Just to throw another idea out there, a further alternative would be to work/look at open-source games. Technology wise you are definitely in the correct direction, most common languages in game dev are C++ and various scripting languages (from my experience).
I have no idea how much time you have or what sort of stuff you want to do in games (e.g. graphic/sound engine, networking, ai...) but since you mentioned FPS games, you could look into Xonotic. It is a fast FPS game, open-source and based on a heavily improved Quake3 engine.
That might give you a better idea of what components make a game and you will not have to worry about artworks etc. if you want to contribute/fork.
But I figure, while contributing to open-source will help you understand games better, it will not get you hired without networking I think. You can also check out the SIGGRAPH convention presentations, lots of interesting, although maybe too specialised, stuff there.
Just to throw another idea out there, a further alternative would be to work/look at open-source games. Technology wise you are definitely in the correct direction, most common languages in game dev are C++ and various scripting languages (from my experience).
I have no idea how much time you have or what sort of stuff you want to do in games (e.g. graphic/sound engine, networking, ai...) but since you mentioned FPS games, you could look into Xonotic. It is a fast FPS game, open-source and based on a heavily improved Quake3 engine.
That might give you a better idea of what components make a game and you will not have to worry about artworks etc. if you want to contribute/fork.
But I figure, while contributing to open-source will help you understand games better, it will not get you hired without networking I think. You can also check out the SIGGRAPH convention presentations, lots of interesting, although maybe too specialised, stuff there.