G'Day Everyone! Based on the popularity of this video, I've just released part 2 of my GAME DEVELOPEMENT JOURNEY - going over life after graduating from university. You can check it out here: ruclips.net/video/pk8sUenCytE/видео.html
wow. what an inspiring video. I'm the type of person to hates school and pretends like i could teach myself all the skills i need but in reality, i would just stay home and play games. not to learn from the game or anything, just autopiloting. from the way you challenge yourself to improve on your weaknesses to the "always be learning" mindset you had during the 4 years, it is truly inspiring and this video had opened my eyes. thank you
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! And don't worry, I can be like that too - especially when I get hooked on a game like BG3 last year. It can be hard going 100% all the time, so taking time to recharge and just play some games is totally good too. Keep chipping away when you can, and you'll be surprised how far you can go - best of luck!
Yeah, it seems to vary quite a bit. Some places offer 2 year courses, and others 4 years - but I'd say Game Dev degrees tend to be on the shorter side because they're more specialised in one area. My degree had quite a lot of freedom to pick and choose classes, especially in the final year which let you pick up some other CS subjects as sub-majors. Great for an introduction, but not as useful as a dedicated CS degree that covers a larger number of areas in more detail. It really depends on the person and what they're interested in!
@@MrBluecapDev I definitely think the more hands on and focused approach is better, in my degree i had to go through subjects like physics 1 and physics 2 and even Chemistry and Biology, that made the degree a lot longer than it needed to be imo
Yeah, I'd agree with that. Being able to work on projects under "realistic" work conditions was really practical, and it also helped add to my portfolio. And I totally understand the pain of having to do what feels like unrelated subjects. For me it was business and networking subjects - they were the bane of my existence haha
I really enjoyed your closing thoughts. Great video man. Thank you for sharing your experience here. I wish you luck on your game dev journey. I am sure you will make a lot more fantastic things.
I honestly was surprised that someone newer to game dev could make such amazing games. Project Angel looked beautiful and honestly I found it to look really fun and enjoyable. Whenever I would play a single player game, I would something like this one. While Fury of the Pharaohs looked like a fun, yet silly game I would play with friends. I already know they were a blast to make. Also congrats getting through that first year, it must've really hurt not doing what you wanted.
Thanks so much! It was incredibly stressful making those games, but it was a lot of fun. The reward of watching people enjoy those games was definitely worth all the blood, sweat, and tears!
I liked studying during covid, simply because the entire class ended up joining our Discord. Pre-covid, if you made a Discord for the class, you'd get maybe 4-5 people on it - but this time it was the entire class, since it was the only way for us to possibly communicate amongst ourselves and ask each other for the answers. As a result, instead of there being a bunch of different cliques, everybody knew everybody, and it was much easier to socialise. It was also easier to find people to play Minecraft with, and the closest thing we had to a clique was 4 people playing Minecraft while another 4 play Halo. It actually turned out to be the most social life anybody in that class ever had lol, from that standpoint it was amazing while it lasted.
That's totally fair, our Discord server didn't quite go the same way - although to be fair, ours was set up by our lecturer. Most people were just spending time with their own group, and didn't really branch out that much. I only really got to know people during the first half of my final year where it was more social and we could talk face to face. But I'm glad that worked out for you, sounds like a lot of fun!
I recommend people to find more practical school related to gaming, I don't know about the US, but here in sweden there are at least 3 *highly* acclaimed video game educations, one of which I'm attending myself. The one I attend is aimed at getting us moving quick and ready to start working in the game industry after 2 years, and as such we do four group projects in that time, one of which over 7 weeks. I can say that I so far have been loving my time here, so I hope people aren't scared to try it!
It's awesome to hear other people are enjoying studying Games Dev too. There's a school in Australia called the Academy of Interaction and Entertainment (AIE), that are heavily focused on all areas of Games Dev (Programming, Art, Designing, etc.), and their courses are 2 years as well. I was considering going there, although I leant towards UTS because I felt it had a stronger coding course and had great industry connections - not just in games, but all areas of IT. But both courses offer lots of great opportunities to work on real, small-scale projects like you do in the industry. And I totally agree! I hope more people give Games Dev a go because it's a lot of fun!
As someone who is finishing up his 3rd year of game design and development at WLU in Ontario, it is interesting seeing people's experience elsewhere. I think something that people watching this video to decide if they like game design studies should know is that all universities are different - what you make, learn or do in class is highly dependent on the market the school is aiming for. Laurier focuses on boardgames and critical/ethical design, with the occasional class on videogames, escape room design or games as art. This is very different from most other schools that look at digital games as their primary focus. If you are interested in studying game design and development, do your own research, figure out why you want to study games instead of just starting to develop on your own. Look into schools and talk to students and alumni of those schools about what the uni focuses on and figure out which school matches what you want to do in the future.
Small world! I went to Waterloo for Geomatics for a few years before dropping out and just teaching myself game dev from RUclips videos lol! Thankfully with Unreal 5 becoming so popular there's a massive number of tutorials out now compared to 2014, so learning anything is extremely simple and quick.
That's some really great advice! There are so many types of game design/development, not just digital games. We even had a subject that focused on designing a board game for other classes to play. And I highly recommend talking to students and alumni, they always give a far more realistic view and expectation of what it's like studying a particular course.
This is a amazing video, I have been in school for 2 years now and I am going to start my final year and then my masters in game dev soon and man I needed this. My school is good, and ive learnt a lot but I feel in the back of my head that it might not be worth it and that all my time and effort was wasted when I should of done something practical like computer science. This made me feel good. makes me feel like I can get passed this burnout doom and gloom phase I am in. I would love to hear how after university has been because I feel thats were most people have the most worries for. But really thank you for making this video and helping me realize that maybe im not wasting my college years
Thanks so much for the kind praise! I'm actually working on a follow up video that focuses on what happened to me after university and what it was like getting my first job - so be sure to keep an eye out for that :)
Game Development needs passionate individuals, I learnt this through experience... I'm self taught and I have failed too many times but I have never felt discouraged I keep at it no matter what coz I wanna make a fun game some day!
My experience (attended UCI) is a whole lot of theory and barely any actual making of games. It wasn't until my second to last and last year when I we were actually expected to a complete game. And from that, we only made two rather small games. To get around this, our school had a video game development club. While it wasn't required by the school, it was more or less required if you wanted to do any real game development, and I wish I invested more time in it. We had a quarter system, so classes were 10 weeks long, which meant that you only had like 6-7 weeks of development, which is a real crunch. One class was two quarters, so then we actually had time to create a decently polished game. It leaves a LOT to be desired.
That makes sense, those smaller quarters would make it really hard to get some momentum and add all that extra polish. Fortunately, UTS worked on longer semesters, so there was more time to work on projects, and we started working on making our own games in the first year. And UTS was in the process of establishing a Game Dev society that ran outside class where you'd work in really big teams to make a game together - which has really taken off since I left. I agree that practice is so much better than theory, and I'm grateful that UTS was very project oriented, because I was able to graduate with 5 games to my name.
@@TtroubleTT I've heard its now Games and Interactive Media, and it became official the year I left. Glad to see they're putting more focus on actually making than pretending. When I was there it was called Computer Ge Science.
Yo, this video is so good! I’m in the third year of this myself, and would highly recommend it if you’re considering it. As of 2024, the degree is pretty similar to several years ago (give or take a few assignment tweaks), but there are new opportunities to showcase work, either through the Playmakers society or SXSW Sydney! Great video man, all the best for future works!!!
