Any tips or advice on making the transition mid-career? Have worked frontend web based for around 6 years with some fullstack experience and a bit of iOS, but no work experience in game dev. Primarily work with React, Typescript. Have used Python, Java in the past. What tools or technologies should I prioritize to maximize my chances of landing a job in game dev? Will I be able to apply to senior roles in game dev and have my resume considered if I add some projects? What if I apply via referral? Frontend bores me to death, every app is the same with new makeup. Would rather build something I would enjoy playing myself. Will most likely target companies like Riot Games, Blizzard, etc.
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Number one piece of advice? Don't. If you are bored, learn backend, DevOps or do some game dev as a hobby. Full-time game devs make half as much, work twice as hard, and are always one bad game away from a layoff to a job market full of surplus applicants.
I thought about doing it on the side, but the barrier of entry for a successful game that I would actually want to play seems high. At least in terms of my knowledge thus far, making a game like League of Legends or World of Warcraft or Genshin Impact would take significant amounts of time investment. I would need to learn art, music, character design, game dev and more to make something like that come to fruition. Joining an existing game as an engineer would let me jump into an existing game with all these in place. If we were talking about making a game like pacman or a simple 2D strategy game like Bloons, then that's a different story. I could be wrong though, since I'm not too familiar with level of effort for various features in game dev world.
Not agreeing with Roblox. The industry is not the same with 10 years ago. Especially with the rise of “games as a service” the industry is now very similar to high tech companies with pay, WLB and job security wise. (Roblox, a game company, is one of the top payers within tech isn’t it??) Breaking in to game play programming? I would say just start learning a game engine like Unreal. There are excellent courses within Udemy and other places. Epic also releases a bunch of educational content. I would start doing some side projects and build a portfolio. That would already get you past 80% of the candidates that are trying to break in to the industry. BTW, companies like Epic, Riot etc… also hire a bunch of frontend and backend engineers. I would say within Riot engineering, gameplay programmers are a small percentage. 50%+ are backend engineers. Do you could also target those positions.