What got you into game development?

[Digital]

What got you interested in creating your own game, versus just playing them? What about game development excites or motivates you?

I have always been interested in how things worked, even as a younger kid. When I got my hand on computers, I couldn't help myself but wonder how they worked. Not so much how mechanically they worked, but how the OS worked, or how the the Internet worked (it was the age of dialup). I quickly started to absorb programming and internally how things worked.

Then I got an Xbox, then I got even more interested in specifically how a game worked, since it was different! The rest is history.

So... Whats your story?

[Anoua]

For me it's always been about creating a world. I've always been creative, interested in writing and art, and game development can be a great expression of that (though I don't do my own art, just recolors since I just don't have the skillset built up enough).

I specifically remember playing Zelda Ocarina on N64 and exploring and thinking, I want to create worlds like this. Then looked into what path I needed to take and decided to go into Computer Science to learn programming. Web and virtual pets joined that interest, and I was really interested in web because it could more easily be a solo person experience. But of course now there are so many tools and frameworks out there, this doesn't just apply to web. And honestly once I get my 2 games in a more stable state I will probably dabble in some other areas too. 

So for me it's more about the end product than the how question. I am very logic oriented though as well. So I think programming is overall a good fit.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Anoua

[halichu]

I got into game development when I was around 12 years old. Of course, it started off with Neopets... I would always play with my twin sister and we had a lot of roleplaying characters so even though it wasn't allowed, we had like 10 accounts each  But I wish there were certain features available on Neopets so then I wanted to create a similar site with all the features we wanted. However, it broke off to be way more than that.

Now 10+ years later, I'm developing something totally different inspired from all the games I have played in the past and with my husband. And from being on the computer developing the same project over and over again, I learned a lot of new technologies. I kept scrapping so many projects since I learned new technologies such as CodeIgniter and then I went into Laravel. It just kept expanding so now I finally stuck with the technologies I want to use and have been developing the project for a good few months now. However, what was a hobby also turned into a professional career for me  I am now working at J.M. Smuckers full-time and hope to continue on my project during my maternity leave.

[Syntax]

I started playing Horseland with a friend when I was about 12 (2005). They let you customize the CSS on your page so you could change the look of it, and gosh darn if I didn't want the prettiest page. That launched me into making photoshop graphics and simple html websites to offer horseland stylesheets and graphics. Then I had a friend making his own Horseland website except instead of horses it was fish. I thought that sounded SO cool and I decided I wanted to do it too so I started learning how to program. It was a lot of work and stress but after a few years I proudly launched my first site which I basically ran for a dozen of my friends on a free hosting site about recoloring pixel ponies. It was up for a few months, but the hosting company I'd used disappeared(I assume they went under) and the site was just gone. I was upset at first but I decided to move on and build other things that didn't require as much art since that's what I wasn't good at. So I helped other people with their sites and built little websites and webapps for friends and family. While I never really stopped programming in my free time, It wasn't until my second year in college that I decided to pursue web development as a career.