How can you learn new game development skills and stay up-to-date with the industry?

It's important to note that you can't usually "do it all". it's very rare that one person can make a game all by themselves and if they can, they usually don't have deep enough knowledge in each required field. Focus on one discipline first and then grow more horizontally while working.

As you begin your journey in game development, it’s essential to zero in on what genuinely fuels your enthusiasm. Rather than getting lost in the multitude of paths available, start by pinpointing a specific area that excites you. This initial focus will not only serve as your entry point but will also organically guide your career trajectory as you gain more experience and expertise.

One of the important factors is being a gamer before you enter game development. Being a gamer will give you an idea of what the industry is expecting from creators. Being an active user in the industry will provide you with immediate insights into the products you desire to create. Once you finally decide to enter the creation, you need to discover your skills and talents. Artistic, managerial, development, which area suits you more? Once you have all the answers you need to decide which platform/engine would be more suitable for you and this is entirely up to your choices. What makes you feel comfortable and happy is without a doubt your platform to proceed on. Last but not least you will need patience and consistency.

Assuming that you are already in the industry, you could be looking to up-skill, change discipline or simply curious. I find scratching an itch that you have is a great motivator. That may be learning to program so you can batch resize images, learning to model to grey box levels, understanding rendering pipelines to produce a cool effect for you game, etc. Remember to start with the smallest step possible to get going and then build up from there. Also don't forget to document/share your progress. Not only does it reinforce learnings, it's a great record of your journey and can open up connections to others in the industry.

Online courses and tutorials are a great starting point to learn new skills and provide a solid theoretical foundation. However, it's essential to transition from learning to doing, applying newly acquired skills to real-world scenarios. As you build and create, keep your mind open to new ideas and knowledge. The world of game development is dynamic, and staying current requires a commitment to learning and adapting. By combining education with application, you'll set yourself on a path of perpetual growth within the game development industry.

There are so many cost courses available for game design, including Zenva, GameDev.tv, Udemy, etc. You can often find them on sale and in bundles, so I don't recommend paying full price. Humble Bundle also has deep discounts. If you're doing courses, create a curriculum for yourself and track your progress. There's a staggering statistic that the actual completion rate of online courses is 5-15%. For free material, check out YouTube. Create a playlist for yourself in your account, and organize the videos that are the most helpful. For example, I have General Game Design, Unity, UE5, Godot, and other categories.

There are countless online courses for game development but its knowing which ones will help you improve in the role you want to work in. Just as there are tons of good resources, there's also negative resources providing insight in the wrong manner. My best recommendation is to check LinkedIn Learning, udemy, and actual game development books as they'll be a little more concrete and help you get a foundation for your knowledge. If you go on YouTube, take a lot of what's taught with a grain of salt as its mixed content.

Architect of Games, Game Makers Toolkit + Design Doc are 3 very solid Youtube channels for it. Also GDC talks are available, you can always learn other areas by switching creators every week while you practice.

An infinite amount of resources are at your disposal with the internet. Udemy, YouTube, search results, and ChatGpt for questions and solutions, LinkedIn Groups for networks... Use all the resources you can to learn and progress in your path. It can be difficult in the beginning but it is extremely rewarding. What's important is to understand what you need to learn as a core, for example: Unity requires C# so it is best to start from C# if you have no coding background. After a certain point of knowledge, continue with Unity. Follow these steps from core to end point and you can learn everything.

I am unsure if newsletters should be here, you can't interact with other readers and you are rather just consuming it, I'd move the newsletter and podcasts recommendation to the topic above and re-title it as "Follow the newest trends online", keeping the info of courses and tutorials but adding podcasts and newsletters (with some links as examples)

Mostly I like to play in the space. Stay curious and try out new tools, even if you don't think you have an immediate use for them. How do I do this while working? Typically I keep my personal projects time to 1 hour a night. I set an alarm on m phone and that's my "hour of power" where I work on a personal project, even if I just sit in the chair and clean up code or something. Another way is to join a community of creators who share work on a regular basis. I know the Community Meetup people and VRC Prefabs have helped me a lot with different perpectives and new things to try. One of the most rewarding creative communities I've tried.

Community and networks are a must. LinkedIn provides professional groups and networks. YouTube compared to LinkedIn has more casual community. If you're learning from course websites, join their communities to meet like-minded people. There are hundreds of Discord channels made for your interests where you can meet more like-minded people and networks to collaborate. Follow developer channels and blogs to keep up with the industry. All will provide you with amazing insights and motivation and even networks to collaborate with. Always be open and social!

My favorite community is the Indie Game Academy and their Discord server. The community is incredibly supportive and helpful.

