What did you think you would be doing the most as a game developer when you were studying/trying to get into the profession versus what you did you actually end up doing the most once you got the job?

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When I was a child, I dreamed of making the levels and coming up with cool features and abilities for characters in games. What kind of weapon, what kind of ability, what kind of item, what kind of bad guy, and so on and so forth. As I got older and learned more about how stuff worked, I thought I would be coming up with things like the characters, story, and the overall look and feel of the game. I believed I would be the one telling everyone else what to do, the quintessential "idea person".

Once I got to the university level and started taking computer science courses to learn how to make my ideas reality, I started thinking about how I would apply what I learned to making my ideas reality. A lot of seemingly-unrelated classes like linear algebra and vector math were actually very helpful in understanding classes like Computer Graphics and how it all works. Data Structures actually ended up being an incredibly important class. Ultimately, I took a software engineering course that required me to build a semester-long project. I chose to build a Half-Life game mod with a small team of others. It was during that course that I actually learned what game dev is really like (building features, adding assets, fixing bugs, tuning values, working with a team) and I realized I really liked it - so much so that I continued developing mods on my own after the class concluded.

Since graduation, the things I've worked on day to day in my career have mostly been doing the same things I learned in that software engineering class - I'm building features, adding assets, fixing bugs, tuning values, and working with a team. The features I build are bigger and more complex, the assets I use are higher fidelity and more complex, the tuning I do is more involved and complex, and the teams that I work with are bigger and more professional, but it's still in the same style as before - I can see that I've leveled up a lot and have a much greater understanding and ability than before, but it's still the same kind of skills involved.

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