First thing first, what is your education?
B.S. in math with minors in computer science and physics, but I majored in the wrong thing for what I want to do (because at the time, I didn't know what I wanted to do), and I'm not really interested much in physics anymore. That comp. sci. minor is the most relevant thing, but it pales in comparison to a major.
A neighbor of mine works for n-Space. They're a smaller developer who works mostly on licensed games, but they've produced a steady stream of games over the past few years so I figured he's as good as anyone to ask. He gave me two suggestions. The first is to get an actual degree of some sort from a school that focuses on game design or a directly related field. There's lots of them popping up all over the place these days, and the more respected ones act as feeders for a lot of the bigger developers. For instance here in Orlando there's a school called Full Sail University and they've got a pretty respected program that focuses on all aspects of game design. After graduating a lot of their students go on to EA Sports (also based in Orlando) and do a lot of the grunt work there. Another fun fact about Full Sail is if you remember Skylock from GS, he is (or at least was) a professor there and teaches music composition for video games.
The other way is to get noticed on your own, and make your game, as you sort of mentioned. That's not the easiest thing to do though since there's tons of people out there doing the same thing and it's tough to get noticed unless you have someone who is actively showing off your game. An easier route is to try and make an iPhone or Android app. It shows off design skill, and offers a degree of creativity. Plus there's the added bonus of making some money off of it. Once again that's a crowded market as well, but it has an added advantage of being able to show off your work very easy as well. If you can do something like that, and you aren't afraid to network it's a decent plan.
Hope that helps a little.
I want a job where I tell people what to make and they make it. I tell them exactly how the game should play, how it looks, I help design every level and moment. Then they make it and I play test it to make sure it does not suck and I send it back until it is perfect and the most incredible game ever made. Is there a job like that? 
Your idea of "indie dev" -> creating your own company, meaning you have to be able to do business planning, and funding. Even if you're not under the control of a parent company, getting funding affects what you pitch, because there may not be much of a backing for Penis Wars 2012.
The alternate side of "indie dev" is basically friends making a game together. FInancial success in this regard is largely luck-based. It doesn't matter how awesome you think your game is if nobody plays it. You have to catch some breaks here, on top of being very skilled. You don't just say "I want to make a game!" then learn the requisite programming skills in a month to make a success.
You need to focus on what you want to do from a career perspective first, then how it fits into the gaming world second.
- What do you want to do? You ask this in part in your original post. If you want to be a programmer, start with how to be a programmer. Not how to be a game programmer -- that comes later. If you are worried about being a free-spirit, you may have an interest in more of a business side of things.
- What skills and education do you already have to help you in that direction, and get you in the door career-wise? Depending on what you want to do, it may be exponentially more difficult if you don't have the degree to back it up.
- Understand the game industry and how that affects you long-term. It is not a place for job security. I've played videogames all my life. A lot of the people I know want to work in the games industry and want to make games, and do so on their own time and focus a lot in that area. This was something I have not wanted to be a part of, because it's very unstable. A lot of your work is on contract, companies come and go at astonishing rates, and the entire industry is prone to utter collapse. That means maintaining portfolios if you're working for other companies and being ready to have your name out there and finding new opportunities constantly. If you're in it for yourself, understand the possibility of going under rather quickly.
Can you be a part of it? Of course! It's a big industry, with a need for a lot of skilled people. If you focus yourself in what you want to do, and maintain that passion over an extended period of time, you'll break through and get your chance. But you need to know what you're passionate about, where you want to be, and how you'll get there.
Oh, and what's going to get you into a position with a professional gaming house, or most programming places worth a damn, anyway, is not knowing a particular language, but knowing the concepts behind the area of work. Largely, just be a good programmer and the rest will come. If you get serious about developing your own games instead of conceptualizing them, you may want to look into writing an engine instead of using middleware.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
"because there may not be much of a backing for Penis Wars 2012."
There'd probably be A LOT of backing for Penis Wars 2012! 
Yodariquo said:You're thinking of this in the wrong way. You're being far too specific and limiting.
Your idea of "indie dev" -> creating your own company, meaning you have to be able to do business planning, and funding. Even if you're not under the control of a parent company, getting funding affects what you pitch, because there may not be much of a backing for Penis Wars 2012.
The alternate side of "indie dev" is basically friends making a game together. FInancial success in this regard is largely luck-based. It doesn't matter how awesome you think your game is if nobody plays it. You have to catch some breaks here, on top of being very skilled. You don't just say "I want to make a game!" then learn the requisite programming skills in a month to make a success.
You need to focus on what you want to do from a career perspective first, then how it fits into the gaming world second.
- What do you want to do? You ask this in part in your original post. If you want to be a programmer, start with how to be a programmer. Not how to be a game programmer -- that comes later. If you are worried about being a free-spirit, you may have an interest in more of a business side of things.