LinkedIn has amazing game development communities, one being the community of Amir Satvat. He has tons of resources from job boards to mentorship programs to help out others. There are also Game Development discords for each aspect of development. Take advantage of all these resources to make the best of your career

Game jams are a lot of fun. They do require some pre-planning since there is often not a lot of time once the game jam starts. Put together a basic pre-event plan: How will your team communicate? Who is filling which role? What whiteboarding software will you use? What task management? Which game engine? Prepare your GitHub or source control plan in advance, and ensure your team knows how to use it. Some options are: Messaging: Slack, Discord, video conference software Whiteboarding: Miro, Google Jamboard Diagramming: Draw.io Source Control: GitHub Task Management: Trello (very lightweight), Jira, Google Sheets

I love to participate in game jams (if you have time). I've always liked to participate in a "fair" way and try to go empty-handed and raise the problems in the competition. It's a way to test if you're good at prototyping, locking down mechanics and polishing the game. The good thing about this is to have a jury (usually official) and then the public. You can get a lot of information if you prepare a good post-mortem at the end.

One of the things I found pretty defeating was when my itch.io experiments / games had very little attention, and even less feedback. Being part of a jam or creative community who shares work and also offers a lot of feedback is extremely rewarding. I think that feedback cycle can be crucial to pushing you out of your comfort zone and into new and exciting things. At least it seems that way for me.

If you have entered a game development journey from a totally different background, game jams and competitions can be very challenging. Without enough practice and speed, you will be challenged in various creative ways. Even though these competitions are perfect for publicity, I suggest not to approach these events for your business targets. Be acceptable to failure and improve from your learnings. It is a great way to discover your limitations and areas of improvement.

Build your portfolio. Get an understanding of what goes into creating games. Companies want to see that you have the basic knowledge of what is needed to make a game as well as actual projects you've worked on. The best ways to do this are through personal projects displaying very key aspects of your role and doing Game Jams. Game Jams are an excellent way to work with amazing teams AND get to understand game mechanics. Not only are you given a time frame but a theme to work with and it will help solidify your knowledge and experience in your role.

Deconstructing games is a skill on itself, as it requires good narrative and writing abilities. Try with your own small blog and work upwards from there. Don't expect anything lucrative to come out of this work, it's mostly for your own understanding of Game Design & Development.

Being able to evaluate the competition is an underrated yet essential design skill. Clearly articulating why a given mechanic is more successful in one game than another, or being able to recognise a nugget of value in something that has been overlooked by the masses, demonstrates a meticulous sense of observation. Then being able to convey that information to colleagues helps to share knowledge and understanding with the team in an efficient and informative manner.

Playing and analyzing games is only used to help you understand what makes a game fun and entertaining for players. Never have this on a resume as it isnt skill related. Deconstructing games is, however, important, and top institutes that teach game development will take classic games and tear them apart so developers can understand how its built and how it'll operate. Harvard's CS50 Game Development program does an excellent job demonstrating the concept of deconstruction as you'll take apart games like Pong, Super Mario, Flappy Bird and Legend of Zelda.

Another great source of game analysis are the GDC talks. They tend to do post-mortems of some games and in-depth analysis of specific features. It is a great idea to see some talks posted there

Be a gamer if you want to be in the game industry. Play as many games as possible. Play multiple genres and have a critical approach. What did the creators do well? Why? What would you change? How can you improve it or how can you make it worse? Also, learn from other developers. See their approaches on the level of creativity and solution-making. Discover what you enjoy and what you hate and observe how others react to certain games. All this knowledge and experience will guide you throughout your game development journey.

Edge Magazine is a fantastic source of contemporary industry information that is often written in a candid, yet constructive, manner that is more reflective of the conversations you will likely experience as a designer. In part, this is how resilience and confidence in your features can be built.

It is kinda commented here and there, but "Stay up to date with the latest features" is something I would add. Try to keep a lookout for new features added on general game-development software, like reading release notes of Unity, Unreal, Figma, Blender, Maya and others. Create a Habit of searching and exploring new features that pops up every day

Ideas Are Cheap. Execution Is Everything. =========================== The mistake some designers and devs make when starting out is that they try to make something brand new - never seen before. That's the romantic ideal. The challenge with this is that it will take many months to refine the new idea into something comprehensible and engaging. Maybe you finish the game in a year+. However, if your goal is to build new skills quickly, there are plenty of practical lessons to learn in remaking existing games. Remake Pacman. Workout how they made the AI for the ghosts. Then remake Streets of Rage etc. Do 1 a month. Tearing-down, remaking and discovering the hidden gems in existing games is the fastest way to level up.