I really appreciate that! Playmaker's society was still starting out when I was in my final year, and SXSW Sydney is such an awesome opportunity for all the students - definitely a little jealous of some of you students, I would've loved to have been able to take part in both of those. But UTS is always stepping things up with it's Games Degree, so I totally recommend the course to anyone considering it as well - it's really top quality.
Fury of the Pharaohs looks really nice and polished, good work ! Especially love the art style, color palette, shaders, it all fits really well somehow, not sure how fun the game is. If possible, when you catch some time, make some postmortem on it or something like that, what were the problems, what went well, on code, art,... Cheers !
Thank you! Fury of the Pharaohs was a labour of love and we all worked super hard on it. One of my friends was working hard on the art and level design, and another was going all in on animations and shaders. "Slightly" biased, but I think the game is really fun - you can probably still download and play it, although you'd probably need a few other people to get the most out of it. And that's a really good idea - I'll add that to my video to do list!
I'm currently in my 4th year of secondary school and I'd love to work in game development, seeing some insight on what the experience is like is really helpful for me! Since Rockstar North and Rockstar Dundee have offices in Scotland, the unis close by have lots of courses dedicated to game development so frankly, I'm quite excited lol
University done nothing for me felt like I wasted 4 years of my life. Everything can be learnt online. I even sat in a lecture one day and the lecturer was asked if we could naturally get into the industry after the degree or if a masters would give us a better chance and he flat out said no. That was the day I realised it was all a huge waste and I could have used my time better to learn and make a career out of game dev.
Your lecturer lied to you. College graduates with degrees have higher earnings potential and lower unemployment. Everything can be learned online, but there's no test for employers to give you to prove that you know what you will if you graduate. No paper trail, and no quality control for how well you've absorbed the material.
Just discovered your video, I have to say that we have very similar experiences as a soth African student . This is my last year and I hope I can make something awesome.
For me, my dream is to make anime show like my favorite anime is spy x family, and Mob Psycho Magi .I’m currently doing computer animation i’m kinda having doubts of myself, so it expiring your skills improved. I had my first ever drawing and compare to now it was improvement, so thank you keep it up men .
I'm one of those few people who has the discipline to self-learn gamedev. It's flipping hard. If you can afford it, university is probably the better option lol. To do it without people who can just teach you is possible, but you have to get lucky finding the right tutorials and you have to have an insane amount of dedication. I've been able to make myself work on it for ~1.5 hours a day consistently, and even then things take months or years to get anywhere substantial.
Good for you - that's an insane amount of discipline! You're right, it can be a bit hit or miss with the content online, and it can be tricky if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. But I think your way of doing a bit every day is definitely the best if you're going to be self taught. It all takes time, but with a drive like that, you'll be seeing awesome results in no time!
Was going to apply for a psychology degree last year, since I wasn't sure what I wanted to do - ended up taking a year off to figure myself out heh. Just started applying to unis for game dev yesterday, then this video popped up!:0 thanks for explaining your experience, it seems like fun! and these games look really good - very creative ideas, I'd like to try them! Also, your video's really well made, so I was surprised to see this is a relatively new channel! Good luck with everything, I hope your channel and games will be successful!:D
Yeah, Games Dev is lots of fun, but it's also a lot of work. If you put in the effort you'll get a lot out of it, so best of luck with your applications - I hope it all works out. And thanks for the great feedback, it's really appreciated!
I loved online learning While we were in offline learning teachers didn t give any of their materials to students, after online started they were forced to, now, all we wanna have are online classes cuz that way we can focus on both classes and jobs, we can attend class while we are at work
That's a good point. I disliked online learning because I really enjoy the social aspect of it. But I totally get that online learning/working gives a lot of freedom too!
It was definitely a labour of love, but we all enjoyed making it so much! There are quite a lot of games about Greek/Roman/Norse mythology, but not a lot about Egyptian, so we wanted to make a fun game that could highlight more of those obscure figures.
@@MrBluecapDev Definitely worth it in the end ! I looked it up on steam after watching the video but couldn't find anything. Have you thought about uploading it ?
@@ThatCarrotFella It's something we thought about but never got around to. Once the game was finished, we all went looking for full-time work or continued with studying, so we didn't have a lot of time. And we were also working with a publisher through UTS to convert Rescue Angel to a mobile app, which unfortunately fell through. So Fury of the Pharaohs just slipped through the cracks. But a few people have asked about publishing it, and I've always been curious to revisit it, so maybe that's something I'll look at doing in the near future!
Thanks so much! Don't underestimate architecture, the artist and level designer from my group started in architecture and she makes some truly amazing work. It's all about finding that overlap and transferring those skills over - best of luck getting into game design!
It's something I'd considered briefly, but hadn't given it much thought. If that's something you'd be interested in, I could maybe look at putting something like that together!
interseting to hear! i liked the video a lot, and i thought the final game looked really dope. main thing that stands out on it(which you guys probably already know) is the lighting being flat. but it looks really fun and polished. are there any future plans for it?
Thanks so much! We originally were hoping to release it on steam, but we got caught up with finding full time work and continuing further studies. Unfortunately, it just slipped through the cracks. But it's got quite a bit of attention, so maybe I'll look into tinkering with it again soon!
as a 1st year CS student from France, i'm so jealous you guys have access to these kinds of courses in uni! of course, we have private schools that have 2 year long programs, but i've heard very mixed results from them so i just took the safe route and went to uni. my only question is, how has your life been post-uni? i see you started a youtube channel, but are you doing this full-time or are you working somewhere on the side? i'd love to see your feedback as a graduate from this type of degree!
Yeah, I've been incredibly fortunate that there have been several good games courses available to me. As for life post-uni, things have been simple but quite nice. I was able to get a full-time job in VR straight out of uni that I've been working at for the last 2 years. And I started this channel for a bit of fun to help me stay focused and finish a project for once instead of start a bunch and never complete any (which has had mixed results haha). If you're interested in a bit more detail, I could always look at making a post-uni type video or a "day in the life" if you think that would be good?
@@MrBluecapDevooh, that would be a great idea! i'd love to see that! i saw a few other game dev youtubers do that (such as DuckDev) and they're really informative videos so i don't see why you shouldn't make one too
Really cool, fun and informative video to watch man, well done man! You've definitely got a sub from me. Would love to see your future videos if you're choosing to pursue RUclips on the side. While you briefly mentioned it at the end, I do wonder if there are any insights on jobs after getting a game development degree? I personally have dreamed of being a game dev some day more than anything, but I worry that the pay and working conditions are complete garbage (Activision Blizzard, Meta, Rockstar Games) compared to being, say, a Software Developer / Engineer and doing game development as a hobby (and perhaps transitioning into a game dev through a course to be qualified.) Edit: For context, I have studied Technical Computer science for a year now in the Netherlands but dropped it due to figuring out my passion lies a lot more within software and games instead of the hardware and electrical engineering aspects of the study.
