Introduction
The FX artist is a support character. FX is there to help the environments sell the mood, it's there to communicate gameplay and let the players know that what they are doing affects the world. FX is there to keep the game world alive when the animations stop. It's there to hide things that didn't get done in time, and it's there to be the shiny distraction while the magician (designer) does a quick swap with the other hand. A big part of the work an FX artist makes is not seen, but felt. When FX is well integrated in a scene they aren't noticed, but the feeling they are built to convey just "happens" to the player. Then we have the other side of the card where it's very much designed to be noticed. It is often the explosive crescendo to massive E3 demos and the backbone of any action trailer.
There are a few things to keep in mind when starting out in FX. Effects never exist in isolation. Most effects look quite bad when viewed on their own, as they are always built to support something else in the game. This means two things, the first is that it can be hard to understand how to build an effect by just looking at a reference. The second is that even if you have access to the effect to have a look at it, it can be hard to understand all the connections. Luckily, you don't start in that end. You build up to that complexity and this buildup is probably what makes it seem more complex than other areas.
An FX artist has a lot of tools available to do all these things, but none is more important that particles. Particles let you fill the world with magic, sparks, smoke, fire and light. They are the bread and butter for any effect and it's a good place to start learning.