My Son is about to enter High School and I am trying to help him choose his courses. He wants to “make video games when he grows up” and being a Network Engineer, I can help a little bit, but I am interested in some guidance about what it takes to be competitive for entry level jobs in making games. It doesn’t have to be UE necessarily, though we do live in RTP, NC where the new campus is being built, so a career at Epic Games would be great for him.
Note that he is not artistically creative, so he’s not looking for design and artistry, though maybe they’re not the same thing. I don’t know a ton about this stuff.
If there’s somebody that works in the existing Cary, NC campus that I could maybe have lunch with or something, that would be ideal. Going back and forth on a forum post is less ideal for a discussion like this I think.
Some specific questions:
Is a bachelors degree required, or are certs king? If he doesn’t have to get a bachelors degree, he can avoid taking two language courses in high school as that is a requirement for college admission in UNC, not high school graduation. This could free him up for more programming type classes.
Are there specific programming languages that are more useful for creating video games rather than general programming? I just play video games, I don’t know much about writing them. I know his high school offers Python in freshmen year, but I’m not sure if this is a primary language for gaming.
Disclaimer: This is speaking from my experiences in the industry, not as an affiliate of Epic.
If he’s looking into development/programming it’s definitely best to have bachelors. Game dev is actually a field that doesn’t always require a CS degree, but those applicants will always have an extreme leg up. This is because self taught programmers are unguided and sometimes miss out on some fundamentals that don’t seem useful from an outside point of view, but they are imperative to making clean, scalable, and efficient code. Experience can offset this to an extent, but if you are in a position that can afford college it is often best. In my experience as a self taught developer you either have a portfolio of released games or the degree, entry level positions at most studios are incredibly contested and competitive.
Game development has so many languages, but primarily you’ll be looking at C++ and C# for many modern jobs, but Python is huge in tools development and even Godot uses a language similar to Python. If possible Python is an excellent foot in the door to start getting the logic and syntax of programming down in an easy language and , but if he’d prefer to dive in head first starting with an engine and making tiny games is often the best way to get your bearings and start learning the engine at the same time.
At the end of the day, everyone’s paths are different! If he’d like to get started in Unreal now, I’ve got some resources that could help him get a bit of practice on the side while you guys decide what path you’d like to take! Don’t forget we here on the forums are also here to be a resource if you have questions!
Thank you so much for your fast response and advice! I will guide him towards a CS degree for sure. I appreciate the tips on what the common languages are! That will be helpful.
I’ve already seen some of the UE tutorial stuff and it looks pretty comprehensive.
