This isn't "discuss how you got into game design", so I'll shorten that bit to say I started developing games in 2009.
I was feeling confident, looking at HaloMaps. "I could totally do that stuff," a younger me pronounced. I still have a copy of the tutorial video I downloaded way back when our cap was 10GBs (massive in a time before I was regularly using Facebook and YouTube) and download speeds were virtually dial-up. 70 forgetIN' MEGABYTES. THAT'S HUGE. It wasn't all I had to download either; the HEK and GMax (and all the other tools and tag collections) weren't cheap in terms of download size or time spent downloading, but I really wanted to make HaloMaps from scratch. I was so set on making the world's first Halo overhaul that would make me a millionaire and famous.
I still remember that afternoon. I would watch about 10 seconds of the video, jump into GMax, replicate, go back, double check all my values and then continue forward. At the time, I thought nothing strange of the guy and his voice, and I didn't really understand terms like "normals", "distortion" or "UVs". Amazingly, I was able to grasp a lot about the modeling process in those tutorials; I figured out for myself why the tutorial had us tessellate the level we were creating (to make more verticies for softer hills), and I even discovered a few shortcuts to the long and tedious parts of the video.
The level compiled perfectly, and in she went. With that tutorial out of the way, I then went ahead and messed with the engine mapping tools; it wouldn't be for a while before I tried to walk the path on my own. The results...were loving ghastly.
I pretty quickly gave up on this map (and modelling in general for a while); not because it was putrid stuff (I was too stupid to see that), but rather because I was a bored and dumb kid and I wanted to do something else. The map never got in engine; not for lack of trying, but rather lack of understanding (the documentation which I did read states very clearly that all "holes" must be closed, and you can see some pretty gaping ones all over the place).
For a long while, I spent a lot of my time interacting with modelling programs like Lightwave and 3DS Max while extracting game assets, for various purposes. There was also the abysmal Drama HSC animation, which I doubt I'll ever live down, which was my attempt at a 3D CGI animation using extract LEGO and GTA models. All of this was without training or experience; just playing with buttons and knobs and trying to see what works and what doesn't.
Nowadays, I'm formally trained in Maya, Max and Mudbox (which is a sculpting program, but I use it in cooperation with Mudbox). I reckon I'm decent; it's just not where I like spending my time (I prefer to be a programmer/writer).
