Cheers man. I'd dearly love to get into that line of work, but my programming knowledge is still pretty limited, and I have no connections in the industry, I only have my ideas and my love for videogames (and I won't be alone there). I'm decent with graphics, but obviously not to the amazing extent seen in modern games, which have whole teams of utterly exceptional talents toiling like mad in dev studios' art departments. I also suspect it's ayoung person's game, tough to break into past your early-20s or whatever.
My best chance I guess would be to devote a great deal of time to working with a few others on actually creating a game. I don't have that to spare at present, but should the opportunity arise, I would jump at the chance to be like the ideas 'glue' in a small indie dev team, that focused on general game concepts, characters, story and design, working alongside a talented programmer or two, a boss practical graphic artist. Hell, I could sort out the sound effects and music and all that myself.
I believe there are games design workshops, but I'll bet they're full of snotty, ruthlessly ambitious college leavers, who'd have some bitchy issues or other with a proper-bearded, experienced grown man who's there for the love of it. Fuck them, like, but I'd nevertheless stick out like a sore thumb, and probably get my contributions ignored. I'll defo make a game someday, though - the thing is, I have these epic cinematic visions in my head of current-gen-quality presentation levels, and the reality would be a lot more humble and rough around the edges. I could work with that though, do something interesting at least with it, if not create a breakthrough masterpiece.
It's unfortunate that so many studios, who have all the means to make brilliant games, settle for the easy, lazy, quick money. To think there are so many utterly samey, yawnsome franchises that get a full new release literally every year, and yet we're still waiting for
The Last Guardian to be released on PS3, which has apparently been in development for 8 years! Guess that's just mainly a case of perfectionism gone mad on Ueda's part, and Sony have shown remarkable faith and patience in not shelving it and still classing it as 'in development', but it shows that adventure games should always be crafted with great love and care, and Ueda is a bona fide genius, his games are so utterly beautiful it's hard to adequately describe. There'll be mourning if it gets cancelled, and the usual suspects all carry on with their conveyor belt of trash regardless.