Thanks so much, glad you liked the video! I really enjoy making videos and I've got a lot of ideas, so there's plenty more of me to come haha. As for jobs, it can be hard to get a foot in the door, but I think that's the most difficult part. Pay varies a lot from company to company and by role, so that's quite tricky to estimate. Working conditions, I've found to be quite good. Again, it depends on the company you're talking about, but in general it's pretty realistic. There might be times where people work overtime when it's crunch time and there's a deadline coming up, but otherwise I'd say it's pretty normal in my experience. I highly recommend taking 3 to 6 months to just play around and see if you like making games. Make a bunch of really small games (and you can use RUclips for this), and see what parts you enjoy the most - whether it's design, or coding or something else. There's no need to rush into a decision straight away, but if you have a dream like you do, give it a shot - you don't want to have any regrets. I hope that helps a bit, and I wish you the best of luck!
Thanks so much! We were originally looking at putting it on steam, but unfortunately that fell though due to a bunch of other commitments from the team. But who knows, I might revisit it in the future!
Yeah, having some of the basics down before starting definitely made those Year 1 subjects much easier. The other years were still quite challenging, although it was up to the individual on how much they wanted to push themselves. Best of luck teaching yourself Game Dev!
Second year game design student in France here. The improvement in your games over the years is quite impressive. I've a few questions : How many hours of classes did you have per week? During the the projects, did you have any other assignments that you had to do? Were all the assets done by the game designers or you had artist as well?
Thanks so much! To answer your questions: 1. It varied a little bit, but for a typical semester, I would do 4 subjects. Each subject would normally have a lecture and a tutorial/lab. Each subject would range from 2 - 4 hours total, so I'd say about ~12 hours a week of straight classes. But sometimes classes would just be time to work on assignments if nothing major was being covered. But a lot of my time was spent working on all of my assignments outside of classes. 2. So each project I showed off, was for just one subject per semester. And I would have another 3 subjects with their own assignments that I would have to work on too. These weren't necessarily Game Dev related subjects, so I'd be working on reports or studying for quizzes. But I really enjoyed creating games, so any extra time I had was spent focused on developing those projects further. And not all projects went for an entire semester. For example, Psychoscape was only for the last 5 or so weeks of the semester, and the first half was all about designing a board game, which was quite fun too. 3. Majority of the art we used was free assets we got from various sources. The one artist in our group designed the characters from a model for Fury of the Pharaohs, and she also created Luci and Dave for Rescue Angel, as well as doing all the art for Psychoscape. As far as I'm aware, everything else was from either the Unity Asset store or Quixel or other asset libraries. My uni course had a larger focus on code and design, so creating original art wasn't a necessity for our projects, but it was nice to add that personal element when we couldn't find exactly what we needed. Hope that covers everything, but if you have any more questions, let me know!
I would argue against a game being “too hard.” The greater the struggle and frustration, the higher the reward and payoff. There is a difference between a fun challenge (defeating an Elden Ring boss with your skill) and a boring challenge (relying on your memorisation of a level). It sounds like it may be a design issue. You don’t want to punish the player too much. You want to keep that carrot dangling in front of their face without ripping it away from them if they fail. You also want to be strategic about ramping up the difficulty and easing up in places.
I totally agree with that. I personally love challenging games because the pay off is so incredible. For me, my issue was poor design - unrealistic difficulty curves and a poor understanding of a player's knowledge of the game's mechanics and interactions. While I tried to replicate that experience in my earlier games, I simply didn't have the design skills to strike that right balance yet. But I've worked on it a lot, and been able to improve over time!
Yeah, there were definitely pros and cons. Being able to skip the 2 hour commute was a huge plus, but I really missed working face to face with people (since I find it much easier to learn that way), and I was starting to get sick of being trapped in my room haha
I pretty much know how to make games and I don't want to go to university. I don't think I need it, but my family keeps pushing me to go to university so I don't know what to do. I still have a year, so my plan is to release a game and hope it's successful enough so that they see that I don't need university.
That sounds like a good plan. University isn't for everyone, so if you're confident in your ability to be self taught, then you should back yourself. Definitely release that game, and I hope you get lots of success from it!
I've got a new video coming out soon that goes over what happened after I graduated, including getting my first games job. Hopefully that will provide some clarity, and you can ask other questions in the comments if you have any!
You went to the wrong school. My program starts immediately creating games. We don't do any general courses. All of our courses are based in games and the production pipeline.
Oh wow, that sounds really interesting. My first year was slower mostly because it was a course with no assumed knowledge, so majority of the subjects were on the simpler side. Thankfully I was making game projects for majority of my remaining semesters though. But no general subjects does sound nice though haha!
soon (hopefuly) i'm going to university for gamedev but i also have a bit of expiance with unity so i hope it will be easier than collage but i wouldn't know
In my experience, having that extra bit of unity practice always helps out, especially transitioning into university from other schooling - makes things more manageable when starting out. Best of luck with it all, I hope everything goes well for you!
Celeste? Your movement cannons look just like the barrels from Donkey Kong Country 😅 Your progress is awesome though. Looks like the school was well worth it
Thanks so much! It's a lot of fun, but also a lot of work - I really recommend giving it a go if it's something you're interested in! You can always start small with a couple online tutorials to see if it's something you want to pursue in the long run.
yeah haha, I tried a number of tutorials over the years and unfortunately it all feels hyperspecific, and it rolls right off, here's hoping the education system does me better@@MrBluecapDev
Thanks so much! Both options are really viable and it depends on where your interest lies. I'm more of a natural programmer, so my course which had a primary focus on coding and design was appealing for me so I could level up the 2 main skills I wanted to focus on. If you're interested solely in design, there are definitely courses that can fast track your skills and probably give you more in depth knowledge than others. From my experience, working with designers with a bit of programming knowledge is great because they can prototype relatively well on their own. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to study straight programming either, there are other easier ways to pick up those basics. I'd think about what you see yourself doing/enjoying, and pick a course that suits those interests. Hope that helps!
@MrBluecapDev I already have a couple years of freelancing experience in narrative design and I quite liked it, just that it was way too lonely for me. However, when reading in the net upon design, this career path sounds SO horrible! Low pay, high competition, etc.. programming at least would be a skill and much safer choice. I am trying to learn a little bit on my own before applying, but watching code all day, solving math issues is simply not the same as brainstorming texts and so on. I am not sure if it is for me and it is tearing me apart! The uni of my choice seemingly has great opportunities for both (thats in Breda University, Netherlands. But I already have finished a degree and picking 4 years more as a student abroad is a tough choice to make :( just wenting off, sorry! 😅😔
@@Eddy-nn7wj Yeah, Game Design can be quite competitive. But narrative design is super cool, and combining it with game design could lend itself to a nice skillset. If straight code isn't your thing, you might want to look into visual scripting. Both Unity and Unreal have their own systems. You create scripting logic with code blocks, without having to write lines upon lines of code. It's a nice skill to have, and act an easier entry point into seeing whether programming is for you. I know it can be daunting, but I always tell myself I don't want to have any regrets - maybe it will work out, maybe it won't. But if you have a passion for this, then make sure to give it everything you've got. Try a bunch of different things and see what works for you. I wish you the absolute best of luck, no matter which path you head down!
