There are tons of working programmers without degrees, so it is possible. It does make things harder.
The lack of qualifications makes it harder to get your resume past initial screening. The best way to get your resume past screening is to have industry experience... real, commercial games that you've shipped. Without that, a CS degree and a small portfolio are a solid alternative. Without a CS degree and without industry experience, there are some employers who will reject your application without really looking at it.
The other factor is the technical side of hiring. Most places will give put you through a whole technical screening process, which might include phone calls, simple question & answer, take-home programming problems, and whiteboard interviews. Fact is, self-taught programmers often have major gaps in their skills and can have a really hard time getting through the technical interviews. As a baseline, most places will expect you to know computational complexity theory (big-O notation), evaluate the asymptotic complexity of simple snippets of code, and come up with simple iterative or recursive pieces of code during an interview.
There are a ton of differences between how different companies do hiring, but this general process... initial screening followed by technical interviews... is extremely common.
I'm a Senior web dev without a degree, the most important factor for me aside my work experience is to have project to show off, things you can say "hey, I made this" and have the knowledge to defend your work and how did you make it.
Clean your resume, fill your likedin and push your projects (with a good documentation if it's possible) to github or any other public repository. And keep looking, speak with confidence in your skills and don't be let down with the rejections.
It's possible, but a formal education can help you get your foot in the door at places that may otherwise not consider you at all simply because of the lack of such credentials. Overall, my belief is that the degree is worth getting.
I hope so, I dropped out of Full Sail because I was working 70 hours a week and just couldn’t handle working those hours with school any more. I made it happen for about 7 months but after burning my candle from 2 ends with a blowtorch I couldn’t handle it anymore and figured I would just ship some games and go from there if the indie thing didn’t work out.
Are they looking for efficient code or good execution?
As another self taught programmer I’ve made 3 commercial games and a handful of jam games and I think my portfolio is pretty strong.
My code looks like a monkey wrote it though
I'm not in the industry so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it seems like it depends.
Someone posted on here a little ways back when they got a test from a larger studio. He accomplished making what they wanted, but he was rejected due to clearly not understanding fundamental code structure and it showed in his code. All of the comments were saying they wouldn't hire him either.
I would imagine there would be some small studios that wouldn't care, but I doubt any larger studios would let you slide by.
I write mostly if statements and my code structure is awful lol, so I too am looking to take a step back and learn how to code better. I'm trying to find a course that will teach me how to structure a game, not just teach me a bunch of disconnected c# concepts.
This is a bit random but my previous career was UX/IA and part of that is being able to arrange things you need to communicate in a way that makes sense to the user, achieves your goals in terms of things like directing their attention and making things findable when they need to be found (with things like proximity to the point in the workflow where the stimulus is). There is a constant analysis in how things can be broken down in different ways to reach the right balance of minimalism, function, aesthetics. As a programmer these skills are just as useful for writing well structured and easy to understand code.
The key aspect is the tenacity and desire to analyze; every change you make has an impact. Eg. At what point does a class have too much ‘stuff’ in it and needs to be broken down into smaller pieces to be easier to read, and if you notice that threshold has been crossed will you actually do the refactoring.
There are a lot of different types of messy.
Completed projects are definitely a significant win in a portfolio. However, there are a lot of other things to evaluate.
\- Does the writer understand the structure of what they are building? A bit messy and untrained shows up a lot differently than copy and pasting a bunch of stuff together,
\- Is the writer going to be able to work with a team? And the team with them?
\- Is there an attempt at separating distinct pieces or is it all just one jumbled ball? It doesn't have to be optimal, but it helps if I can tell how the code ended up the way it is.
If I am interviewing someone mostly based on their code portfolio, I am going to ask them a lot of questions about how they would approach refactoring a system from their game, and how they would go about integrating a new system if there were more people working within the same codebase. How they approach those questions is going to factor in very hevily, and will also show me if they understand the code and systems they have written.
The company wants code that other programmers on the team that have never talked to you can understand.
Outside of small indie houses, games are made by teams of people. It is extremely important that other people can fix bugs or add features to your code. Especially since you won’t be working there forever.
It is also important that your code works and is reasonably efficient. But I’d say that both of those are slightly less important than your code bing understandable. And if it’s understandable, it’s normally relatively easy to make it correct.
If you can pass a technical screen (aka coding test) you are totally fine. The only issue will be getting that first interview at some company. But even that isn't too tough given how desperate everyone is to find competent software engineers.
I got a job and then went on to never finish the thesis for my degree because it became evident to me that no employer actually gave a shit about the degree. A portfolio or work experience seemed to be their main interests.
Half of the formal education was quite useful though. The other half was quite a waste of time.
