I have read books on this subject, and wanted to get into this years ago but didnt.... What questions do you have?
The one biggest thing that I learned on this subject is that 99.9% of the games out there are not just one person who wants to make a game and makes it and markets it themselves. The games have teams of programmers, game rendering and graphic artists for making all the characters and graphic environments, voice over artists, and investors and marketing team and that budgets in the millions of dollars to develop and release a game title for sale is the majority of the software titles out there with some costing tens or hundreds of millions to develop in hopes that what they made for software wont be a flop and it will turn a profit greater than that of the development costs.
The books I read did not sugar coat that everyone can be one of the people on the game development team, it was VERY down to earth and told you that you have to pretty much be the best of the best in whatever aspect of the development that you want to be a part of. Additionally if your a greenhorn, that is, you have never developed a game before or been in a team environment to produce a profitable piece of software, you have even harder chances of hitting it big, that is unless your privileged with connections to someone already in this field.
Just like most tech jobs, many employers have requirements of 3 to 5 years experience working for a well known business in the field, so that your able to jump on board and do the job with minimal training. If your lucky you might be able to get an internship with a game or any other software company to get the work experience in this environment to bridge you to the career of your choice as for most employers especially game design companies do not hire greenhorns for mission critical roles in software and game development because deadlines have to be met and the risk of not meeting deadlines reduced by having on board skilled help who will have a greater probability of meeting the deadline goals as well as making for a quality product that wont have bugs that are the result of someone who is new to a field etc.
You will want to build a portfolio of your skills so you can sell yourself. If its programming for example you will need to show code examples as well as be prepared to demonstrate your skills during interview and defend your programming when it may be critiqued in a manner to see how you handle negative and positive feedback. If graphic game design and user interface design etc, you will need to be able to show examples of what you have on that as well.
Additionally, while I havent landed a job as a "Programmer", I was once in an interview as an "Electronics Engineering Assistant" and it had a requirement that you know your way around C++. I was instructed to bring with me to the interview code examples. I had an interview in 4 days and I had nothing really to show for my skills. I had to hit the computer and put together programs that I found fit a use that was ALL my programming and no plagiarism! In programming its ok to use objects similar to others work as your own, as long as you have it constructed differently, but grabbing someone elses program and just changing variable names and menu information isnt enough, you need to really stick to making your own product and have comment lines in the program and show good use of reuse of objects etc. I ended up putting two programs together for the interview that were about 5 pages each in length. One of them was a game but rather simple. The other was a program that was to be used in testing environment that worked with Parallel Port I/O to control relays and feedback from inputs. I had a circuit with this and I came forward and said that this program is open source from this said location and I added my own menu's and options to this already existing program. I showed a before and after code examples of what I added and why. I demonstrated that I was able to read someone elses code and modify it as needed for my own needs.
The game I showed they were not impressed with and didnt really raise an eye brow to. But the code example of the open source relay control software that I took someone elses product, I was able to read it and add my own menu system to it to make it better for a specific application. This right here sold my skills to them as well as showing that I knew my way around electronic circuits and demonstrated how to use an oscilloscope and troubleshoot their interview never seen before test board and fix 2 problems. One problem was a 1 amp fuse on the board was popped but this small fuse that looked like a green 1/4 watt resistor had no physical signs that it was blown. 5 volts in and no 5 volts out the other end of the fuse. Test 1 passed. Ok now test 2. A board that would not communicate. I troubleshot this for about 10 minutes and then found that the crystal that was on the board was the wrong crystal. Instead of 16Mhz it was 24Mhz. Anyone looking quickly on the clock pin would see a clock signal and move on and never find it. I was told that I was one of 2 people that found this bug on this test board, 9 others before us sweat it out and didnt catch the problem seeing the squarewave and moving on and chasing their tails with wrong guesses.
