Here is a collection of links to articles related to working your way into the game industry. The common theme is that if you want to make games for a living, you should probably start by making games in your own spare time first. Getting exposure to the industry as early as possible is also imperative, so get out there and start meeting people. Actually finishing and releasing your own projects for others to play, coupled with a healthy involvement in a local game development community, will put you miles ahead of the vast majority of game industry aspirants. On to the links:

If you are in the NYC area, subscribe to the IGDA mailing list for local event announcements:
http://nycgames.org/mailman/listinfo/igda-nyc-announce

Sloperama is a great place to start, tons of articles:
http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html

You're going to need to learn how to network effectively:
http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com/2005/10/effective-networking-in-games-industry.html

Short and to the point:
http://www.patrickcurry.com/thoughts/how-to-become-a-game-designer-in-four-simple-steps/

An inspirational story:
http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007/12/05/how_i_became_a_game_designer/1

Game taxonomy, because it's important to know the scope of the field:
http://www.ferzkopp.net/joomla/content/view/77/15/
http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Video_Game_Taxonomy

Independent Game Development:
http://www.tigsource.com/
http://indiegames.com/
http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html
http://www.indiecade.com/
http://creators.xna.com/

Of course, there are also these daunting sites:
http://www.gamasutra.com
http://www.gamedev.net
http://www.gdmag.com
http://www.bluesnews.com/
http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/

Get out to GDC in San Francisco or Austin:
http://www.gdconf.com/news/index.html

For making your own games, Lua-scripted 2D game engines are an excellent option:
http://www.2dengine.com/
http://love2d.org/

For the technologically minded, here's an excellent page of links:
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/games/

Wikipedia has lots of info on game technology as well, such as these pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_physics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaders

If you are local to the NYC area and want to contribute, get involved in this website's forums. Standout forum members get access to post news stories on the front page, as well as other perks:
http://www.nycgameindustry.com/forums/

Please share your own links in this thread, and any I've left out.

alex k

These are some great links man, thanks for posting them!

Wow man, thanks for the links. Really helpful!

I'm sorry to sound so pessimistic but nyc simply is a clean conduit to produce games. By any measure of which a successful development company is run (costs, talent, etc) and there aren't enough big name publishers located here; off the top of my hand i can name only a few within the city which you can make a pitch to and about two or three which are hours out of state.

Then there is the fact that for the most part the students here who study computer science or any other programming related major are the extreme minority.

That is why places like Utah, Texas, Florida, Vancouver and California are such havens for programmers wanting to break in to the industry.

However the links are very helpful and Im sure that many of the users here will appreciate it.

You would be surprised, while NYC only houses one true triple A studio ( that being Kaos ) that doesn't mean it doesn't have a good community for entry level people.

There are a lot of small studios within the city and if you look at the companies tab up top you can see exactly what I'm talking about.

Aside from that, the quality of people in NYC and the enthusiasm for the industry itself is very strong here. I used to goto Orlando IGDA meetings before I graduated ( Full Sail University ) and there was about 12-18 people there monthly. Here, on my first night in October, I walked into a meeting of almost 50 people and they were telling me it was a slow night.

The one thing I can say about NYC being a difficult breaking ground is the cost of living is quite high. That I think is the biggest problem which prevents it from being even larger. But give it time, its seen a lot of rapid growth recently and if what I see at the meetings and get-togethers is any sign of whats to come than I expect NYC to be on the charts soon enough.

Also great links Alex =)

Haha, Jose, that is why we are trying to change things here ;)

If anything, I can see a plethora of Indie studios set up here in NY, its just that people need to take initiative in making this state competitive when it comes to the industry. Also, there needs to be some type of reformation to the way businesses are started here; I heard California, all that needs to be done to start up a video games company, is to mail in some application to the state! Jesus, thats easy. Just take a look at the end of this video, so you see: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/43679.html?type=flv

I honestly do not dispute that new york has development studios and publishers which operate here in the city and prefer it that way. However i do question the legitmacy of most of them because i have seen the lure of pretenders before.

A few years back i was lured to this publisher (i forget their name or else i would call them out right now) which claimed to have connections to and sometimes offload some of their projects to the big ten publishers (EA, Take Two, Ubisoft, Vivendi, Activision, e.t.c.) with the promise of starting out as a member of their quality assurance outfit and working my way up as i gained experience. Instead i was stuck working long hours, testing really sub-par software and got stiffed by them when it came to my paycheck and ended up quitting thereafter.

Just because i went through this doesnt mean its marred my perception. It just means im cautious. There is nothing i want more than to be part of a indie built development firmly rooted in new york. And by the looks of it most members on this page do too.

I agree with prototype when he says that we need to make the state more competitive but that's just the beginning. To get the industry up and running here NYC has to find a way to welcome people that are looking for the same thing. Look at other states, they have schools which are exclusive to just programming and video game design; we have none. Some states even offer incentives if a certain type of business is started there and is operational like in Georgia. And may i add that's to entice us; the so called "creative class". All of this is on a indie scale. I haven't gotten to the laundry list of ideas which NYS can enact to get publishers to move here.

This can change.

"This can change"

It will change man! Hahhah

Listen, did you do the Steam sign up like I asked you? Be sure to add SWoskowiak as a friend (he was the one who introduced it to me). They also offer Steamworks BTW, a digital distribution platform. It'll come in use for our collaborative indie studio later on, so get it man!

Great list and an interesting discussion. Making this a sticky so that others know to use it as a resource.

Very thorough and highly informative.

Many thanks. :)

Thanks, I actually revised this post a few weeks ago to improve upon the original post from last December. It's now more concise and organized better. Glad you find it useful; I learned a ridiculous amount from all these links and have much appreciation for the work that the authors put in.

Alex

As a fledgling developer, this info and this site in general are fantastic motivation to stick with it. Thanks for helping us noobs out.