Topic: I'm Gonna Be Majoring in Game Design But...

He started small too. Ever heard of a little game called Radar Scope? Miyamoto made that, and it sucked. But without it, we wouldn't have Donkey Kong. Even the greatest minds in gaming had rough starts, and so you shouldn't expect to make an all-time classic on your first try. Everyone has to start somewhere.

And if you hate the games on XNA, that's great! It'll inspire you to make something better.

XNA has some good games like the Arkedo series and Carnyvale Showtime.

Wait... All indie games look like crap? When did this happen? I can run off quite a good sized list of really good looking indie games.

Cave Story (Which is free on PC)
La Mulana (Also free on PC)
Spelunky (Free on PC)
World of Goo
Bit.Trip Series
Knytt Stories (Free on PC)
Braid
And I could go on...

Sure, these games don't have the high resolution textures of some PS3 and 360 games on high polygon count models, but that doesn't mean they don't look great. The graphics of a game should fit what the developer is going for with the game. And in all those cases, their graphical look is right on the money.

And as others have said. You need experience to make ground breaking games. And the only way to get that experience is to make games, whether they are good or not. Every game you make will teach you something about what does and doesn't work and what sorts of things you are good at. As it has been said previously, even Miyamoto made some not so good games before he found an idea that really worked well.

Hmm go with wiiware then or whatever is out after wii Somethingware

Hmm go with wiiware then or whatever is out after wii Somethingware

Well I guess I'd better start somewhere because I don't want to end up like LJN did back in the 80s where they made some of the worst NES games based off good movies and TV shows (i.e. Back To The Future, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.)

Wait a second, games like Cave Story are Indie games? Then in that case I take back what I said about them being crap. However I don't think I want to start out making iphone games unless I find making Indie games hard.

@good I thought you said gaming was not about graphics?

I doubt you will be making games for anything anytime soon so its not really something you need to worry about. Do you have any alternate careers in mind in case game design doesn't pan out?

I'm begining to think we're not all using the same vocabulary here.

Good - an Indie game is one that is made by a person or team that is not part of a much larger company that has had previous success (Indie stands for Independent).
Thus, while something like "Madden NFL '10 for iPhone" is not an Indie game, something like "Fling" or "Rolando" is.

Also, you shouldn't need 6 years to finish college. 4 years should cover your generals and the courses you need for your major.
Do you have any programming experience?
It's not as glamorous as you might think. And it's certainly not easy.

You see Twilight Princess and say "yeah I'm going to make something like that." Now you aren't. Ever.
Games like that are the product of dozens of employees working 60+ hours per week for 2+ years.

Then... don't? You're the one making the game, it's up to you what it ends up looking like.

Dude you know that one most iphone games are indie right. Also iphone and XNA are where you want to start off if your beginning like me.

1) iphone and XNA SDK's are free to download
2)The publishing lisence is cheap. $100 for an iphone game $100 to publish XNA games for a year
3) you said you want to make DSiware games too. well most DSiware games are ported from the iphone.
4)You have to pay get your game rated by the ESRB(not sure on that) that's null and void on Iphone and XNA

these are the closet you will get to wiiware and DSiware right now. Also developing whole games for the respective serivce's now it will be easier to port them to the nintendo systems.