Slashdot Mirror
Want To Make Video Games?
Invader Zim writes "Looks like Levelord, of Ritual fame, and some folks at id, and Ensemble Studios have teamed together with Southern Methodist University to create a new school for people that want to work in the video games industry. It's called the Guildhall. Also a story about it at GameTutorials."
Hopefully, this will be a blessing for overcrowded Computer Sciences classes. I remember when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was make video games. Alas, most of university/college courses cover other things, such as business utilities, or math problems. While this does help programming skills, it isn't hands on experience in the field of choice for most students.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Just wandering about the curious choice of school, given the problems we've seen lately with WalMart not carrying theose "ultra violent" games. Free speech and so on.
Had me worried for a second. But a school in Texas would probably be an okay place to learn how to code first person shooters.
I had nightmares about what kind of video games a truly christian university would focus on.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The video game industry is already cut-throat. It's already hard enough to make a living using your programming skills. Imagine how difficult it's going to be like to get a job with "Video Game College" on your resume.
Besides, do you really think a Methodist church is going to teach you how to create First Person Shooters?!
has added game development (BS degree), though I am doing the straight SE track.
cogswell.edu for those interested
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
course testing only pays $8/hr. to start, but right now, they're giving him 80+ hours a week, so i think he's happy with em.
80 hours of games a week, that would be a light week for an evercrack head, right?
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Yep, you're thinking of DigiPen. Its still around, in Seattle I believe
Isn't that a little, well, nerdy? Do they forego grades in favor of experience points, and require new students to choose an Alignment and Class instead of a major?
Seriously, they should probably be going out of their way to appeal to creative non-geeks, artists and writers who can come up with new ideas and revitalize the stagnant game market. Sure, you can always eke out a few dollars from the latest boring iteration of a proven formula, Grand Theft Auto 7 or Warcraft VI. What the industry needs is fresh ideas from different sorts of people.
The very problem with the foundering game industry is that it's run by, well, let's just say the people who were picked last in kickball. Games appeal to the most antisocial element of society, because that's all their creators know. I guess it's too optimistic of me to ask this of the founders of this school...they're probably geeks themselves, with not a creative bone in their bodies.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
It's ironic that this happens and yet it's considered a poor-man's profession. Programmers in this field are generally poorly treated, with poor contracts, little chance of advancement, and little cross-skillification that would allow a programmer to move into a more respected arena. This is, in part, because it's an entertainment area, and in part because for every superskilled programmer who is able to push the arena into a new paradigm, there must be a hundred who can barely put together a bunch of assembler instructions to copy memory from one place to another without it taking five times as long as it ought to, and containing bugs.
This quagmire of the more innovative area of programming being hampered by a low perception of the people involved and the skills they bring to the table will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them you value programmers who have the imagination and skills to create entirely new technologies for the manipulation of complex graphics, and who have the cut needed to understand the essentials of good game play. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to create wonderful new games but that if good programmers are put off by poor working conditions and salaries, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how poor working conditions detering the best of the best harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on elite computer game programmers.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
It's called the "LARC", for "Laboratory for Recreational Computing", and was started in 1993. Check it out here.
The lab is run by a professor (Ian Parberry) who has published a few books on game programming.
NO ONE IS HIRING!!!!!
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...
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... I think that would clearly illustrate just how flooded the market is with "computer people" that want to work in the video game market ...
... these people will TRY to get a job with an established video game company ... then TRY to start up their own video game company after 6+ months of unemployment ... then they'll rush a crappy product to market so that they don't starve to death ...
... I have a company like this ... and one our programmers did this!!!!
... it is our web hosting and web design that makes money and allows us to keep making games .... so how are unemployed people going to make games if you have to pay to keep games running?????)
/Venting >
< Venting >
Thats great that they're going to share some of their "trade secrets", but it won't do anyone any good if they can't land a job!!
