Gaming Hacks

Foreword

I’ll let you in on a secret: the best way to make games for a living is . . . to make them.

This is like saying that if you want to be a writer, you should write. If you want to be a singer, then sing. If you really want to be an artist, then paint or sculpt or just put a lump of driftwood on eBay and call yourself an “Outsider.” If you want to try your hand at any endeavor, it makes perfect sense that you should just dig in, get dirty, and see how it suits you. Mucking around is fun; taking things apart to see how they work is an indispensable part of any craft.

But games are such complicated things. How far can one person go in a field in which, more and more, the hit games are products that take years, and teams of people, to create?

The answer is: farther than you might think.

While you won’t necessarily be able to make the next Grand Theft Auto-killer singlehandedly, there is a great deal you can learn by getting into the guts of the games you love: dissecting them, naming the parts, playing Dr. Frankenstein or Moreau as you build new things out of bits and pieces of the old. Even if you don’t have any desire to make games for a living, there is a great deal of fun to be had, and a lot you can learn, tinkering with the pieces. Not everyone who takes apart a watch wants to make Rolexes for a living; sometimes it’s enough just to find out what makes those things tick.

When I was just starting out doing the thing I most wanted to do with my life—write fantasy, horror, and ...