How to Get into Game Development: Starting out

I've decided to post the occasional bit of advice for those wanting to get into Game Development. I'll try to post something like this with some degree of regularity, but who knows if I'll remember or not be too busy. That said here goes.

Today's advice is going to be for the total novice. I'm going to keep this short, but here's my best piece of advice:

Work. And learn.

Today is Saturday. It's almost 2pm. I could be having fun, hanging out with friends, watching TV, or playing video games. But I'm not. I'm working. I'm working in Unreal to make VFX (something I had no idea how to do two weeks ago). They're getting pretty good. I'm doing something that I didn't know how to do before. But more than that, I'm working on my own pet-project of a game. Why? Because working on games is what I want to do.

"But Craig, you've been in game development for years! You know what you're doing already!"

Well sure, I do now. I didn't when I started.

If you're a novice, though, here's what you do:

Download the Unreal Engine, or Unity 3d, or Game Maker (from YoYo Games). Just download whichever one you're most comfortable with. If you have absolutely zero experience, Game Maker is the simplest.

Just download one, and install it. Then open it up and look around. You'll probably be overwhelmed, and that's fine. Maybe you won't understand anything, and that's fine too. Just look around.

Now, depending on which engine you chose to install, Google one of the following: "Unreal first tutorial", "Unity first tutorial", or "Game Maker first tutorial".

Believe me when I say that most of what you'll need to learn to get into game development is fully available in step-by-step tutorial form. Just do that one tutorial today, then relax. You can do it again tomorrow. Do it again and again until the steps make sense. Then you'll be ready for a newer, more complex step.