[quote]If you want to become a video game programmer, you must first become a great programmer. The most reliable current way to do this is to enter a Computer Science program at a university, don’t skip classes, study and work hard, and become one of the top students in your class. Don’t worry too much about getting into a top-ranked school – the motivation and talent you bring with you will serve you better than all the Ivy League trappings in the world. Hundreds of top Computer Science students try to break into the game industry every year. How can you separate yourself from the pack? One very effective way is through personal projects. A candidate with a 3.5 GPA and an impressive self-developed game demo is often more impressive than a candidate with a 4.0 GPA and no personal game work. Personal projects show your enthusiasm for and commitment to making games, and can also demonstrate your skill in working in larger systems than are seen in collegiate projects. Other things that help are playing a lot of games, reading GDC papers and presentations, reading articles on video game development forums like GameDev and GamaSutra, and reading physics books in your spare time. Was there a single game or moment when you realized that you wanted to make games? How’d you get into this line of work? When I first played X-Wing, in March of 1993, I knew I wanted to make games. 5 years later, when it came time to pick a college major, I decided my best shot at making games was leveraging my love of computers and math and becoming a programmer (also, I hated creative writing and had no artistic taste, talent, or inclination). I was persistent (and lucky) enough to get an internship with a local game company in Los Angeles in my junior year, and the rest is history. [/quote] Along with the majority of people on here, I would love to work at bungie. Not just because one day it will rule the world and you get pastry-delights, but because it would so cool to see your dreams come to fruitition. I'm currently in college taking computing and my tutor is great, well.. he knows a lot of stuff, even if half of it is probably a lie, like his claim that if he stopped being a teacher and worked on his own company more then he'd be a multi-millionaire by the end of the year. Okay, so far so good right? I'm into computing with a great teacher, it's just my own unbelievably misapprehension of the work that gets me. Somehow I manage to fail continuously. Ironically, my other subjects are Electronics and then my best subject is my English Language, and I love creative writing and just making up stories that'll lead the readers mind of a path of dauntingly insane situations. I mean, what would you do if the sun exploded right now ? BBQ? I know I would... So here's my dilemna (I think) I need a job by the end of college, I already have one, ironically I sell pastry-delights at my local stadium, and they are goooooood. Anyway.. I need a job this summer and then generally for the rest of time. I'm not so good at the whole computing aspect of things, I even tried to get to grips with using Maya, as I saw that pretty much all of your jobs required it. I've only messed about with it for the last 2 hours now, but it's pretty obvious that it takes alot longer than that to be able to have a good handle on the software, unless you've tried something similar before. On the other hand, I like creative writing and I want to be able to write something and see it come to fruitition. I know you'd probably have advertised the job position online for a writer, but I need to be an apprentice to something, because at the moment, my quiet little town just doesn't offer anything much in the way of jobs, other than selling food and other bits and bobs. I just don't think that retail is for me. I wrote some beginnings to stories and ideas on a networking website, purely because it had an author's section to it. I get the feeling this is going to be unlikely, but if you want to read them contact my Bnet account (above) or gamertag (shifty373) I guess living in the UK doesn't help either, right ? Anyway, I hope I hear from anyone who reads this because there's nothing wrong in trying. Unless it's for recon.