This was a amazing video🎉. I have a question though. I am in a similar position I really want to do this as a career. But I’m wondering if I should go though school or try and learn it on my own. I would like to know your take on that,
Thanks so much! It's a hard question to answer, and it really depends on the person. I'm a big advocate of school because it tends to give a more realistic idea of what working in Game Dev is like, such as working in groups and Agile development. I personally find that you also learn a lot more from other people than you could from a book or online course. And schools typically have better industry connections which can help with getting a job when you're finished. But some people just don't like school, and depending on where you go, it's not necessarily cheap. What I'd recommend is to try teaching yourself some small things first and see how you like it - the Brackeys channel is a great place to start if you haven't found it already. Follow some tutorials and make your own small games, and see how you like it. If you're still enjoying it and you're not heavily against studying, then try and apply to some schools and see what happens. And don't forget, just because you choose one path, doesn't mean you have to ignore the other. If you go to school, don't be afraid to teach yourself some extra things that you find fascinating that aren't taught in class. Or if you prefer teaching yourself, there's nothing bad about doing a small 3 - 6 month course to boost your skills and see how on track you are with your learning. I hope that gives you a rough idea with everything, I wish you the best of luck with your future Game Dev adventures!
Unfortunately no. We were working with a publisher in collaboration with UTS to publish Rescue Angel as a mobile app, but we weren't able to keep up with development, as 2 of the group had started full time jobs, 1 was back at Uni, and 2 were moving out of Sydney - so the group fizzled out. There was a group of students from the class before me who released their project "Regional Town Fantasy Manager" on Steam though, which is really cool. And I know UTS was working on trying to get some publishers to help future students release some of their projects - but I don't know what stage that is at. However, I'd be keen to pick up one of my old Uni projects again and see how far I can take it.
Good question. It was something we considered at one point, but right after that subject finished, a lot of us were looking at starting jobs or continuing with study. We also ended up in talks with a publisher to release Rescue Angel as a mobile app, but that took up all of our spare time and unfortunately it fell through. I guess it's something we all just let slip through the cracks. But I've always been interested in picking it back up again - maybe now's a good opportunity!
Not quite sure what you mean. If you mean was the game resource heavy, I don't remember it being that intensive - we had plenty of people on a range of devices using it. If you meant did the game do well, it was really well received and liked by a lot of people, but unfortunately due to other commitments we didn't end up taking it any further. Hopefully I answered your question haha!
If you're really interested it should still be available on itch.io. We were considering putting it on steam, but unfortunately that never happened with everyone getting busy with full-time work and further studies. But who knows, maybe I'll revisit it and do it up a bit more
It can be - I feel like it really depends on the person. Learning online can be faster, but you have to know what you want to learn. If you don't know what you don't know, it can be really hard to identify areas you need to work on. You also have to be extremely disciplined - you need to set your own deadlines and hold yourself accountable, otherwise things can fizzle out. It's definitely doable, but that's not going to suit every person. I also find university is far more social which is something I prefer, even when I had to study online because of COVID. You can meet other like-minded people, and you can learn from one another and push each other to do bigger and better things. It also provides a really good introduction to working in teams to produce games, which is something that's lacking from most online courses. Either way, university/college and online learning are both good and bad in their own ways. Ultimately, it depends on the person, and how they prefer to learn and what type of goals they have :)
I think there is something to doing group work in a group where you see and interact with each other in class. There is just a different vibe you get with people meeting in person, even if you divide to do independent work for long stretches. Also, the difference with COVID was people were forced online without being prepped for online study. A friend of mine is a university proffessor who did a mix of teaching online and classroom before Covid and how she prepped an online course vs in person was different. So prepping to be in person and being forced online made it a difficult experience for many on the student and teacher side. I found online classes did me in, I flunked the two I took electively (before COVID). Having to go to a classsroom, pay attention to a teacher, and even engaged with other students in the subject in person kept me way more focused.
I studied at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. If you're from Sydney, I highly recommend it - it's a great course, and they're constantly making changes and improving it!
Thanks so much! I'll do my best, I had to really scavenge for some of that older footage - but I'll try to make sure newer projects have cleaner gameplay.
Or you could've saved your money and just watched alot of RUclips and just did it yourself. Unless you plan to do it professionally for triple a studios
Very true haha. I currently work full time in the game industry, so it was well worth it to me. And I personally believe that RUclips tutorials can only get you so far, but each person has to find what works best for them
guardian angel named lucy....🥴 Lucy is the shortform for lucifer, also know as satan or devil... If your guardian angel is the devil, you're pretty messed up...🥴🤦♂
Definitely no malicious meaning there. I think it was just an angelic sounding name we all liked the sound of, out of a big list we had whipped up. Although ironically, her name is spelled Luci cause we were trying to be different, which doesn't help our case hahaha!
G'Day Everyone! Based on the popularity of this video, I've just released part 2 of my GAME DEVELOPEMENT JOURNEY - going over life after graduating from university. You can check it out here: ruclips.net/video/pk8sUenCytE/видео.html
For a second I was like "Christmas in summer??"
And only then realised that it was in Sydney
Yeah, it throws a lot of people off - we like to mix things up down under haha!
wow. what an inspiring video. I'm the type of person to hates school and pretends like i could teach myself all the skills i need but in reality, i would just stay home and play games. not to learn from the game or anything, just autopiloting. from the way you challenge yourself to improve on your weaknesses to the "always be learning" mindset you had during the 4 years, it is truly inspiring and this video had opened my eyes. thank you
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! And don't worry, I can be like that too - especially when I get hooked on a game like BG3 last year. It can be hard going 100% all the time, so taking time to recharge and just play some games is totally good too. Keep chipping away when you can, and you'll be surprised how far you can go - best of luck!
Great summary of the game dev uni experience!
I appreciate that, happy you enjoyed the video!
aye man, I’m currently second year doing the same course at UTS, loved the video and cool to see someome that has been through it before, big ups
Love to hear that, and glad you liked the video! Plenty of fun subjects to look forward to in the next 2 years!
I'm from India do you think I should also do the same couse because we do not have advance game dev uni here
Damn, I had to study for 5 years for my CS engineering degree, I see game dev is quite a bit shorter
Yeah, it seems to vary quite a bit. Some places offer 2 year courses, and others 4 years - but I'd say Game Dev degrees tend to be on the shorter side because they're more specialised in one area. My degree had quite a lot of freedom to pick and choose classes, especially in the final year which let you pick up some other CS subjects as sub-majors. Great for an introduction, but not as useful as a dedicated CS degree that covers a larger number of areas in more detail. It really depends on the person and what they're interested in!
@@MrBluecapDev I definitely think the more hands on and focused approach is better, in my degree i had to go through subjects like physics 1 and physics 2 and even Chemistry and Biology, that made the degree a lot longer than it needed to be imo
Yeah, I'd agree with that. Being able to work on projects under "realistic" work conditions was really practical, and it also helped add to my portfolio. And I totally understand the pain of having to do what feels like unrelated subjects. For me it was business and networking subjects - they were the bane of my existence haha
@@kondratov8269 i can understand physics but chemistry? wtf lol
@@koli4213 I even had to take one Biology class lol
7:26 IM IN THE THICK OF IT EVERYBODY KNOWS
XD
I really enjoyed your closing thoughts. Great video man. Thank you for sharing your experience here. I wish you luck on your game dev journey. I am sure you will make a lot more fantastic things.
Thanks so much, I really appreciate the kind words!
I honestly was surprised that someone newer to game dev could make such amazing games. Project Angel looked beautiful and honestly I found it to look really fun and enjoyable. Whenever I would play a single player game, I would something like this one. While Fury of the Pharaohs looked like a fun, yet silly game I would play with friends. I already know they were a blast to make. Also congrats getting through that first year, it must've really hurt not doing what you wanted.
