Hello!

First of all, sorry for my english.

I'm +40 and been working as a developer for +20 years. Most of that time is working on mobile apps, building apps and all the standard stuff around it. And, I'm super tired of this, is boring and tedious at this point, and I want to move to Game Development. I have experience in that field but it was a long time ago (10 years or so), I built games for some clients like Zynga, BigFish, and similar companies. Recently I started to play with Unity and felt again the need to get back to the “good old days” because my past work as a game developer really was the best experience I had in my entire career.

So, the purpose of this post is to have some feedback on how I can achieve this. Browsing around the different job opportunities out there, is difficult to find a company that is willing to take someone that is not a student/just-graduated and invest in training. The rest of the jobs requiere experience, which I don't have. I know one of the options is to built a portfolio but been honest, that seems out of reach to me, don't want to spend 2+ years building a portfolio just to get rejected because of my age or something like that. Building my own studio is also an option, but is the hardest one for sure jeje I had my own company at some point but it was a struggle.

Sorry for the long post, if you read until here thank you so much, and any comment will be really appreciated.

right, u r doing the right thing… as u said, “play with Unity”;

in game dev, i'm not sure that u will easily find established studios willing to take on devs who have long gap years of “other” forms of coding in the industry than game experience… unless it's for a specific task not directly related to game-dev, that's usually because they know what u've missed in that time.

So if u really want to get break into their studios, u have to prove your worth (with respect), u maybe the best c++ guy out there, but if i asked u to explain to me how volumetric lighting works and u can't, i will find it hard to hire u…

This means u have options:

• look for a hobby team willing to take on devs from all cuts of society (with/without gamedev exp); there are plenty here on gamedev.net, i think i saw some a couple days ago or so… and use your evenings for it
• use your evenings to learn “the new stuff”, update yourself, learn and write small projects to test features that you don't know
• many folks here are writing their own game engines from scratch purely for educational purposes to know how new techs work (if you are going to choose this route please write a game engine, THAT means, think of a game, even a short one and write an engine for this game. Do not write an engine in view of having all the ‘cool’ features embedded into just so u can show off, it would be a massive waste of time, even if you think it makes up a cool tech demo -just don't- we're not impressed ?)
• use an existing game engine and develop your own game (using unity, unreal, godot,… or else), this way u will know what u've missed and learn from it; then when you're done with your game; demo or sell the game
• become an indie (not always easy as u have already found out but it can work)
• etc… tc…

if u can have some tangibles in a year or 2 (and i see loads of folks who dun it) then you can make it in… there is no magic wand here for sure, you've got to prove yourself first then prove to others (because u have missed a lot).

These days with some free resources, it is definitely doable, 10 years ago maybe not so much, right ?

That's it … all the best ?

ddlox said:

15 instances of "u"

you!

haha!

thank you @supervga :-D

bad habits die hard … ok i'll find my train again -lol-

Apply for jobs. Don't waste too much time guessing what a company might or might not want.

The book “What Color is Your Parachute” has sections on changing industries, and lots of good job hunting strategies, so I recommend reading and following that book's advice. Especially relevant are how you can find jobs, which brings us to:

NETWORK to find jobs. Leverage your social connections, your old Facebook friends, any and all relationships you have had over your professional career. Don't bother wasting your time on hobby projects at this point. You have plenty of work experience, so talk to everyone about opportunities they know, or a friend-of-a-friend knows, and look for ways your experience can help solve their needs.

Also look using other methods, job boards and aggregators like gracklehq.com, gamedevmap company lists, and recruiters and headhunters if you must, but always work the social networks first. Networking with others is the best way in general, even when “nobody is hiring” people will interview those who come recommended.