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Comment by utnick | Hacker News Reader

www.gamedev.net

I second gamedev its been around for a long time and has some decent helpful people on their forums. I used to use it a lot when I used to do game dev for my own projects.

also checkout garagegames.com great community over there based around their engines which are cheap and easy to use.

As for online degrees I wouldn't bother, most game dev employers are looking for killer demos and knowledge. If you are of an age that you are about to go to college/uni then I would do a game programming related degree for sure.

You could also checkout MS's XNA platform, its in .net but easy to get up and running and also with the creators club you can get stuff running on your xbox 360 if you have one.

I already passed the college age. I am 30 years old and I have a familly to support. So if I can avoid investing time and money for a degree, I would prefer. But if someone knows a good online degree, maybe I would consider it. I don't have a xbox 360. I have a nintendo DS and a Wii. But thanks for your informations, I will check them. What I wonder is the time to get killer demos by learning alone...

well it depends on what you are after. If you are going to be making your own games and selling them I would suggest garage games route. If you are after just being employed then its basically how quickly you pick this stuff up.

have you thought of mobile phone development or maybe the iphone/touch? There used to be a lower barrier to entry to get jobs doing these sorts of games. Also easy to learn j2me and build your own engine on it.

my only caution about the DS is effectivelly you will never be able to release a game on it but on the other side a cool tech demo on a ds would get your foot in the door with a devshop doing ds stuff.

good luck with it.

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