Thanks so much! It was incredibly stressful making those games, but it was a lot of fun. The reward of watching people enjoy those games was definitely worth all the blood, sweat, and tears!
really interesting video, and holy shit your projects just keep on looking better !
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!
I liked studying during covid, simply because the entire class ended up joining our Discord. Pre-covid, if you made a Discord for the class, you'd get maybe 4-5 people on it - but this time it was the entire class, since it was the only way for us to possibly communicate amongst ourselves and ask each other for the answers. As a result, instead of there being a bunch of different cliques, everybody knew everybody, and it was much easier to socialise. It was also easier to find people to play Minecraft with, and the closest thing we had to a clique was 4 people playing Minecraft while another 4 play Halo. It actually turned out to be the most social life anybody in that class ever had lol, from that standpoint it was amazing while it lasted.
That's totally fair, our Discord server didn't quite go the same way - although to be fair, ours was set up by our lecturer. Most people were just spending time with their own group, and didn't really branch out that much. I only really got to know people during the first half of my final year where it was more social and we could talk face to face. But I'm glad that worked out for you, sounds like a lot of fun!
Thanks for making this video! Very valuable and love the conclusion. Good luck on your journey!
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed the video!
I recommend people to find more practical school related to gaming, I don't know about the US, but here in sweden there are at least 3 *highly* acclaimed video game educations, one of which I'm attending myself. The one I attend is aimed at getting us moving quick and ready to start working in the game industry after 2 years, and as such we do four group projects in that time, one of which over 7 weeks.
I can say that I so far have been loving my time here, so I hope people aren't scared to try it!
It's awesome to hear other people are enjoying studying Games Dev too. There's a school in Australia called the Academy of Interaction and Entertainment (AIE), that are heavily focused on all areas of Games Dev (Programming, Art, Designing, etc.), and their courses are 2 years as well. I was considering going there, although I leant towards UTS because I felt it had a stronger coding course and had great industry connections - not just in games, but all areas of IT. But both courses offer lots of great opportunities to work on real, small-scale projects like you do in the industry. And I totally agree! I hope more people give Games Dev a go because it's a lot of fun!
Project Angel is so cool! I can’t imagine finishing a game every semester. That’s intense!
As someone who is finishing up his 3rd year of game design and development at WLU in Ontario, it is interesting seeing people's experience elsewhere.
I think something that people watching this video to decide if they like game design studies should know is that all universities are different - what you make, learn or do in class is highly dependent on the market the school is aiming for.
Laurier focuses on boardgames and critical/ethical design, with the occasional class on videogames, escape room design or games as art. This is very different from most other schools that look at digital games as their primary focus.
If you are interested in studying game design and development, do your own research, figure out why you want to study games instead of just starting to develop on your own. Look into schools and talk to students and alumni of those schools about what the uni focuses on and figure out which school matches what you want to do in the future.
Small world! I went to Waterloo for Geomatics for a few years before dropping out and just teaching myself game dev from RUclips videos lol! Thankfully with Unreal 5 becoming so popular there's a massive number of tutorials out now compared to 2014, so learning anything is extremely simple and quick.
That's some really great advice! There are so many types of game design/development, not just digital games. We even had a subject that focused on designing a board game for other classes to play. And I highly recommend talking to students and alumni, they always give a far more realistic view and expectation of what it's like studying a particular course.
This is a amazing video, I have been in school for 2 years now and I am going to start my final year and then my masters in game dev soon and man I needed this. My school is good, and ive learnt a lot but I feel in the back of my head that it might not be worth it and that all my time and effort was wasted when I should of done something practical like computer science. This made me feel good. makes me feel like I can get passed this burnout doom and gloom phase I am in. I would love to hear how after university has been because I feel thats were most people have the most worries for. But really thank you for making this video and helping me realize that maybe im not wasting my college years
Thanks so much for the kind praise! I'm actually working on a follow up video that focuses on what happened to me after university and what it was like getting my first job - so be sure to keep an eye out for that :)
Game Development needs passionate individuals, I learnt this through experience... I'm self taught and I have failed too many times but I have never felt discouraged I keep at it no matter what coz I wanna make a fun game some day!
My experience (attended UCI) is a whole lot of theory and barely any actual making of games. It wasn't until my second to last and last year when I we were actually expected to a complete game. And from that, we only made two rather small games. To get around this, our school had a video game development club. While it wasn't required by the school, it was more or less required if you wanted to do any real game development, and I wish I invested more time in it. We had a quarter system, so classes were 10 weeks long, which meant that you only had like 6-7 weeks of development, which is a real crunch. One class was two quarters, so then we actually had time to create a decently polished game.
It leaves a LOT to be desired.
That makes sense, those smaller quarters would make it really hard to get some momentum and add all that extra polish. Fortunately, UTS worked on longer semesters, so there was more time to work on projects, and we started working on making our own games in the first year. And UTS was in the process of establishing a Game Dev society that ran outside class where you'd work in really big teams to make a game together - which has really taken off since I left. I agree that practice is so much better than theory, and I'm grateful that UTS was very project oriented, because I was able to graduate with 5 games to my name.
Uci has now revamped the gdim major and now from the first class we are making games. We’ve made a game every quarter so far.
@@TtroubleTT I've heard its now Games and Interactive Media, and it became official the year I left. Glad to see they're putting more focus on actually making than pretending.
When I was there it was called Computer Ge Science.
Very well made video for a new channel, you got my sub, keep up the good work!
I really appreciate that! And I hope you enjoy the new stuff coming up just as much
Yo, this video is so good! I’m in the third year of this myself, and would highly recommend it if you’re considering it.
As of 2024, the degree is pretty similar to several years ago (give or take a few assignment tweaks), but there are new opportunities to showcase work, either through the Playmakers society or SXSW Sydney!
Great video man, all the best for future works!!!
I really appreciate that! Playmaker's society was still starting out when I was in my final year, and SXSW Sydney is such an awesome opportunity for all the students - definitely a little jealous of some of you students, I would've loved to have been able to take part in both of those. But UTS is always stepping things up with it's Games Degree, so I totally recommend the course to anyone considering it as well - it's really top quality.
Really good video and I loved the project you have worked on.😊
Thanks so much, glad you liked the games - they were a labour of love!
Wow cool story! What an interesting ride. I’m not remotely in the field of video game design but watching you unfold the process was great
Thanks so much! Yeah, Games Dev definitely has its ups and downs, but I'm loving every second of it. Glad you enjoyed the video!
Fury of the Pharaohs looks really nice and polished, good work !
Especially love the art style, color palette, shaders, it all fits really well somehow, not sure how fun the game is.
If possible, when you catch some time, make some postmortem on it or something like that, what were the problems, what went well, on code, art,...
Cheers !
Thank you! Fury of the Pharaohs was a labour of love and we all worked super hard on it. One of my friends was working hard on the art and level design, and another was going all in on animations and shaders. "Slightly" biased, but I think the game is really fun - you can probably still download and play it, although you'd probably need a few other people to get the most out of it. And that's a really good idea - I'll add that to my video to do list!
I'm currently in my 4th year of secondary school and I'd love to work in game development, seeing some insight on what the experience is like is really helpful for me! Since Rockstar North and Rockstar Dundee have offices in Scotland, the unis close by have lots of courses dedicated to game development so frankly, I'm quite excited lol
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the video! Being so close to Rockstar sounds super cool, best of luck with all your future game dev endeavours!