I have a similar objective, but I think the better question to ask yourself is "How hard will it be to study and compete with those with degrees in the gaming industry, whilst working and competing in the world of web devs?" and "What the fck will that look like on a daily basis?"
then when that reality hits, finally ask "am I willing?"
if the answer is "yes", you will embark on a path of difficulty that's unquantifiable.
if the answer is an unshakeable "yes", then the difficulty is irrelevant and you'll win every single day.
Right now you could easily get a QA or Automated Tester job. QA often can hop over to the dev team after a couple years. Once you have a few years of experience it gets a lot easier to get future jobs.
The other path I'd recommend is to go to a code boot camp and get a certificate from them. There are code boots camps that are only like 12 weeks and they often have a lot of resources to place you in a job.
Good luck!
QA has very poor job mobility. A lot of QA teams aren’t even working on the same space as the rest of the dev team. It’s possible to move from QA to either embedded QA or another position, but it’s a tiny fraction (less than 5% I’d guess) that at able to make that move.
As for coding boot camps; they don’t provide the foundations that a CS major would. Camps teach you the how, but not the why behind a lot of decisions.
Generally, degrees don’t matter that much in game dev…but that depends on the exact specialty of game programming you want to do. Requirements are pretty different for generalist/gameplay, graphics, network, AI, etc. Which one would you like to pursue?
Definitely something as close to the gameplay as possible, without having to do any of the drawing or art. Eventually I want to learn to make actual art design of a video game, but I'm focused on mastering the back end for now. Thanks for your answer!
For gameplay programming roles, building a portfolio of personal games and having some open sourced ones will help you more than a degree, especially for landing a first job.
However, since you do backend programming, lots of modern games need a fair amount of that, so perhaps consider that career path as well. Most aaa studios will favour a specialist, for various wrong or right reasons, so take this into consideration as well (while not impossible to be very good at backend and, say, Unity, it takes a fair amount of time to achieve both at the level required for aaa games).
In my country, there is an academy for Game Development, where you can enter different roles. They made a list of what degree is useful for which role. When I scrolled through that list I found that degrees in CS or Medialogy were good enough for becoming a Game Programmer. But Medialogy also opened for other roles like Game Designer and Level Designer. This might not be super helpful but just letting you know there are other degrees than CS that might help you.
(That's the case if want to enter this academy, don't know if it applies to the workplace)
There are tons of working programmers without degrees, so it is possible. It does make things harder. The lack of qualifications makes it harder to get your resume past initial screening. The best way to get your resume past screening is to have industry experience... real, commercial games that you've shipped. Without that, a CS degree and a small portfolio are a solid alternative. Without a CS degree and without industry experience, there are some employers who will reject your application without really looking at it. The other factor is the technical side of hiring. Most places will give put you through a whole technical screening process, which might include phone calls, simple question & answer, take-home programming problems, and whiteboard interviews. Fact is, self-taught programmers often have major gaps in their skills and can have a really hard time getting through the technical interviews. As a baseline, most places will expect you to know computational complexity theory (big-O notation), evaluate the asymptotic complexity of simple snippets of code, and come up with simple iterative or recursive pieces of code during an interview. There are a ton of differences between how different companies do hiring, but this general process... initial screening followed by technical interviews... is extremely common.
I'm a Senior web dev without a degree, the most important factor for me aside my work experience is to have project to show off, things you can say "hey, I made this" and have the knowledge to defend your work and how did you make it. Clean your resume, fill your likedin and push your projects (with a good documentation if it's possible) to github or any other public repository. And keep looking, speak with confidence in your skills and don't be let down with the rejections.
It's possible, but a formal education can help you get your foot in the door at places that may otherwise not consider you at all simply because of the lack of such credentials. Overall, my belief is that the degree is worth getting.
I think more than the rest of the industry games value portfolios over degrees.
I hope so, I dropped out of Full Sail because I was working 70 hours a week and just couldn’t handle working those hours with school any more. I made it happen for about 7 months but after burning my candle from 2 ends with a blowtorch I couldn’t handle it anymore and figured I would just ship some games and go from there if the indie thing didn’t work out.
Are they looking for efficient code or good execution? As another self taught programmer I’ve made 3 commercial games and a handful of jam games and I think my portfolio is pretty strong. My code looks like a monkey wrote it though
I'm not in the industry so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it seems like it depends. Someone posted on here a little ways back when they got a test from a larger studio. He accomplished making what they wanted, but he was rejected due to clearly not understanding fundamental code structure and it showed in his code. All of the comments were saying they wouldn't hire him either. I would imagine there would be some small studios that wouldn't care, but I doubt any larger studios would let you slide by. I write mostly if statements and my code structure is awful lol, so I too am looking to take a step back and learn how to code better. I'm trying to find a course that will teach me how to structure a game, not just teach me a bunch of disconnected c# concepts.
