I am a c/c++ sofeware engineer for 6 years, and have a steady job. However, I　love game, especially MMRPG game, such as ShadowBonw, WOW. I want to become a game developer or producer, what can I do? Do I need to continue to go back to school reading more books？ I am Chinese, US is a sacred vedio game place in my mind, Which can give any points ? Who can recommend a better university or school for game developing?

Here's how I did it:

1. Read lots of books; learned a lot about subjects I wasn't familiar with
2. Built a game demo in my spare time, where I applied the things I'd learned and put them into practice
3. Submitted applications to a whole load of studios
4. Eventually got hired!

I would definitely suggest building a demo to include with a resume. It goes a long way.

Quote: Original post by strtok
Here's how I did it:

1. Read lots of books; learned a lot about subjects I wasn't familiar with
2. Built a game demo in my spare time, where I applied the things I'd learned and put them into practice
3. Submitted applications to a whole load of studios
4. Eventually got hired!

I would definitely suggest building a demo to include with a resume. It goes a long way.

What strtok wrote is pretty good advice. Teaching yourself and use that knowledge to build a demo of some sort is very helpful, especially with 6 years of actual software engineering experience.

I would suggest working on a demo with a small group of people, and be able to talk about it. That worked wonders for me. I was applying for jobs fresh out of school but had extensive work on various projects that my friends and I had created. Not one place actually even saw the code, or the demo running but my interviews consisted almost exclusively of talking about it. How it was designed. How certain parts were coded. What I worked on / how I contributed. Etc... This extended to interviews at more traditional 'business' coding jobs as well.

In the end, I took one of the more traditional software engineering jobs (can't argue with much higher pay/benefits than game industry) .. but I did have offers from game companies as well.

Good luck!