In the orientation program, we will tackle one of the most important and tricky mental roadblock faced by a newcomer - your action plan.

The game development process is a multifaceted one. One needs to possess multidisciplinary skills even if (s)he chooses to specialize in one aspect of the game development pipeline. Because there are so many things to learn, and most importantly learn them in a way that they can be used in conjunction with one another, the newcomer often faces a catch-22 situation.

Because one is new to the world of programming games, one is short of relevant questions to ask, and because one cannot ask relevant questions, it's difficult to get good answers. The old cliche, "You will get the right answers, provided you ask the right questions" holds true here too.

In this article, we will attempt to raise such "non-frequently-asked" questions and answer them concisely to spare you the confusion. This article will attempt to demystify the million dollar question, "What does it take to become a game programmer?"

 

Gaming today has reached a point that continues to surprise even the forefathers of this industry. What was once perceived as a mere tool for idle amusement, games have since emerged as a dominant form of entertainment, education and training, surpassing not only the movie industry, but predicted to soon surpass the music industry as well. There are many factors that resulted in this exponential growth of the game development industry. This section of the article will discuss some of the important ones briefly.

Firstly, continuous re-doubling of computer power has exponentially fueled the complexity of games and had shaped them to what they are today. The semi-conductor industry had dedicated itself to doubling the number of transistors employed in the fabrication of computer microchips in every 18 months. From the humble beginnings of a few dots on an oscilloscope to real-time imagery virtually indistinguishable from reality, it's needless to say that modern games have snowballed into something no one could have ever predicted.

The second factor that helped games to become a rich and exciting form of entertainment is the natural human desire to be visually simulated. Eighty per-cent of our brain power is spent in processing data received from the eyes. No wonder real-time graphics was, and still is, one of the most heavily researched gaming technologies, sometimes almost forcing other aspects of game development to take a back-seat. Only until recently the game development industry had started to pay more close attention to disciplines like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Physics.

 

The third factor that resulted in the growth of the video games industry is the radical advancements made in the manufacturing of computers themselves. These advances resulted in miniaturization of computers and a steep decline in their production cost. Fortunately, we don't need a 23 ton air conditioner to cool our PCs these days!