You start writing games and have a tangible impact. You can point to features and say “look Ma’, I wrote the thingy that makes that thingy go wibble-wobble”. “Oh thats great son, are you sure this a career?”. “Yeah Ma’, sure is, I’ll be coding games forever!”

Then some years pass and you can say “Well I only wrote a wee bit of code for this game, but it was important because now it draws stuff 25% faster! But yeah, I a lot of the time I went to meetings so other people didn’t have to”.

Then the meetings are on speakerphone with folks in San Fransisco, some of whom you have met but mostly not, and you are talking about ad networks and telemetry data and soft launches. “Look Ma, I’m now working on 6 games at the same time!!”

A games programming career begins as a months or years long singular focused all-life-consuming game evolves (devolves?) from to multiple games concurrently phasing in and out of priority. Is your impact as Technical Director or CTO the same as Junior or Lead Engineer? Of course not. But making games is a team sport. Even as a solo-indie-dev you don’t make games without the help and support of your family, friends, dogs, cats and iguanas.

The List