So basically, they're going to help flood the programming world with young, ambitious "game" programmers that won't know how to or want to do anything but make video games
This will lead to flooding the market (even worse than it already is) with badly designed games that have a couple of pieces of eye candy
Actually, I wonder how many apps Blizzard just got for their Unix sysadmin position
The biggest problem will be the number of lives a school like this will ruin
Trust me
(btw: our games don't make money
<
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Making video games is over-rated. If you enjoy very tight deadlines and having to cut corners due to time and budget restrictions then that's all well and good.
The pay is crap too.
With Romero on the staff you might see admissions by 2007 ;-)
and $37,000 tutition, there had better be job placement!
I have just applied to universities here in the UK, and I looked at the few computer game design courses available.
Most of them are very poor, they have low enterance requirements (someone at my college got in without even a maths A level!), and aren't run by any of the good universities (imagine Oxford doing a BA in computer game design - hardly).
I've opted to do a generic as possible degree, a masters in computer science, at a good, respected university (either Oriel college Oxford, Durham or Bristol).
I can't imagine why anyone would want to do one of these fashionable degrees like "wireless computing", "internet technology" or the computer games ones. People who want to do game design should study maths, physics or pure computer science.
Think of it like this, how many really good directors or actors went to one of these film schools one sees advertised in the back of film mags? Probably not many.
The tuition rates are rounded to the nearest thousand, and the first semester fee's include:
" Tuition for the first term includes a fully loaded computer specially configured for digital game development."
http://guildhall.smu.edu/Admissions/tuition.htm
After further review, it appears that this is _quarterly_ rates. (6 term, 18 month program.)
Yeah, but sex ed is already mainstream - so much so that it's more likely the students know more than the teachers (sounds like the same situation vis. computers in schools - I guess life is becoming fractal).
"They're trying to produce a generation of young Americans so dismally uneducated that they'll fall for any idiotic junk-science and pseudo-philosophy that comes down the pike."
I hate to point out the obvious, but that's kinda how things are as we speak.
this is nuts. in a few years, we'll have
H ollywood
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Yeah, I got nothin'.
Duh, they aren't going to teach you programming from scratch. They assume you're able to write something like Pong, Snake or Tetris if you decide to attend and need proof that you can do that.
what do you think the difference between a "First God Smiter" and a "First Person Shooter" is?
None that I can see.
There's a way around nearly every idiotic bias,at least for those with the intelligence to be game designers in the first place.
KFG
I have a friend that is a xbox developer in San Jose. I once joked to him that if he needs a play tester to call me asap :) He laughed and said, thats a job for my worst enemy. Apparently playing the same game, over and over and over at the same point (bug hunting, reproducing the error, etc) gets extremely boring ;(
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Game testing isn't really the fun-filled job you'd think it would be. You sit there and do one part over and over again. Or you die on purpose. You aren't paid to play the game, your paid to do very specefic things in specefic parts of the game. You're hunting for bugs, not playing for kicks. Just warning you.
Why not fork?
Your friends lied. They went to hamburger university, but were too ashamed to admit it. While stumbling for an answer, they looked around the room and the first thing they saw was your Nintendo sitting in the corner. Like Jan Brady in the "George Glass" fiasco, they blurted out, "Nintendo! Um, yeah...Nintendo college." Yeah right. Boy are you gullible.
There's another college in northern California that has a game design program. It's called Cogswell Polytechnical College (http://www.cogswell.edu). They're fully acredited and have a Bachelor's degree program for Computer Video Imaging and Computer Science with majors in game design, 2D animation, 3D character animation, video editing, etc. I'm in the game design program there, and I'm having the time of my life and am set to get a job at EA Games this summer.
The school also has a Game Development Club where many students get together and develop games each semester in the same process that most game companies do. Check out their website: http://www.fuzzywoto.org/
(it'll soon be changing to www.gameclubworldwide.com)
For a good personal account of game testing and the medium, check out this entry at Penny Arcade. It's a good description of the ups and downs of being a game tester.
--
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
the easiest way to get a job at a games company is to be a *physicist.*
Here's your course work for your first sememster as a games programing major:
*English* 101
Physics 101
Calc 101
Intro to Computer Science - which will consist mostly of theory, but don't worry, you'll get to write "Hello World!" in four different languages.
