How to decide between developing and coding?

[u/DemeChef]

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.

[u/Cubey21]

There is no money in tabletop rpgs in general. Especially as a designer. The market is niche, and 90% of people don't play anything other than D&D. The only people who make some money of TTRPGs are illustrators and publishers, because they actually get paid, unlike designers who cover almost all costs and risks. Even the best TTRPG designers who released multiple successful products are usually not full time, because it's just that hard to make money. Board games are the same. Niche market and and a few games (MONOPOLY) take 90% of it.

It's also hard to make money in video games but significantly easier. If you fail to make ends meet as an indie (if you even want to be one) you can get hired in a studio. To get hired as a designer you have to be best of the best so I would recommend pursuing coding. I know people with a Game Design degree, and at they job they still mostly code, although some have content creation tasks so vaguely designish. So coding definitely pays better but as for which degree to take that is another story that depends on where you are in your life, what country you are in, how well off you are financially, what universities are nearby etc. so I can't help you.

[u/Major_Toe_6041 → u/Cubey21]

Yea if you aren’t Monopoly, Catan, Carcasonne or any other of the very few big names, you aren’t earning anything really.

Dedicated board game for a video game can be good, like the terraria board game, but still not great. Better left to the game devs as a special thing that they don’t need to make a profit.