Unfortunately, this job didnt pan out to what I had hoped. I was only getting $15 an hour as an Electronics Engineering Apprentice which should have been a title of a Production Test Technician since i was testing their product and repairing them. The owner of the company was a graduate of a big name college and he engineered and marketed a product and I was testing it and troubleshooting it and the engineer there I really didnt work with. I was hired through a temp agency and when testing their product, i was able to test 840 of these little boards in a day and I thought i was doing really well at 800 tested and bagged for ready to be boxed and sold... the owner said he was hoping i would have 1200 of these done in a day. I looked at him and laughed. He didnt like that I laughed. I backed up my laugh with, your surely joking right, because in an 8 hour day and each board taking 30 seconds to test with 18 seconds of that 30 seconds being connecting the small board the size of a postage stamp to a test station, the center of a wheel, and a download, and the other 12 seconds being turning the wheel a full rotation and watching the values on the read out to be +/- within a specific tolerance, each board takes 30 seconds to test, with 2 per minute thats 120 per hour than can be tested, and in an 8 hour day thats a maximum of 960 of these tested which falls short of your 1200. So are you suggesting that I work a 10 hour day to get the 1200, since if all goes as planned with no board failures and no distractions, if I get 2 done per minute I can hit 1200 in 10 hours? He said no... You need to hit 1200 in 8 hours. I said laughing and shaking my head, your asking for the impossible. He said well if its impossible then find another job. So I said ok here I have a solution. But it will take money and it wont be happening for a few days if implemented. I said approve of me to modify your test wheel to test at least 2 of these at the same time. Then in an 8 hour day with no distractions and no complications there is potential for around 1920 of these to be tested. I said with a laugh I guess I passed this test.... so when can i start ordering the stuff we need to be able to test 2 of these at a time? He looked red in the face and said, this was no test. I really need 1200 of these tested in a day! I said well, I am not able to change the laws of physics and time, and someone with a degree of your stature I would think would be able to do simple math of 2 x 60 x 8 and know that 1200 is not going to happen in an 8 hour day. So I contacted the temp agency that evening and thanked them for the placement of the position, but that the owner had unrealistic expectations so I have to leave employment with them.
While this example above isnt game development, it is to show that some employment out there can have unrealistic expectations as well as show real life examples of testing for employment to show your skills and my C++ skills were shown here that vaguely ties into game development. But most importantly that you best be prepared to sit down in an environment that they have set up for you and show that you will sink or swim in whatever it is that you want for a job. This job was the most extensive and longest interview ever. It was 3 hours long. And my wife thought i broke down somewhere because what interview starts at 3:30pm and goes to 6:30pm.. most are done in under an hour. But they kept throwing stuff my way to see where I would make mistakes or where I would show a weakness and in not finding weaknesses its almost like dealing with an auditor and an auditor can never audit something and not find anything because if they dont find anything its as if they arent doing their job good enough as an auditor so you almost have to give them something so they are satisfied and so I caught on to this and so I started just saying openly where my strengths and weaknesses were so that they would either finally be satisfied that the interview is complete and I am hired or not because my stomach was growling and I was ready to leave at that point spent on the Q&A and tests they kept throwing at me to try to get me to flop and fail at something, and I wasnt failing.
Lastly, most games out there are made using game engines. Programming and rendering etc all made with tools to work with specific engines. The one book I have on game development and design goes into talking about all the different game engine environments and talks a lot about the unreal engine and how knowledge of working with certain engines are beneficial than that of someone who has not worked with those engines before.
Hoping anything I share doesnt deter you from whatever your passion is.... but just sharing from reading about it and researching it.... These positions are not easy to land! And if your lucky you might get an internship to get the experience requirement that you need and have a foot in the door that way, but that to be accepted for an internship you will likely have to be very good in the field of study at your college so that when going in for interview for internship you can show them that your a 3.7 or better GPA etc as for the book talks greatly on the game dev companies wanting the best of the best. Many companies use internships as cheap labor and a ways to feel out who to keep and who to drop without having to deal with hiring and firing regular career employees that may have labor law privileges that interns lack, as well as many arent given a 40 hour work week and so there are no health benefits etc, and being just an intern your salary is peanuts compared to the real bread that those in the field get paid who have the actual positions.
Once again, any specific questions on this, please feel free to ask. And maybe someone else here may be able to answer where I lack knowledge of etc.
