It seems like the only way you can end up as a successful game developer is if you grew up with your own computer and your parents gave you unlimited computer privileges.
ひげ
@xianc78 idk about "successful" but i started using rpg maker on the family computer when i was 10 years old :)
@beardalaxy I don't know how much RPG Maker costed back then, but I knew for a fact that my parents wouldn't buy me GameMaker Pro which costed $50 and required you to repay for every update. I messed around with GameMaker Lite, but it was severely limited and lacked certain features like scaling and rotating sprites.
There was also Video Game Tycoon which allowed you to create 3D action games and even burn them onto CD. It was in a monthly Scholastic book catalog that was given out to us in our elementary school. I really wanted it, but our teachers urged us not to buy anything on there outside of books (they couldn't prohibit us/our parents from doing so, but it was heavily discouraged), and my parents agreed with them (being public school teachers and education advocates themselves).
I think I was aware of RPG Maker back then, but I probably wrote it off because I felt like a genre specific game maker was worthless and I didn't care for turn-based games back then.
@xianc78 no idea how much rpg maker was back when i was a kid but i actually used a cracked version i found on a freewebs site lol. it was called "Postality Knights Edition" and i believe it was translated from the japanese release so that english users could use it before it came to the west.
there was also fps creator that i used when i was a teenager and had a slightly better computer haha. kind of fun.
the same company that made that, thegamecompany, made something called "3d game builder" or something like that. begged my parents for it because it was in one of those scholastic book fairs but they didn't want to get it for me xD very similar situation there.
i tried game maker a little bit but it didn't really jive with me. i also tried this thing called "adventure game maker" and it came bundled with a MIDI tracker. that was my introduction to creating digital music!
@beardalaxy I tried to find a way to get a cracked version of Game Maker Pro working, but I didn't know how to pirate software (outside of ROMs) back then.
There was another program that I forgot to mention earlier. It was DS Game Maker. It was also shareware and let you make DS games, but the Lite version was even more limited than GameMaker Lite. It only allowed you to have three rooms and no save feature.
But it looks like the project is still around and is now FOSS.
https://digitaldesigndude.github.io/DSGM-Resource-Site/index.html