Video game design question(s)?

hey guys. I was just wondering if had any advice or comments about a career in the video game industry. What courses are good to take? colleges to apply for? just some basics i should know? game software out there that is good to use? Im just thinking about what i should do and video games have always been part of my life and to make and design them for a living would be awesome. So again if anyone has any imput it would be a great help. Mahalo!

This question gets asked a fair amount of times.

I think the most important question to ask yourself is this: Do you know what a game designer actually does, and do you think thats something that you think you will actually enjoy?

I want you to understand that a game desiner does not design games. They design game mechanics. The actual process of designing the game is left to a game producer. It is not the job of a game designer to decide how something should look, what setting the game takes place in, or what kind of feel the game should have. A game designer probably spends the majority of his time writing in Word writing with extreme detail the elements of a game, or spending huge amounts of time looking at Excel spreadsheets attempting to mathematically balance equations and adjusting them to give the perception of balance.

As for advice, the biggest advice i can give you is this: Start making games. Thats it. It doesn't matter whether you decide to take college classes, where you take them, or even if you take them at all. College end year projects will often force you to create a game. But doing it on your own is just as good.

It is my opinion that the best course of action to take is to go to college and take a non-gaming degree and work on game development on your own. This helps you in the event you cant get a gaming related job as a gaming degree is largely only useful and relevant in a gaming industry, where as a non-gaming degree can be applicable in other fields. A huge amount of develoeprs do not have gaming degrees as such things have only come into practice relatively recently.

If you want to go at it on your own, then i would recommend joining a mod development team. Its a great way to understand and get started on the game development process and to figure out whether or not you truly like it. I wouldn't advise making your own mod team (and you as the leader) as that is an incredible amount of work, but if you feel like you have the drive for it, go ahead.