Hey ive been following this blog for a while

Hey, I’ve been following this blog for a while now, and I kinda wanted to ask; How would someone completely new to game development start off? As in, never even touched a system? I’ve been interested in making a game for a while now, but I had no idea where to start and no one I know really knows a lot on this subject.. Sorry if im bugging ya.

Hey! No bother at all. :)

I recommend GameMaker. It has a lot of flexibility to be good for beginners and experts alike. Other engines are great too–Unityis a good one for getting started, and I’ve heard good things about Construct. If you find another engine suits your needs better, go that route instead! But the main thing is to find an engine that has a supportive community and lots of tutorials.

So there’s a couple principles to getting started, and this goes for most creative things:

• Start small. Really small. Learning to finish is so important (and a boost to confidence)! Like, we’re talking Asteroids or Pong small. Then work your way up.
  
• Follow tutorials. Pause a lot to write the code out yourself and try to learn what’s going on. For GameMaker specifically, check out Let’s Learn Gamemaker, Heartbeast, RealTutsGML, Shaun Spalding, and Pixelated Pope. Writing code to make something fun is the best way to learn how to code. After you’ve gone through some smaller stuff and have a better handle on things, follow Heartbeast’s Making an RPG series.
  
• Look stuff up and ask for help. Seriously. Everyone does this. Get good at using Google. All the pros use Google. :) Ask other devs for help. I’m always open to help–even if I don’t respond immediately!
  
• Try stretching yourself. Do this bit by bit–don’t overwhelm yourself. But thing of one feature you don’t yet understand. Look up lots of stuff on the subject, find tutorials… get good at using Google. ;)
• Break features down. If something seems too complicated, don’t worry! Try to break it down into smaller pieces, then break those pieces down into smaller pieces, until you’re creating one small feature at a time.
• Make lists. Take all those little tiny pieces and make a checklist. Notebook paper works good for this. Cross stuff out when you finish
• Practice a lot. Try to do at least one “thing” from your checklist a day. This is so important in getting good at anything! You may get frustrated with yourself at times and feel like you can’t do it (I feel like that often!), but a major secret is that most people aren’t born good at stuff. They practice and practice and practice for years. And this is good–there’s value in striving for something.
  
• Get constructive criticism. Another major key in getting good. Find communities (tumblr, twitter, reddit, discord, etc.) that can give you feedback. This can be a difficult thing to learn
  
• Start by making something crappy. This is kind of related to everything I’ve said before, but don’t worry about stuff being bad at first. “Do it, THEN do it right.” It’s so freeing just to make stuff without worrying about how good it is… and you’ll find that you get good by making stuff. :)

Finally, this is an awesome, awesome resource on so many different aspects of game development. It’s primarily focused on GameMaker, but has tons of other stuff too, like how to do PixelArt, how to code without any experience coding, lots of tools, and so on. Go check it out!

And as always, let me know if you have any questions. :)