Awesome video ! I am currently doing a double bachelors degree in Maths and CS, and your uni experience was very interesting :D
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the video!
I am so excited for college, I get to go to ACU (Not the Australian one) to study game dev. This video makes me even more excited!
Glad you enjoyed the video! Best of luck with your Gam Dev studies!
@@MrBluecapDev Thanks man!
Thank you for the high quality cozy vid
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the video!
University done nothing for me felt like I wasted 4 years of my life. Everything can be learnt online. I even sat in a lecture one day and the lecturer was asked if we could naturally get into the industry after the degree or if a masters would give us a better chance and he flat out said no. That was the day I realised it was all a huge waste and I could have used my time better to learn and make a career out of game dev.
Your lecturer lied to you. College graduates with degrees have higher earnings potential and lower unemployment. Everything can be learned online, but there's no test for employers to give you to prove that you know what you will if you graduate. No paper trail, and no quality control for how well you've absorbed the material.
Just discovered your video, I have to say that we have very similar experiences as a soth African student . This is my last year and I hope I can make something awesome.
That's awesome! Best of luck in your final year, and with your final projects!
For me, my dream is to make anime show like my favorite anime is spy x family, and Mob Psycho Magi .I’m currently doing computer animation i’m kinda having doubts of myself, so it expiring your skills improved. I had my first ever drawing and compare to now it was improvement, so thank you keep it up men .
Thanks so much, it's all about constantly chipping away at it! That's a really cool dream to be aiming towards, I wish you best of luck with that!
hi there, i hope your channel will become success. i love how you make summary about game dev uni.
Thanks so much, I really appreciate that!
I'm one of those few people who has the discipline to self-learn gamedev. It's flipping hard. If you can afford it, university is probably the better option lol. To do it without people who can just teach you is possible, but you have to get lucky finding the right tutorials and you have to have an insane amount of dedication. I've been able to make myself work on it for ~1.5 hours a day consistently, and even then things take months or years to get anywhere substantial.
Good for you - that's an insane amount of discipline! You're right, it can be a bit hit or miss with the content online, and it can be tricky if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. But I think your way of doing a bit every day is definitely the best if you're going to be self taught. It all takes time, but with a drive like that, you'll be seeing awesome results in no time!
Was going to apply for a psychology degree last year, since I wasn't sure what I wanted to do - ended up taking a year off to figure myself out heh. Just started applying to unis for game dev yesterday, then this video popped up!:0 thanks for explaining your experience, it seems like fun! and these games look really good - very creative ideas, I'd like to try them! Also, your video's really well made, so I was surprised to see this is a relatively new channel! Good luck with everything, I hope your channel and games will be successful!:D
Yeah, Games Dev is lots of fun, but it's also a lot of work. If you put in the effort you'll get a lot out of it, so best of luck with your applications - I hope it all works out. And thanks for the great feedback, it's really appreciated!
(just came back to this to say- in the end I’ve gone to uni for computer science and am enjoying so far! It’s just super tiring haha xD 😴)
Dope vid man!
Thanks so much, glad you liked it!
I can't believe you said "movement cannons" and then said "a bit like the bubbles in Celeste" instead of the barrel cannons in Donkey Kong Country 💀
Thanks for the perspective
Glad you enjoyed the video!
I loved online learning
While we were in offline learning teachers didn t give any of their materials to students, after online started they were forced to, now, all we wanna have are online classes cuz that way we can focus on both classes and jobs, we can attend class while we are at work
That's a good point. I disliked online learning because I really enjoy the social aspect of it. But I totally get that online learning/working gives a lot of freedom too!
Damn that last game looks amazing!!
It was definitely a labour of love, but we all enjoyed making it so much! There are quite a lot of games about Greek/Roman/Norse mythology, but not a lot about Egyptian, so we wanted to make a fun game that could highlight more of those obscure figures.
@@MrBluecapDev
Definitely worth it in the end !
I looked it up on steam after watching the video but couldn't find anything. Have you thought about uploading it ?
@@ThatCarrotFella
It's something we thought about but never got around to. Once the game was finished, we all went looking for full-time work or continued with studying, so we didn't have a lot of time. And we were also working with a publisher through UTS to convert Rescue Angel to a mobile app, which unfortunately fell through. So Fury of the Pharaohs just slipped through the cracks. But a few people have asked about publishing it, and I've always been curious to revisit it, so maybe that's something I'll look at doing in the near future!
Amazing video Mr Blue Cap!
I am subbed!
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the video!
Bro, when you got to furry of the pharaohs, I audibly was like "wow, that's cool as shit"!
Thanks so much! It was a real team effort and it was a lot of work, but it all paid off!
Very helpful video
Thanks! I'm glad you found the video interesting
Great video and amazing story telling
Thank you so much, I'm happy you enjoyed the video!
Great video! I work in IT in Aus, but am only starting game design as a hobby. Also.. I done architecture at Uni 😂
Thanks so much! Don't underestimate architecture, the artist and level designer from my group started in architecture and she makes some truly amazing work. It's all about finding that overlap and transferring those skills over - best of luck getting into game design!
Fury of the Pharos looks awesome!
Thanks so much! It really was a labour of love from all 5 of us, but I'm so happy with how it turned out!
Great video !
That means a lot, glad you enjoyed the video!
Your should definitely make a discord man it would be awesome seeing your progress on games and maybe let people beta test games to give feedback
It's something I'd considered briefly, but hadn't given it much thought. If that's something you'd be interested in, I could maybe look at putting something like that together!
interseting to hear! i liked the video a lot, and i thought the final game looked really dope. main thing that stands out on it(which you guys probably already know) is the lighting being flat. but it looks really fun and polished. are there any future plans for it?
Thanks so much! We originally were hoping to release it on steam, but we got caught up with finding full time work and continuing further studies. Unfortunately, it just slipped through the cracks. But it's got quite a bit of attention, so maybe I'll look into tinkering with it again soon!
This guy is seriusly underrated
Thanks so much, that means a lot!
as a 1st year CS student from France, i'm so jealous you guys have access to these kinds of courses in uni!
of course, we have private schools that have 2 year long programs, but i've heard very mixed results from them so i just took the safe route and went to uni.
my only question is, how has your life been post-uni? i see you started a youtube channel, but are you doing this full-time or are you working somewhere on the side? i'd love to see your feedback as a graduate from this type of degree!
Yeah, I've been incredibly fortunate that there have been several good games courses available to me. As for life post-uni, things have been simple but quite nice. I was able to get a full-time job in VR straight out of uni that I've been working at for the last 2 years. And I started this channel for a bit of fun to help me stay focused and finish a project for once instead of start a bunch and never complete any (which has had mixed results haha). If you're interested in a bit more detail, I could always look at making a post-uni type video or a "day in the life" if you think that would be good?
@@MrBluecapDevooh, that would be a great idea! i'd love to see that!
i saw a few other game dev youtubers do that (such as DuckDev) and they're really informative videos so i don't see why you shouldn't make one too
Really cool, fun and informative video to watch man, well done man! You've definitely got a sub from me. Would love to see your future videos if you're choosing to pursue RUclips on the side.
While you briefly mentioned it at the end, I do wonder if there are any insights on jobs after getting a game development degree? I personally have dreamed of being a game dev some day more than anything, but I worry that the pay and working conditions are complete garbage (Activision Blizzard, Meta, Rockstar Games) compared to being, say, a Software Developer / Engineer and doing game development as a hobby (and perhaps transitioning into a game dev through a course to be qualified.)
