GameDevHQ Alumni Success Story: Alex Somerville
“I had always thought that game development was only for the best developers, the brilliant minds. I felt like I did not have the skills to even consider it. Doing the GameDevHQ course in my spare time showed me that I did not need to be a beautiful mind. I just needed to invest some time into developing the skill set.”
Alex’s Results
- Was able to overcome imposter syndrome
- Built skills for game development
- Confidence to pursue game development as a career
- Gained skills that help him with programming in general
How GameDevHQ helped Alex become more confident in his own abilities and give him the skills to pursue game development
- Detailed lessons
- A library of videos and tutorials
- Experienced course tutors
- A supportive community
What were your biggest challenges before GameDevHQ?
Before I joined GameDevHQ’s program, I had been working as a web developer for most of my life. I was enjoying it, but I was also finding myself just lacking something.
Video games have been a large part of my life, and I wanted to figure out how I could incorporate that into my life and my career.
One of the biggest problems I had with my career was imposter syndrome. It got to be very over empowering at times and I kind of sat back and did not know what I was doing anymore.
What results did you see after signing up with GameDevHQ?
My biggest win was finding the confidence I needed to get into the gaming industry. Within an hour, you can see results where you are using your keyboard to move a little thing around on the screen, which is pretty cool!
What is unique about GameDevHQ’s support system?
GameDevHQ has a Discord server and they are always on hand. Even Jonathan who has so much going on at the same time. He has so much love for his teaching and game development.
What makes GameDevHQ better than free resources?
One of the things that I remember about the videos was that when Jonathan is making them, he knows that you are not going to learn by listening to a video and doing exactly what the video says.
Many of the videos are him walking you through the pseudocode, which consists of commented out lines of code that are in roughly plain English, what you want to achieve for your next step.
Following that, the next step is you trying it. Then there is a follow up video, where you compare your solution to the one that he has come up with.
Is GameDevHQ worth the investment?
Quite frankly, for what you get, especially including the asset package, the amount that you pay is pretty paltry.
You get all these assets that you can work with for free. You could even make an entire game with the assets that GameDevHQ gives to you as part of the whole package!
Who would you recommend GameDevHQ to?
I would recommend GameDevHQ to anyone with a passing interest in game development or even just development in general. The foundations that you learn from the course are not strictly about game development.
There are a series of videos that cover just the basics of programming, and I think the basics of programming work really well in everyday life. Life is a series of if/then else questions and that is the bare bones of programming.