If you want to make smallscale indie games you can kind of flail around with your code until you get something that works , and that ' s fine . If you want to make something bigger , do interesting things , work at a company , etc . I find it unlikely not impossible that just messing around on your own will get you to the point that you can do that . Whether you ' re in school or not , 4 years of experience is like the bare minimum for someone to be a relatively competent coder . Everyone is different though so whether you spend those 4 years in school or not depends on how you learn best . You learn a lot of useful things in school , as well as a lot of things that aren ' t useful . <| sep |> I know but that stuff is really expensive in the UK . Thanks though .