How he taught himself all his technical skills and started freelancing. Went to university only for the soft skills. 

Watch the full interview here : 

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we talked with Nixon, someone who has a strong interest in game development and even producing his own game and started freelancing. He learned most of his skills through self-learning and only went to university for the soft skills. We hope you learn something from Nixon’s story, enjoy!

Can you share about yourself, your background, what you do now?

Hey guys, my name is Nixon and I'm actually a student in APU in diploma, third semester. I pretty much learned everything on my own, school doesn't help much, like right now it's just teaching python basics so it really doesn't it doesn't help much.

My current interest now is game development and I joined three game jams before which is quite fun. Game jam is like a small event and everyone’s welcome to join, have fun and create games. I also do some freelancing jobs in my freetime.

You mentioned that all your skills are self-taught, do you mean that all the stuff that you learned in Uni is things you already know and just learning beyond that?

No, actually not everything that i learned in uni is already known by me. For example, topics like business that are not related to it or topics like hardwares that are not related to software and programming and stuff, those are the stuff that I did not learn in my self learning journey. But for stuff like programming or databases, those are the stuff that I learned quite a lot already but still got some insights from the lecturers and peers there. For right now, in University, I learned much more on the theories compared to practical stuff.

What’s the things in game development that really excites you?

I enjoy game development because you can put in your creativity and your technical skills to create something that other people can enjoy and you yourself also enjoy when you're looking at other people who play your game. When I receive positive feedback or comments from my community when I release the game, it really excites me and makes me happy to make the game.

Is game development something that you see a big future in and want to work in that?

I don't think it's a field that’s profitable, or actually the right word to describe it should be “sustainable”. If you want to be a full-time game developer, especially indie game developer it's quite hard and you need to be very lucky to be successful. 

For my future, what I would like to do is joining game companies or joining the 3D industry like you know in filmmakings they need vfx. Something like that or what i like a lot is also simulation so maybe if there's something challenging simulation physics stuff that is needed to solve. I would be happy to join too.

What’s your advice for people who want to learn game development? What’s the journey like to become a game dev?

If you have a day job don't quit your day job to learn,it's not a good thing to do, you should stay on a day job and then if you have like extra time only then you learn game dev. Just pick an engine, Unity or any other, just pick one and then just start doing some weird stuff with,  play around the engine and get used to it and I will also recommend that you choose the right tool because there are lots of tools out there. Experiment with some of those software and choose the best that you think it is and then use that and stick with it. Just don't change too much, stick with the engine for a while, at least complete something.  Completing a game is quite important, you can always start like a new idea and create a new game but completing a game is a good way to learn stuff because anything that you do in the past will help you in the future. 

Anything else you want to share with our community before we call it a day?

I would say just go and chase your dream, don't listen too much to what others think, you don't need to follow every advice that you get. Just listen but you still work on your dream.

Thanks for the awesome interview! And good luck chasing your dream Nixon!

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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