Julianne, that’s a tough question … There’s not really a “best way” to get started in game development, but a pretty safe bet would be “Learn as much as you can.” If you’re already familiar with development, you might study platform-specific development, and if you already know the platform, it’s a matter of coming up with the next great game idea. If you are starting from ground-zero, there are a lot of resources online that can help you through the process of learning about coding, level design and graphics.

Depending on the type of game, the infrastructure you’ll need will vary, and what you’ll use while you develop is going to differ significantly from what you’ll use when you push the game into production.

It’s pretty intimidating to get started with game development because it seems so difficult, but the effort you put into learning will pay off in the long term.