Edit: For context, I have studied Technical Computer science for a year now in the Netherlands but dropped it due to figuring out my passion lies a lot more within software and games instead of the hardware and electrical engineering aspects of the study.
Thanks so much, glad you liked the video! I really enjoy making videos and I've got a lot of ideas, so there's plenty more of me to come haha. As for jobs, it can be hard to get a foot in the door, but I think that's the most difficult part. Pay varies a lot from company to company and by role, so that's quite tricky to estimate. Working conditions, I've found to be quite good. Again, it depends on the company you're talking about, but in general it's pretty realistic. There might be times where people work overtime when it's crunch time and there's a deadline coming up, but otherwise I'd say it's pretty normal in my experience. I highly recommend taking 3 to 6 months to just play around and see if you like making games. Make a bunch of really small games (and you can use RUclips for this), and see what parts you enjoy the most - whether it's design, or coding or something else. There's no need to rush into a decision straight away, but if you have a dream like you do, give it a shot - you don't want to have any regrets. I hope that helps a bit, and I wish you the best of luck!
Awsome video ^-^ I'm in my 3rd tri doing game design at another Uni in Sydney.
That's awesome! Hope you're enjoying your game's degree too - it's a lot of fun!
Yeah its been really fun so far, I got to make a coop roller ball project first tri, and its been uphill from there ^-^ @@MrBluecapDev
Great to hear, sounds like you're gonna have a lot of fun in your course!
That Pharoah game looks sick you should invest in the idea
Thanks so much! We were originally looking at putting it on steam, but unfortunately that fell though due to a bunch of other commitments from the team. But who knows, I might revisit it in the future!
@MrBluecapDev well if you do you got at least one player trying it
Very good video!
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed it!
your video is so inspiring . thankyou
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the video!
1:30 me too I just learn solo and then on a school or any thing like that I just know it alrady
Yeah, having some of the basics down before starting definitely made those Year 1 subjects much easier. The other years were still quite challenging, although it was up to the individual on how much they wanted to push themselves. Best of luck teaching yourself Game Dev!
Second year game design student in France here. The improvement in your games over the years is quite impressive. I've a few questions :
How many hours of classes did you have per week? During the the projects, did you have any other assignments that you had to do? Were all the assets done by the game designers or you had artist as well?
Thanks so much! To answer your questions:
1. It varied a little bit, but for a typical semester, I would do 4 subjects. Each subject would normally have a lecture and a tutorial/lab. Each subject would range from 2 - 4 hours total, so I'd say about ~12 hours a week of straight classes. But sometimes classes would just be time to work on assignments if nothing major was being covered. But a lot of my time was spent working on all of my assignments outside of classes.
2. So each project I showed off, was for just one subject per semester. And I would have another 3 subjects with their own assignments that I would have to work on too. These weren't necessarily Game Dev related subjects, so I'd be working on reports or studying for quizzes. But I really enjoyed creating games, so any extra time I had was spent focused on developing those projects further. And not all projects went for an entire semester. For example, Psychoscape was only for the last 5 or so weeks of the semester, and the first half was all about designing a board game, which was quite fun too.
3. Majority of the art we used was free assets we got from various sources. The one artist in our group designed the characters from a model for Fury of the Pharaohs, and she also created Luci and Dave for Rescue Angel, as well as doing all the art for Psychoscape. As far as I'm aware, everything else was from either the Unity Asset store or Quixel or other asset libraries. My uni course had a larger focus on code and design, so creating original art wasn't a necessity for our projects, but it was nice to add that personal element when we couldn't find exactly what we needed.
Hope that covers everything, but if you have any more questions, let me know!
Thanks for sharing
I would argue against a game being “too hard.” The greater the struggle and frustration, the higher the reward and payoff. There is a difference between a fun challenge (defeating an Elden Ring boss with your skill) and a boring challenge (relying on your memorisation of a level).
It sounds like it may be a design issue. You don’t want to punish the player too much. You want to keep that carrot dangling in front of their face without ripping it away from them if they fail. You also want to be strategic about ramping up the difficulty and easing up in places.
I totally agree with that. I personally love challenging games because the pay off is so incredible. For me, my issue was poor design - unrealistic difficulty curves and a poor understanding of a player's knowledge of the game's mechanics and interactions. While I tried to replicate that experience in my earlier games, I simply didn't have the design skills to strike that right balance yet. But I've worked on it a lot, and been able to improve over time!
I honestly didn't mind online learning during COVID at all.
Yeah, there were definitely pros and cons. Being able to skip the 2 hour commute was a huge plus, but I really missed working face to face with people (since I find it much easier to learn that way), and I was starting to get sick of being trapped in my room haha
I pretty much know how to make games and I don't want to go to university. I don't think I need it, but my family keeps pushing me to go to university so I don't know what to do. I still have a year, so my plan is to release a game and hope it's successful enough so that they see that I don't need university.
That sounds like a good plan. University isn't for everyone, so if you're confident in your ability to be self taught, then you should back yourself. Definitely release that game, and I hope you get lots of success from it!
I also want to pursue this degree but i just nedd to know if it is worth the wait
I've got a new video coming out soon that goes over what happened after I graduated, including getting my first games job. Hopefully that will provide some clarity, and you can ask other questions in the comments if you have any!
@@MrBluecapDev I am aspiring to be a game devloper. I will be waiting for this video as it can also decide my whole career. :)
You went to the wrong school. My program starts immediately creating games. We don't do any general courses. All of our courses are based in games and the production pipeline.
Oh wow, that sounds really interesting. My first year was slower mostly because it was a course with no assumed knowledge, so majority of the subjects were on the simpler side. Thankfully I was making game projects for majority of my remaining semesters though. But no general subjects does sound nice though haha!
What program?
@@TheKidMelodies Centennial College - Game Development
Very underrated
Thank you, I really appreciate that!
soon (hopefuly) i'm going to university for gamedev but i also have a bit of expiance with unity so i hope it will be easier than collage but i wouldn't know
In my experience, having that extra bit of unity practice always helps out, especially transitioning into university from other schooling - makes things more manageable when starting out. Best of luck with it all, I hope everything goes well for you!
I wish you showed who won the final project
Wow I knew this guy in school
Very nice
Thanks so much!
Celeste? Your movement cannons look just like the barrels from Donkey Kong Country 😅 Your progress is awesome though. Looks like the school was well worth it
Thanks so much! I didn't even think of that, but that's definitely a much better comparison haha
awesome video, I wanna study gamedev
Thanks so much! It's a lot of fun, but also a lot of work - I really recommend giving it a go if it's something you're interested in! You can always start small with a couple online tutorials to see if it's something you want to pursue in the long run.
yeah haha, I tried a number of tutorials over the years and unfortunately it all feels hyperspecific, and it rolls right off, here's hoping the education system does me better@@MrBluecapDev
awesome video! would you recommend considering only game design studies instead of programming + design?
Thanks so much! Both options are really viable and it depends on where your interest lies. I'm more of a natural programmer, so my course which had a primary focus on coding and design was appealing for me so I could level up the 2 main skills I wanted to focus on. If you're interested solely in design, there are definitely courses that can fast track your skills and probably give you more in depth knowledge than others. From my experience, working with designers with a bit of programming knowledge is great because they can prototype relatively well on their own. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to study straight programming either, there are other easier ways to pick up those basics. I'd think about what you see yourself doing/enjoying, and pick a course that suits those interests. Hope that helps!