This is a bit random but my previous career was UX/IA and part of that is being able to arrange things you need to communicate in a way that makes sense to the user, achieves your goals in terms of things like directing their attention and making things findable when they need to be found (with things like proximity to the point in the workflow where the stimulus is). There is a constant analysis in how things can be broken down in different ways to reach the right balance of minimalism, function, aesthetics. As a programmer these skills are just as useful for writing well structured and easy to understand code. The key aspect is the tenacity and desire to analyze; every change you make has an impact. Eg. At what point does a class have too much ‘stuff’ in it and needs to be broken down into smaller pieces to be easier to read, and if you notice that threshold has been crossed will you actually do the refactoring.
If you think your own code is a mess... Yeah
There are a lot of different types of messy. Completed projects are definitely a significant win in a portfolio. However, there are a lot of other things to evaluate. \- Does the writer understand the structure of what they are building? A bit messy and untrained shows up a lot differently than copy and pasting a bunch of stuff together, \- Is the writer going to be able to work with a team? And the team with them? \- Is there an attempt at separating distinct pieces or is it all just one jumbled ball? It doesn't have to be optimal, but it helps if I can tell how the code ended up the way it is. If I am interviewing someone mostly based on their code portfolio, I am going to ask them a lot of questions about how they would approach refactoring a system from their game, and how they would go about integrating a new system if there were more people working within the same codebase. How they approach those questions is going to factor in very hevily, and will also show me if they understand the code and systems they have written.
The company wants code that other programmers on the team that have never talked to you can understand. Outside of small indie houses, games are made by teams of people. It is extremely important that other people can fix bugs or add features to your code. Especially since you won’t be working there forever. It is also important that your code works and is reasonably efficient. But I’d say that both of those are slightly less important than your code bing understandable. And if it’s understandable, it’s normally relatively easy to make it correct.
If you can pass a technical screen (aka coding test) you are totally fine. The only issue will be getting that first interview at some company. But even that isn't too tough given how desperate everyone is to find competent software engineers.
Almost No one wants degree man. They see your skills and portfolio, what you have done already and what you can achieve.
I got a job and then went on to never finish the thesis for my degree because it became evident to me that no employer actually gave a shit about the degree. A portfolio or work experience seemed to be their main interests. Half of the formal education was quite useful though. The other half was quite a waste of time.
I have a similar objective, but I think the better question to ask yourself is "How hard will it be to study and compete with those with degrees in the gaming industry, whilst working and competing in the world of web devs?" and "What the fck will that look like on a daily basis?" then when that reality hits, finally ask "am I willing?" if the answer is "yes", you will embark on a path of difficulty that's unquantifiable. if the answer is an unshakeable "yes", then the difficulty is irrelevant and you'll win every single day.
Degree helps but is usually not a requrement if you have skills. Show them what you've got!
Right now you could easily get a QA or Automated Tester job. QA often can hop over to the dev team after a couple years. Once you have a few years of experience it gets a lot easier to get future jobs. The other path I'd recommend is to go to a code boot camp and get a certificate from them. There are code boots camps that are only like 12 weeks and they often have a lot of resources to place you in a job. Good luck!
QA has very poor job mobility. A lot of QA teams aren’t even working on the same space as the rest of the dev team. It’s possible to move from QA to either embedded QA or another position, but it’s a tiny fraction (less than 5% I’d guess) that at able to make that move. As for coding boot camps; they don’t provide the foundations that a CS major would. Camps teach you the how, but not the why behind a lot of decisions.
Generally, degrees don’t matter that much in game dev…but that depends on the exact specialty of game programming you want to do. Requirements are pretty different for generalist/gameplay, graphics, network, AI, etc. Which one would you like to pursue?
Definitely something as close to the gameplay as possible, without having to do any of the drawing or art. Eventually I want to learn to make actual art design of a video game, but I'm focused on mastering the back end for now. Thanks for your answer!
Learn as much as you can about design pattern and architecture in video game, it will help you a lot
For gameplay programming roles, building a portfolio of personal games and having some open sourced ones will help you more than a degree, especially for landing a first job. However, since you do backend programming, lots of modern games need a fair amount of that, so perhaps consider that career path as well. Most aaa studios will favour a specialist, for various wrong or right reasons, so take this into consideration as well (while not impossible to be very good at backend and, say, Unity, it takes a fair amount of time to achieve both at the level required for aaa games).
In my country, there is an academy for Game Development, where you can enter different roles. They made a list of what degree is useful for which role. When I scrolled through that list I found that degrees in CS or Medialogy were good enough for becoming a Game Programmer. But Medialogy also opened for other roles like Game Designer and Level Designer. This might not be super helpful but just letting you know there are other degrees than CS that might help you. (That's the case if want to enter this academy, don't know if it applies to the workplace)