- What skills and education do you already have to help you in that direction, and get you in the door career-wise? Depending on what you want to do, it may be exponentially more difficult if you don't have the degree to back it up.
- Understand the game industry and how that affects you long-term. It is not a place for job security. I've played videogames all my life. A lot of the people I know want to work in the games industry and want to make games, and do so on their own time and focus a lot in that area. This was something I have not wanted to be a part of, because it's very unstable. A lot of your work is on contract, companies come and go at astonishing rates, and the entire industry is prone to utter collapse. That means maintaining portfolios if you're working for other companies and being ready to have your name out there and finding new opportunities constantly. If you're in it for yourself, understand the possibility of going under rather quickly.
Can you be a part of it? Of course! It's a big industry, with a need for a lot of skilled people. If you focus yourself in what you want to do, and maintain that passion over an extended period of time, you'll break through and get your chance. But you need to know what you're passionate about, where you want to be, and how you'll get there.
Oh, and what's going to get you into a position with a professional gaming house, or most programming places worth a damn, anyway, is not knowing a particular language, but knowing the concepts behind the area of work. Largely, just be a good programmer and the rest will come. If you get serious about developing your own games instead of conceptualizing them, you may want to look into writing an engine instead of using middleware.
This post deserve more love.
Yoda is right. Also let me add something.
If you love programming and are good at it, go get an education for it. Get a master for it or something. You really need to love the act of programming itself. You should have fun writing programs. It should not matter if it is gaming related or not. Don't expect that when you hate writing a code for a website, that you will love writing code for a game. Writing code is writing code.
Like Yoda said you are looking at it way too narrowly. What kind of work do you enjoy? What kind of work are you good at? Are you good at programming? Animation/Modeling? Engineering? From there you pick your career, not the other way around. I suggest you take a good and hard look at yourself and figure out where your talents lie and where you want to go.
Also a lesson for everyone. Never ever go to college if you do not know what you want to do. It is a waste of your money and time. Think before you act.
Originally, I was going to college because I wanted to be a physicist -- specifically, a cosmologist (think Stephen Hawking, the man with ALS and a computer synthesizing his voice). Got dissuaded from that for a few reasons. My first set of majors was physics and math, the former the primary major. Dropped it after a year for computer science, which I majored in for slightly under a semester, because I just didn't "get" computers and programming -- unlike now. In the end, those became minors and my degree is for math because I didn't want to keep going for several more semesters majoring in computer science, as that would have put me much further in debt. It already took me 5.5 years to get my B.S. Looking back, though, more debt might have been worth it, as I feel pretty impotent with only a minor in the stuff I'm most interested in. I kept going with math because I knew I was decent with it, have always liked it, and thought I'd be sure to get a job I was interested in with the degree. Now, however, I'm only really interested in things that would involve the computer science part of my education, which, seeing as I only have a minor, puts me at a big disadvantage out of the gate. I'm considering going back for a masters degree, but seeing as I'd probably have to make up for the courses I didn't take as an undergrad, it might be too prohibitive. So, there you go, Iga. I did originally know what I wanted to do. It just didn't stick. 
Without that additional computer science education, all I know how to do right now (i.e. have more than a few hours acqaintance with and/or remember how to do) is write simple console programs in C (with a refresher), C++ (with a refresher), and C#, the latter of which I've also used for quite a few Windows Form programs using Visual Express. By "simple" I don't mean that I only know how to, say, get input data and vomit out the result of a calculation to the user. However, I don't know how to do anything with websites or network connections, I don't know how to manipulate graphics and pixels, and I don't know how to interact with the hardware itself in code other than, among few other things, using pointers and dynamic memory allocation (in C/C++). I do enjoy programming, but I haven't written an application in quite a while now because, frankly, I can't think of anything to create that I didn't already create doing my coursework, or that would be at all useful. Applying my knowledge to imaginitive stuff has never been a strong suit of mine. If I'm to get into the industry (via any route), my programming skills are the only thing I have going for me at the moment, and even they could use some expansion. My artistic skills are nigh nonexistent, and I mean this in terms of story-writing, level design, and graphics and sound design. So, programming it is, I guess.
By "indie dev", yoda, I was talking more about making something with a group of friends/acquaintances, which might later turn into a "proper" indie dev studio. Given my current lack of business skills, I wasn't exactly expecting anything to happen overnight. And the downsides you mention to being part of a publisher-backed studio are exactly why I want to take this route. For those reasons and also because I want "time after work hours" to actually refer to a period of time. Being able to have a family life would be a very nice thing.