KFG
It's a logical progression that after you've written a few games yourself, you'd join a free game project or start your own. Then you're on your way. If you've already done some college (like they're requiring) then you should know how to lay out a project correctly.
I suppose you'd get some industry contacts, a skookum computer, and some friends doing the same thing as you. You'd also have the free time to actually concentrate on your gaming skills (instead of having some pesky job in the way). And okay, you get a nice certificate..
Okay, it sounds like it might actually be useful..
"Game testing isn't really the fun-filled job you'd think it would be. You sit there and do one part over and over again. Or you die on purpose. You aren't paid to play the game, your paid to do very specefic things in specefic parts of the game. You're hunting for bugs, not playing for kicks. Just warning you."
/. article.
I remember one guy saying that he had to test every single play in a football game to make sure that it's consistent with what the interface shows you. Can you imagine that? It'd be as tedious as spell checking a
No, but every other fantasy writer that's published in 2003 will.
1. Program game. 2. Release as shareware. 3. $$$ PROFIT $$$ Easy as pie. Unless you're completely untalented, in which case you probably shouldn't be creating games, neh?
That these schools produce no-talent programmers who know how to slap down a template for a 3D engine, but don't know much else. Most students I've met that have come out of these schools know little of basic algorithms and data structures, such as binary trees, let alone more complex computing topics such as encryption, compression, etc. I mourn the loss of the gaming industry if these things start becoming popular.
a +1 troll rating would be a good thing to have. The post is a true work of art, consisting of clearly factual, reasonably stated points, and still maintaining its essential "trollness."
There's no way to even tell it's a troll until you're most of the way through it.
A brilliant piece of work.
KFG
As someone who comes from a traditional academic background and now working in the game industry, I would like to say a few words.
Video games are becoming more "academic" as they become more complex, and games these days are a catalyst for continued innovation in areas such as graphics, AI, and physics simulation. Therefore, the intersection between video games and academia in general is growing all the more.
A traditional computer science/fine arts/film/music/etc. education to get the foundations of your chosen trade, be it programmer, artist, musician, etc. will serve you well compared to schools that just inject you with the latest "buzzwords" and techniques which will soon become obsolete as soon as the next big programming language/3D package/etc come out -- those schools to game industry what certifications like "MSCE" or "CNE" is to the IT industry: you can use your skills but don't expect them to last without additional training.
I am not criticizing gaming school as I am indeed aware that some of them do indeed have highly regarded programs that focus on the development of general technical and thinking skills, but do not think you MUST go to a "gaming" school to work in this industry, and if you choose to go that route, evaluate what they teach you very carefully.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Sounds like id and other game companies are looking to recruit well-trained pee-ons to make their maps and color their textures. A true game programmer would have to have good working knowledge of mathematics and physics, not to mention the extensive computer science back ground. I wonder if this "major" will have that?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
yes...thats what everyone seems to think. There's a lot more to it than that...have you ever spent 4 days staring at a polygon counter, trying to keep everything down to where it's within spec while the artists keep wanting to "improve" (read: raise poly count) it, or spent hours (or months) on end doing nothing but staring at the FPS readout, writing them down, putting them in excel sheets (because the programmers were too busy to make a tool for it by this point in the project) to track performance? This is the grim reality of game testing, my friend.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
is digipen
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
you know.. I wanter to rate it +1, the truth, but it's not listed so here's my tale:
Get as much math and physics down as you can, because if ANYTHING matters, it's that. These days everybody can fire up a direct9 wiz to create 'a game', spinning some polygons and acting on some input, but networking, math, physics, and platform experience are the things that count.. and you can only dream to get the last one if you can conveince people with the first ones..
Of course, a healthy appetite for working, clean, fast, interesting, pretty, funny and playfull code should not miss the list, but the main thing is to get as much understanding of all things math and physics, because basicly it's your ticket into the metal. Once you're there, you're 'in'.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
As someone who has also just filled in his UCAS form and got 6 offers from universities, i'd have to say i disagree with this.
