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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."
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"
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
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.
Wal-Mart choosing not to carry a game/album/movie for whatever reason they choose has nothing to do with free speech.
Nor does a school deciding whats appropriate material for coursework.
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with people listening to you.
Once you graduate you can write whatever game you want, and if retailers dont want to sell it, thats their freedom of choice being excercised. No one persons rights (percieved or real) may infringe on anothers.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
NO ONE IS HIRING!!!!!
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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
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HallmarkOrnaments.Com
With Romero on the staff you might see admissions by 2007 ;-)
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.
SMU is in no way a christian university. It's purely a name so they can drag money out of people. This CNN article about a Meth lab they found in their music building should be enough motivation.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
IMHO, this sounds like a good place to go *after* getting that CS degree.
If they either don't teach or don't require some or most of those "other things", this would turn out to be the MCSE of the game programming world, if it survived at all...
anyone who's even slightly familiar with programming knows that game programming involves math very heavily...
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
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.
Oh, so it's Southern Methodist...
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)
DUH priests play DnD...haven't you ever heard of clerics?
Ideas are cheap. Go to any game developer, be they an artist, programmer, level designer, or whatever, and you'll find dozens of interesting ideas for games.
There are two problems. 1) Creative doesn't mean good. An idea may just be stupid. A creative idea might even be interesting and exciting, but not actually produce something fun to play (like the inspired but unplayable Black and White). 2) The business types are cowards. Generic Fighting Game XXVII is seen as safe. It doesn't matter that there are (even after filtering out the bad ideas), many, many creative ideas available to them, they're only interested in low risk projects. It's harsh, but it's also their money.
All that said, while yes the industry is awash in clones and knock-offs, there is always some genuine innovation going on. In the last year for the PS/2 we've seen imaginative titles like Sly Cooper, Kingdom Hearts, and Rez . On other systems we saw Animal Crossing, Freedom Force, Morrowind, and Mafia . Head back a little further and you have brilliant titles like Ico, Jet Grind Radio, or Pikmin . Yes, Grant Theft Auto: Vice City and Warcraft III are both derivative, but they're sequels to cutting edge games that changed expectations. Grand Theft Auto III redefined open ended game play and believable worlds. Warcraft effectively popularized real-time strategy games. Perhaps they're derivative, but they're fundamentally good games which have been continually refined and improved. Why pick on them if they shipping games that are genuinely fun? Instead, complain about Generic Real-Time Strategy II, Racing Game Number 8576, or Street Soul Mortal Ultimate Fighter Extreme Blade Combat IV.
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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