The Developers

As a member of the DirectX team for the last few years, I've had the pleasure of speaking with quite a few game developers. Although each of the developers is naturally unique, they all have similar traits. One of the most obvious traits they share is an absolute love of games. However, this should be expected. Game development is a tough job, with long hours, tight schedules, and immense pressure. Anyone without a strong devotion to the gaming world should go write software without these pressures.

Although it's not common for a game studio today to actually announce how much it spends on the games being developed, many titles cost millions of dollars during development, a substantial investment for the company publishing the game. Many of the games are in development for years, which requires extreme confidence in the game itself and the developers, artists, designers, and everyone else involved in making it. Many times publishers succumb to the pressure and release games before they are ready. On the other end of the spectrum are cases such as Duke Nukem Forever, which is being published by 3D Realms. The game has been in development for well over five years, and the publisher maintains that it won't be released "until it's done."

Back in the old days of video game development (early arcades and the Atari home system), games were commonly written by one or two individuals in a matter of weeks, not years. You can chalk this up to the huge strides that have been made in the video game world today. Back then you could make an extremely simple game such as Galaga that essentially had a single level you played over and over. The graphics were simple, the game was fun and addicting, but was it hard to write? Any developer who's ever seen the game should recognize that it wasn't.

By contrast, today's games feature huge, expansive worlds that must be designed, developed, and have art assets created. Most include multiple levels and much more in-depth game play than the simple move-back-and-forth-and-fire seen in earlier games. All of these advanced features require more and more development time, and as players today expect these advanced features, it seems unlikely that any big-budget titles will be written in a matter of a few short weeks.

Today's big games also add a layer of complexity for the blossoming game developer because games that capture the attention of the masses can no longer be written single-handedly. It's also virtually impossible to get a game written by a single person (or even a small group) onto store shelves because of the extremely high cost of getting the computer stores to stock your title.

Most beginning game developers release the titles they write as shareware, or even freeware. There are quite a few sites out there devoted to shareware game development, and the community consists of many other game developers who provide valued feedback, testing, and a forum in which to express new ideas and show off your latest creations. Burgeoning game developers aren't likely to become wealthy creating these small shareware games, but it does allow them to develop the all important "demo reel" that can be used when applying for a game development position on one of the big-budget titles.

As mentioned in the introduction, this book will start you on your way to growing the skills you need to develop a high-performance, fully 3D game that you can turn into your own demo reel some day. Before that, you need to ask yourself: Are you ready to become a game developer? Ask yourself a few of these questions:

• Do you love playing video games?

• Have you ever found yourself so immersed in a game that you lose track of time?

• Do you often stop to wonder how these worlds were created?

• Do you believe you have the idea that could be turned into the next great video game?

• Are you tired of all the same old games out there today? Do you have the idea for a genre-redefining video game?

• Do you wish I would just shut up and tell you how to write your own video games?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, chances are you already have the desire to be a game developer. Perhaps you already have the ideas, but you just don't have the skills to make the ideas in your head actually come to life through code. This book will help you teach yourself these skills quickly, and by using actual games to do so.