How do I start a gaming company?

Hi Devin,

Awesome questions and it's really cool to see you are thinking about creating games and starting a business. Be sure to tell your parents or teachers that you want to create a video game and ask for help. One of the most important things when starting out is getting feedback and asking the right people for help. Your parents and teachers can provide more information, tools, and support to get you up and running!

All great business's start with a good product. I imagine you're creating a video game based on the hash tags for this post.

So the first thing you most likely want to do is create a video game that is fun. Before you do anything, take some time and sketch out what the game will look like. What's the story? How do you play it? As you sketch out what your game looks like, ask for feedback from friends and teachers. Once you have a clearer idea of what the game looks like, you'll have to create it! Also note it doesn't have to be perfect. Having some idea but not all the details is totally ok!

Do you know how to program? If you've never coded before, check out the scratch programming language https://scratch.mit.edu/. It's a really cool language created at MIT to make programming easy and visual. You may need to get your parent's permission to create an account. On the site you'll find many tutorial and resources to teach you how to create video games from scratch. Also be sure to checkout Youtube which which will have video tutorials as well like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twkbeF5pRnc

Another interesting platform to create games using the Unity 3d engine is GetReady (https://www.getready.io/). You can use their platform to create 3d games on computer or iPad.

One of the key parts of video game development is beta-testing. You want to create games that other people will enjoy and want to play. So as you're making the game ask friends and family to test it out and give you feedback. Listen carefully and see if you can improve the gameplay based on the feedback you get. Also both scratch and getready.io have online communities so you can post your game and ask for feedback online.

I know this is a lot to read, but hopefully it can help you get started. Be sure to post more question if you get stuck and also ask for help! Good luck and let us know when you have a game to play!

Probably the best way is to start small and create your own game, you alone or with some coder/artist friends. Don't get too ambitious, define small goals and simple mechanics for your first game, no need to create the next big thing; it's way more important to finish a project first. Then iterate, develop that game further by adding new ideas, or use what you learned from the previous project to create a new one. Show off your projects, ask for feedback in places such as developers forums or discussion boards and be open for listening both positive and negative opinions.

Developing a game is something that requires a fair amount of time and dedication. At some moment you will need more people to join for more ambitious projects, having a nice portfolio of projects helps a lot to attract new people to be part of your team.

Seek advice from professions at gaming conventions