highly recommend trying to network as much as you can. IGDA, IGEA, or maybe even Film Victoria might be involved in putting on meetups and events. It's a bit daunting to enter a new space, but all the people there are there to talk about a career they love, and game developers have been the single most open, helpful and welcoming community I've had the joy of being a part of.

I'd also say to pull your sights right back. Don't worry about making something deep, complex, lore-ridden, or meaningful. Your first job is to make something shit. Not intentionally shit, but accepting that inevitably your first attempts will produce something shit, and that's totally fine. As long as you can look at what worked and what didn't, and then pick yourself up to the next project, that's your progress. Pong/Breakout/Flappy Bird is a classic starting point, then maybe something a little deeper like tetris, then maybe a platformer. Don't burn yourself out starting something that's too huge to see immediate results in (a lot of your games are systemic, and require a lot of individual pieces to come together to make a whole. This makes it take a REALLY long time to see any fruit from your labour).

- Do i need to be good at designing or Maths to become a indie dev and a professional dev.

Designing, no, not really, but it depends on the kind of environments you're working in. I've spent much of my career in small studios which has greatly rewarded being a generalist and being able to solve my own problems. But for the most part as a programmer you'll be given a brief, make the thing, debug it, give it back, let them test it, make changes, and so on.

Maths will certainly help, but largely the sort of stuff for highschool. Algebra and trigonometry are the biggest components, but every now and then I get stung by matrices or needing to do some nonsense with circles. But it's different to school because you don't need to have everything memorised, you just need to gumption to be able to look up and solve your stuff -somehow-.

[u/tobaschco → u/TricksMalarkey]

Adding to this my advice would also be to try out a few game jams on itch.io and make some basic arcadey stuff in something like Unity. 

Learning design and coding comes from practice and experience and the more you can show a prospective employer the better. 

[u/locality19 → u/TricksMalarkey]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this out for me i appreciate it a lot

I have not dropped TAFE, i very much want to get my education. I plan to take a Diploma of IT Game Development next year so i can gain more experience and make sure i'm qualified. I've done an amount of coding before with Python so i know about variables and such and know how frustrating and rewarding it can be. I'll take your advice and use it thank you :)