Most of the courses are at Ex-polytechnics, with the low requirements that go with them, however on the most part the are excellent courses that do well to teach generic work as well straight games applications.
Case in point being my current favourite: Hull
An old style university doing Computer Science With Games Development
Entry requirement being BCC
Don't confuse low entry with bad courses, they dont' always go together, I have been to Oxford on the open days (i'm predicted AABA for A level) I'd have to say their courses are great theoretical courses, but seem to be incredibly low on practical applications.
Just my views though YMMV
"Tuition for the first term includes a fully loaded computer specially configured for digital game development. The student will use this computer through the six terms at The Guildhall. Ownership of the computer will pass to the student at the end of the fourth term"
Hmmm... that would make the computer worth about $2.00 by the time you graduate (which you can tack onto the $1.00 your degree will be worth).
What ever happened to the old way of learning how to code (be it for gaming or any other software centric industry)? Go to a normal university and study CS.
come on fhqwhgads
english? Hmm. Never programmed that language...sounds like some kind of hokey scripting language...is it like Perl?
The English programming language, used with the Pick operating system, is more like SQL.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm sorry, but if you are trying to sell a programming course, or curriculum, or whatever, it would be nice if the web-site worked...properly...with standards...since they are trying to teach Standards in Game Programming.
Anyway, there is no DOCTYPE in the page, sending the browser (Phoenix/Moz/Gecko based) into quirks mode, and the navigation is just a pain in the ass. It's a challenge of can I move my mouse fast enough over the other layers before the disappear or if I can move to the 2nd/3rd links before the sub-nav layer appears on top of the primary nav.
I'm glad they have this, and I think it is good, especially when being driven by these companies, but they should be able to present themselves too. After all, will you send your kid to a school that can't even present themselves? You are paying a lot of money...
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
"Twice a year, 100 are chosen for The Guildhall...This is an opportunity to test your mettle with the best in the business...It isn't easy, but The Guildhall can get you there. Do you accept the challenge?"
Weed out the weak, fight to the death, king of the mountain, competitive CRAP!! While this is the world of many games, this is totally inappropriate in education. Education should never be a boot camp. Damn competition! Let it be about teaching and nurturing, guiding, and learning for Christ's sake! And this is supposely a Christian college????
You should see 'test sheets' at some places, detailing the scene and goal of the scene, and listing all the different posibilities, and a checklist that the tester has done all of them. It feels like this:
Game testing has about zero appeal. Most people think "that would be fun" because they are ignorant. They see the final product and think it's easy. That just means the creators did good work.
Game programming is similar. The hours are crazy, the pay is low, expectations are high, deadlines are tight, specs keep changing, and the stress is insane. Sure there are a few (as in not very many, as in you won't ever get one) game jobs that don't have the problems, but it isn't the common case.
I would LOVE to see everyone who wants to program games actually be forced into the game market for one year. After the year, there would be enough decrease in demand that salaries might go up to a reasonable level with a corresponding drop in stresses.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
You sit there and do one part over and over again.
So it's like Everquest?
Did anyone else happen to take notice of the fact that this course(s) are going to be held at SMU - a private college that has a STRONG christian influence....I can see it now....
SMU: So what is the name of your project you are working on?
Student: Well I'm thinking of making an add-on to "Omnikron"
SMU: Oh and what do you do in this game?
Student: Well the game originally dealt with you transfering your soul into a character in another world through your game but you end up losing it to this demon and....
SMU: Excuse me but I don't think that would be a suitable game for our viewers!
Student: But i'm going to make it so Jesus saves you from hell
SMU: Oh, well in that case you get an A
*on a side note - the site wouldn't work on my Mac (as in I kept getting errors when trying to click on the links) - but on my PC it worked fine - nice going SMU!
Ave Molech Setting
A nice article on what its really like to be a game tester.
I recently graduated with a BSCS and BSMath from a small, private, well-reputated university. Having the extra degree on my resume has done little. It has broadened my view of programming and helped me in many other areas though. Perhaps one day it will matter as far as a job is concerned, but it hasn't yet.
