Some thoughts on learning XNA game development...
Tuesday, May 27 2008
A recent thread on the XNA forums titled "Where does one have to go to major in game development?" reminded me of a recent blog I discovered, written by Josh "Scientific Ninja" Petrie. Some of you may recognize his name from the work he does on SlimDX, but what is REALLY interesting about Josh is his great blog posts that give various bits of advice about the game industry. Take his most recent one on development tools, where he says:
"When it comes to tools in particular, reasoning behind the argument tends to be one of
- you’re considering a career in the industry and want to learn the “correct” tools, or
- you want to use “the tools” that professionals use because you believe it will give what you produce with those tools an edge over what you might produce with some other tool.
Both of these are bad reasons."
He goes on to outline the reasons, all of them good. I would also add that the single best thing you can do as you learn to be a game developer is to take small steps. Seriously, don't get bogged down in doing big things. Make a small thing and make it bigger in small steps (this also has the side benefit that you feel more comfortable going back and fine-tuning parts of the game). It worked for John Carmack, I guarantee it will work for you :-)
P.S. - Check out Josh's del.icio.us tags...great reading in there!