[Aside: While I'm definitely not ignoring anything that's been said when I say this, I would like to put out the fact that I'm currently working on a Zelda-like game. "Working on", in this case, indicates that I'm working on the concepts and story. Haven't done anything outside of that other than make a tutorial game in the Unity Engine (from a book) and start a beginner's book on character modeling (remember, I have next to zero visual art skills). If anyone would like to contribute, keeping in mind that this really hasn't gotten off the ground yet and that I'll probably need help with graphical assets (I know someone who can do sound), feel free to message me or otherwise say something.]
2 questions
1) Why did you quit physics?
2) How does the minor major thing work in the universities over there?
P.S. I forgot that in America studying cost a ton of money. Try going abroad.
I quit physics partially because some of the concepts weren't making sense to me at the time, but mostly because I just wasn't enjoying the subject as much as I'd hoped, and especially because I never liked doing experiments. What kept me going with math was the fact that it's largely an intellectual thing. I've determined in the last few years that I really enjoy formal and artificial languages, such as math, symbolic logic, and programming. I find the things you can do with them fascinating, and I just enjoy that type of reasoning process in general.
An academic major is what gets advertised along-side the "Bachelor of Science" title, while minors are just... ways you can claim to know some stuff about other areas without looking completely inexperienced, I guess. Were I to redo my undergraduate years, computer science would be my first choice of major, possibly joined by computer engineering as a second major.
Computer Science degrees are not programming degrees. Computer Science spans a much broader spectrum, so a university program only includes programming as a cursory focus. If you are seriously thinking that it may have been worth thousands to continue on with a major because it would have given you more exposure to programming, then do yourself a favour and just get writing instead.
Get a project that you want to do and do it. Along the way, try to pick up good habits, like consistent naming conventions, indentation, organization, etc. but most importantly make it work and make it happen.
The process of coding universal to all to experience it is that each time you're finished a new project, the last one looks hideous to you in terms of code quality.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileAngry_Beaver said:I quit physics partially because some of the concepts weren't making sense to me at the time, but mostly because I just wasn't enjoying the subject as much as I'd hoped, and especially because I never liked doing experiments. What kept me going with math was the fact that it's largely an intellectual thing. I've determined in the last few years that I really enjoy formal and artificial languages, such as math, symbolic logic, and programming. I find the things you can do with them fascinating, and I just enjoy that type of reasoning process in general.
An academic major is what gets advertised along-side the "Bachelor of Science" title, while minors are just... ways you can claim to know some stuff about other areas without looking completely inexperienced, I guess. Were I to redo my undergraduate years, computer science would be my first choice of major, possibly joined by computer engineering as a second major.
So the study you thought would be cool was not what you thought it would be? No worries that can happen to all of us. We all have romatized expectations that come crashing down when reality kicks in. *cough* Mammoet *cough*.
At least you know now what you like. Some people search years for it and never find it. I suggest you start learning programming, by actually doing programming. Grab a book or go on the internet and start. Go simple and work your way up. Forget about the videogame industry for a moment. First train yourself to become a programmer.
Also listen to Yoda he is a expert in this field.
Yodariquo said:but most importantly make it work and make it happen.
Ahh the good old fashioned Soviet style of design. Make it simple, make it strong, make it work. Works for pretty much everything.
I'd really prefer to be an indie dev, so I can make what I want and work with people I like (and have better working hours), but I've been considering the pro developer scene a bit... mostly because I need a job, and making games is what I most want to do. However, even then, I'd like to be able to work on stuff that I'd at least be passionate about. To that end, I need some information, and I'm hoping that someone here might be able to provide it.
The question is this: Do you know of any developer in the United States that makes [GOOD] games similar in any way to the Zelda series?
I want to make Zelda-like action/adventure games (though obviously with changes that Nintendo should have already made). No doubt I wouldn't be prepared for any such job (don't ask me what, specifically, I would want to do) just yet, but I would like to contact someone on the development team and ask them what kind of education and skills I would need, so I can get to studying things that I didn't learn in college. Making small games of my own and/or modding existing ones is something I know I'll need to work on (and have no objections to!).
I might actually work best as a programmer, but I don't want to rule anything else out (except maybe art, but I'll be working on character modeling). For those who want to know, I have some slight experience with Visual Basic (don't remember any), Java (don't remember any, but have a textbook), Python (don't remember any, but have a textbook), JavaScript (just started, so far looks similar to C# except for type declarations and related syntax), C and C++ (remember a bit, giving myself a refresher as we speak), and C# (love it and know it much better than the others, but need a refresher). I'd love to master each of these languages just 'cuz, but I get the impression that C and C++ might be the most useful, followed by the Javas and C#. For my personal projects, I'm using the Unity Engine, which supports scripting in C#, JavaScript (which is how I know any JS at all), and Boo.