Why do you make games?
As the title says, why do you make games and how did you start making them? The reason I make games it to raise money to pay for collage and to help build my portfolio. This way I can hopefully get into a better collage for a full education on coding, game creation and software design. How I got started making games is a different story. I originally started making games when I was almost 11. I started with Gamemaker 8 which at the time cost $25. I saved up my money, bought the software, and began making simple Mario games for PC. I later got into the more advanced C+ coding inside Gamemaker and made a few more advanced games which I still haven't finished. 
I later got my first iPhone and was interested in making mobile games. So I did a simple Google search something along the lines of "easy iPhone game creation software". I then of course came across GameSalad and here I am, making games for all iDevices! Thats how I began. How did you?
I later got my first iPhone and was interested in making mobile games. So I did a simple Google search something along the lines of "easy iPhone game creation software". I then of course came across GameSalad and here I am, making games for all iDevices! Thats how I began. How did you?
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around 9th grade i found something in a stores software department called Dark Basic which still exist its as simple as lua programming but you can even do 3d games, the back of the box showed off 3d fps and other amazing games, i went home and made my first 3d shooter using simple code like if left = true then shooters = shooters - 2. fell in love with it then picked up a c++ and a java book...at the time it was a bad mix, i got c++ as far as writting a single class up to a few chapters writting simple input output programs that do math but java at the time made me hate programming and through my teen years i moved on to music, websites and video editing and left games and programming behind....wish i didn't.
as SOON as the iphone came out i had to have it, i always wanted to make games but i knew it was damn near impossible to get recognized on a pc game sitting on some site with no marketing and now all of a sudden they have this app store made by regular joes like me making apps and games...i was sold. i thought about programming but it was to tedious, time consuming and to delicate for making a game if i didn't know EVERYTHING the RIGHT way and eventually i found gamesalad which allowed me to focus on graphics and gameplay instead of worrying about code error and losing track of good gameplay.
now i found a awesome book the big nerd ranch guide to ios programming and im working on making apps "which code is GREAT for" but i love gamesalad for making games and even if i do get amazing at coding and want to make games with just code i would still use gamesalad for testing and prototyping for the speed and ease you can breathe life into your graphics.
I got to do and say as I pleased. My current game "Mr Jabbs: Epic Waste Of Time" could only be made possible by me self producing it. After all, the game is pretty crazy. So I enjoy making games because I get to be creative without limitations from a systematic hierarchy. Its also just a lot of fun
- Thomas
During college I was mostly doing hardcore computer science researches, mainly in natural language processing. I was a member of the language technologies lab :-B where I met some of the brightest people I know. Don't get me wrong, we totally loved our field of research but sometimes you just get burnt out with stress and start to look for other co curricular activities to unwind. That's where we discovered Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2012. We worked on a mobile game for one and a half month and eventually made it to the semis in Australia - eventually though, we lost to some really awesome teams.
Disappointments aside, realizing that making games is one of the best stress relievers for people like us, we just knew we had to keep it up. Right now, 4 of our team members are working in the corporate world, 2 are taking their post graduate studies, and 1 more is finishing his undergrad - and still we make it a point to bond over our software business, running a 3D printing gig, and of course, making games!
Yeah, GS is definitely a happy-fun-fun tool, even for traditional programmers
I made my first game about 30 years ago using C=64 basic. I also wrote a Macintosh game around 1994.
I've also been teaching kids how to make games for the last couple of years, which inspired me to get back into it myself.
I'm using GS because I'm lazy. I can write code, but it's been a while since I've been a hard core coder. Which means creating games is painfully slow. This is a lot simpler and faster than using Objective C XCode or Android Java.
- Thomas