As a CS major (junior-level) at one of the top CS schools in the US (#11, last I checked), I honestly have to wonder what they're going to teach at that course that I couldn't get from a few books and a generalized CS degree. The coursework itself will be useful, but the question is, do the benefits outweigh the costs?
And, moving on, I teach myself lots of things in the programming field. I resent the idea that people somehow think I'm "dumb and don't understand the real world" because I'm smart enough to realize that guidance in learning is a good thing. It seems to be a fairly common opinion on Slashdot that kids in college are mechanical robots who can only do what teacher's taught them. I don't confuse this with knowing everything - but I have confidence that I'm smart enough to learn.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Let me preface my comments by stating that I worked in the computer gaming industry for several years. During my years in the gaming industry, I have worked on titles for PSX and Windows, and also worked on what was probably the earliest commercially available full 3D game engine for massive multiplayer online games - and this was back in 95 before such things became commonplace. So while you may not agree with my comments, they are not without foundation and experience.
Look at the cost.
For a time commitment of 18 months, you will find yourself $37,000 in the debt. After which time you will hold a 'certificate' that only qualifies you to work in a single industry. Since this is not a degree, but merely a certificate (what is a MSCE certificate worth?), you won't have much to fall back on if the game career doesn't work out.
Look at what you get.
You get a 'fully loaded computer' for an extra fee of $5000. A great deal of the cost is probably software, but you can build a phenominal computer for less that $2000, and since they are probably getting the software at educational discounts, even if they are installing SoftImage, Maya, 3DSMax, Photoshop, and Lightwave for artists. The software required for programmers is probably less. A copy of Visual Studio for Windows since they will probably teach game programming for DirectX. As a student at about any university, you could get the stuff for less.
Who is doing the teaching?
It is not really clear, but from the endorsements of the industry leaders who say such things as " I can't wait to teach at The Guildhall", it seems to infer that the people listed on the sight might be doing the teaching. If this is the case, then consider
John Romero - did level design at id and thought he was God. Part of the braintrust at ION Storm (along with Todd Porter and Tom Hall ) that blew through over $30 million of Eidos' money with only Daikatana and Anachronox to show for it. Not the model of success that you want to emulate.
Kill Creek - aka Stevie Case. Claim to fame was beating John Romero in Quake, getting the opportunity to yell "Suck it down, bitch" back to John Romero, posing nude for Playboy, and marrying John Romero.
Tom Hall - okay, Tom has a decent rap sheet with Anachronox, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity and a lot of earlier stuff that was very pretty good at the time.
What does this certificate qualify you for?
Working in the game industry, which by the way, pays very poorly. Game companies staff the production teams with one or two senior members who actually earn a real salary, and then staff the rest with kids fresh out of school who will work the typical 70 hour weeks for peanuts and not complain because the job is cool. While this is exceptional fun while you are young, if you ever decide to settle down, get married, have kids or buy a house, you will find yourself looking in a different industry for work. However, game programming skills, if you have a rock solid education and phenominal math and programming skills, can get you hired writing simulators for military contractors. Trust me, though, you won't be learning what you need for these types of jobs in 18 months.
If you decide to leave the gaming industry, you won't be qualified to work in any other field. This game programming certificate is probably even worse than the Devry/ITT schools that convince people that they will make lots of money with a two year tech degree.
My personal experience is that most of the programmers who do well in the gaming industry have degrees in Computer Science with a strong math and physics background, or a physics degree with a strong programming and math background. You can't really try to shortcut the process down to 18 months and expect to have the qualifications that employers are looking for.
My own $0.02 so you don't waste $37,000.
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
That is light compared to the Sony of America TRC (Technical Requirements Sheet I think) I had to do everyting from restart the PS2 100 times to unplug and re-plug the controllers 100 times. My favorite was testing a racing game. I had to run in to every wall in the game at differents speeds to see if I could pass though them. When i was just about done I accidentally hit one in reverse and went straight through. Had to repeat each test backwards for every track. Oh well, at least I wasn't working on the fishing game or like some of my friends at another company Britiny Spears Dance Fever.