How can I become a game developer

Hello Annalise, there are many routes into video games development these days, although the most secure route into games development is via the college or university route, the courses comprise of programming, artistic design and writing game plots as well as computer hardware and microelectronics , there is a lot of coding and you would expect to spend 4 hours a day in front of a computer as a start, you'll also need to enjoy playing video games.

There are home based games tester jobs available online which in effect pay you to play games and find and report software and hardware problems, this will give you an idea and also help you earn extra cash as you go along..

Having an interest in the history and development of hardware will get you noticed when applying for a games developer course especially at the interview where they will see this in a positive way.

Here are a few different courses to read about to get an idea of what is involved from different places, the first one is from the first university outside of japan to do these courses around 20 years ago,before that people were self taught and getting a job was by good luck or knowing someone already there, or starting up on your own, now there are dozens of colleges and universities worldwide teaching computer games development..

Abertay Dundee (Scotland)

https://www.abertay.ac.uk/course-search/undergraduate/game-design-and-production/

Academy of Art San Francisco CA-Online degree in games development

https://www.academyart.edu/academics/game-development/online-degrees/

Florida institute of Technology

https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-uds-cse&cx=003136992119298431657:rmmrrkd8mlq&q=http://my.fit.edu/~pbernhar/Teaching/GameDesign/cse4285.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiw5OSQvevhAhVPURoKHRbRBgQQFjAAegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw0cvvSSXrDO_Q7OMu5Q7maQ

I can also recommend having a look at Youtube for videos on Gaming by:

8bitguy (retro computer games and consoles)

Nostalgianerd (vintage games and hardware)

Lastgamer (computer games expert)

Also writing to Sony USA and Nintendo USA will get you some useful material and information.

Games development pays well- around $120,000 USD yearly, and there are opportunities for worldwide travel with work.

Consider Cellphone App development as well, the phone games are big business.

If you have any further questions please ask me

First I would decide on what area of development you want to learn. For example, design vs. programming. If you want to try the programming route, you can take some game development and app development courses online. https://www.pluralsight.com/search?q=game%20development

If you are still interested, then I would try to develop a simple mobile game and get it published to the iOS or Android app store.