@MrBluecapDev I already have a couple years of freelancing experience in narrative design and I quite liked it, just that it was way too lonely for me. However, when reading in the net upon design, this career path sounds SO horrible! Low pay, high competition, etc.. programming at least would be a skill and much safer choice. I am trying to learn a little bit on my own before applying, but watching code all day, solving math issues is simply not the same as brainstorming texts and so on. I am not sure if it is for me and it is tearing me apart! The uni of my choice seemingly has great opportunities for both (thats in Breda University, Netherlands.
But I already have finished a degree and picking 4 years more as a student abroad is a tough choice to make :( just wenting off, sorry! 😅😔
@@Eddy-nn7wj
Yeah, Game Design can be quite competitive. But narrative design is super cool, and combining it with game design could lend itself to a nice skillset. If straight code isn't your thing, you might want to look into visual scripting. Both Unity and Unreal have their own systems. You create scripting logic with code blocks, without having to write lines upon lines of code. It's a nice skill to have, and act an easier entry point into seeing whether programming is for you. I know it can be daunting, but I always tell myself I don't want to have any regrets - maybe it will work out, maybe it won't. But if you have a passion for this, then make sure to give it everything you've got. Try a bunch of different things and see what works for you. I wish you the absolute best of luck, no matter which path you head down!
@@MrBluecapDev thanks man 🤗 hope to see your game on Steam one day!
I want to ask something
I'm from India and we do not have advance game dev cources here so can I join the uni you graduated from is it worth it??
This was a amazing video🎉. I have a question though. I am in a similar position I really want to do this as a career. But I’m wondering if I should go though school or try and learn it on my own. I would like to know your take on that,
Thanks so much! It's a hard question to answer, and it really depends on the person. I'm a big advocate of school because it tends to give a more realistic idea of what working in Game Dev is like, such as working in groups and Agile development. I personally find that you also learn a lot more from other people than you could from a book or online course. And schools typically have better industry connections which can help with getting a job when you're finished. But some people just don't like school, and depending on where you go, it's not necessarily cheap. What I'd recommend is to try teaching yourself some small things first and see how you like it - the Brackeys channel is a great place to start if you haven't found it already. Follow some tutorials and make your own small games, and see how you like it. If you're still enjoying it and you're not heavily against studying, then try and apply to some schools and see what happens. And don't forget, just because you choose one path, doesn't mean you have to ignore the other. If you go to school, don't be afraid to teach yourself some extra things that you find fascinating that aren't taught in class. Or if you prefer teaching yourself, there's nothing bad about doing a small 3 - 6 month course to boost your skills and see how on track you are with your learning. I hope that gives you a rough idea with everything, I wish you the best of luck with your future Game Dev adventures!
Just commenting for the algorithm :P gj
That's awesome, thank you!
HOLY!
Thanks so much! Haha
Did any of the games you worked on get published?
Unfortunately no. We were working with a publisher in collaboration with UTS to publish Rescue Angel as a mobile app, but we weren't able to keep up with development, as 2 of the group had started full time jobs, 1 was back at Uni, and 2 were moving out of Sydney - so the group fizzled out. There was a group of students from the class before me who released their project "Regional Town Fantasy Manager" on Steam though, which is really cool. And I know UTS was working on trying to get some publishers to help future students release some of their projects - but I don't know what stage that is at. However, I'd be keen to pick up one of my old Uni projects again and see how far I can take it.
Why not publish Fury of the Pharoahs as a free game on steam?
Good question. It was something we considered at one point, but right after that subject finished, a lot of us were looking at starting jobs or continuing with study. We also ended up in talks with a publisher to release Rescue Angel as a mobile app, but that took up all of our spare time and unfortunately it fell through. I guess it's something we all just let slip through the cracks. But I've always been interested in picking it back up again - maybe now's a good opportunity!
so, did the last game run hot?
Not quite sure what you mean. If you mean was the game resource heavy, I don't remember it being that intensive - we had plenty of people on a range of devices using it. If you meant did the game do well, it was really well received and liked by a lot of people, but unfortunately due to other commitments we didn't end up taking it any further. Hopefully I answered your question haha!
how can I play Fury of the Pharaohs?!
If you're really interested it should still be available on itch.io. We were considering putting it on steam, but unfortunately that never happened with everyone getting busy with full-time work and further studies. But who knows, maybe I'll revisit it and do it up a bit more
@@MrBluecapDev I hope so
Learning online is faster, no?
It can be - I feel like it really depends on the person. Learning online can be faster, but you have to know what you want to learn. If you don't know what you don't know, it can be really hard to identify areas you need to work on. You also have to be extremely disciplined - you need to set your own deadlines and hold yourself accountable, otherwise things can fizzle out. It's definitely doable, but that's not going to suit every person. I also find university is far more social which is something I prefer, even when I had to study online because of COVID. You can meet other like-minded people, and you can learn from one another and push each other to do bigger and better things. It also provides a really good introduction to working in teams to produce games, which is something that's lacking from most online courses. Either way, university/college and online learning are both good and bad in their own ways. Ultimately, it depends on the person, and how they prefer to learn and what type of goals they have :)
@@MrBluecapDev you know what? this video is a good reference to point out if someone gonna learn by themselves
Thank you for the video!
I think there is something to doing group work in a group where you see and interact with each other in class. There is just a different vibe you get with people meeting in person, even if you divide to do independent work for long stretches.
Also, the difference with COVID was people were forced online without being prepped for online study. A friend of mine is a university proffessor who did a mix of teaching online and classroom before Covid and how she prepped an online course vs in person was different. So prepping to be in person and being forced online made it a difficult experience for many on the student and teacher side.
I found online classes did me in, I flunked the two I took electively (before COVID). Having to go to a classsroom, pay attention to a teacher, and even engaged with other students in the subject in person kept me way more focused.
Where did you study? Sounds like a great university to study game dev
I studied at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. If you're from Sydney, I highly recommend it - it's a great course, and they're constantly making changes and improving it!
promo sm 😱
nice video please add better gameplay
Thanks so much! I'll do my best, I had to really scavenge for some of that older footage - but I'll try to make sure newer projects have cleaner gameplay.
ok@@MrBluecapDev
Or you could've saved your money and just watched alot of RUclips and just did it yourself. Unless you plan to do it professionally for triple a studios
Very true haha. I currently work full time in the game industry, so it was well worth it to me. And I personally believe that RUclips tutorials can only get you so far, but each person has to find what works best for them
guardian angel named lucy....🥴
Lucy is the shortform for lucifer, also know as satan or devil... If your guardian angel is the devil, you're pretty messed up...🥴🤦♂
Nope, it just comes from the latin word for light. There's actually a saint named Lucy.
@@barry5 dude I'm Italian... What the heck are you telling me... 🤦🏻♂️
If you know nothing then just be quite, you're only blaming yourself... 🤦🏻♂️
Definitely no malicious meaning there. I think it was just an angelic sounding name we all liked the sound of, out of a big list we had whipped up. Although ironically, her name is spelled Luci cause we were trying to be different, which doesn't help our case hahaha!
So you go studying GAME DEV at University to waste a lot of time and you also have to pay for it. That's sound smart.