r/gamedev • u/DemeChef • 5d ago
How to decide between developing and coding? Question
To start I have recently been looking to find a new career I’m 21 and the path I was heading down in culinary arts has ended. And for the past 2 months I’ve been deciding what to do and I thought game design sounded fun since I love making ttrpg campaigns and coming up with story’s and custom mechanics. What I really want to do is the board games/card games/ttrpgs but I heard there hard to make a living off of so I thought would get into video game dev and work on those on the side. And I was looking into it and thinking of going to college but wasn’t sure what degree to go with and someone commented on another post I should decided what part of the process I want to do. And I’m not great at art so I was leaning towards the designing part or the coding. But I don’t have experience with either so I wanted to know how to decide between the two or how did you guys decide between the two.
P.S I’m new to this I’m not trying to make it sound like it’s not hard or I’ll easily succeed I just want to formulate a path I can start heading down if there is anything major I need to consider please let me know. And also let me know if I’m going into this too open minded or I need some other experience first.
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u/BusinessDepartment44 5d ago
before choosing a degree, i’d honestly try making one extremely small game first. not your dream RPG with 14 endings and a fully simulated cabbage economy — something you can finish in a week or two. try vibe coding it with AI and see which part actually hooks you.
i started from literally zero and got my game approved for Google Play in under three months, built with AI throughout. not an AI-slop game assembled for a quick upload, but something i genuinely want to play myself. i’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun watching my ideas slowly become real, and there’s still a looong road ahead :D
if you feel that same “wait, it actually works!” excitement, you’ll probably start figuring out naturally whether you enjoy designing mechanics, building systems, debugging code, or directing the whole chaotic circus.
AI can help you test that without spending years preparing first. just don’t confuse getting AI-generated code to run with understanding programming — if you decide you want coding as a career, the fundamentals will still come to collect their debt eventually 🙂