Guildhall at SMU Q&A

An anonymous submitter wrote in about this interview with the director of the Guildhall game development program. Slashdot mentioned it earlier.

Comments

You always find out too late

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

By the time I graduated from college, I had given up on learning how to program games in school, and thus gave up on trying to be a game programmer... oh well. I'll make a game called "Awesome" thats an ugly take off of "Snood" that's an ugly take off of "Bust a Move", and make myself an underground success!!!

Re:You always find out too late

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

You and all the other CS majors who can't find a job right now.

I do have a job... a good one, in fact. It's just not as a game developer. (I mean, what could be more fun than working on a video game everyday, and being able to tell people, "look what I made".... try impressing non-cs people with my fast relational database lookups or something just doesn't work...)

Unemployment: Not just for Philosophy majors!

[stratjakt]

In Class:

These industry experts supporting the Guildhall are what make our program so great! Just think about this - who better to design levels curriculum than Levelord himself? And students at other schools may read about video gaming history, but at the Guildhall our students will hear about how things happened from the people who actually made the history. What's more, our students will not simply talk about their favorite games with fellow students; as part of their coursework, they will actually discuss details of those games with the people who are making them - what a difference!

Extra-curricular:

Aside from classroom assignments and projects, which will run throughout the entire program, our students will have weekly or biweekly LAN parties. Students will take big-name games, challenge each other, and then explore what made it work the way it did. Also, we hear a lot from the experts working with us that a truly professional game developer will never lose sight of the simple fact that games have to be fun to be successful, so of course our students will also spend time discussing what made the games FUN!

Sitting around talking about Pac-Man won't make you employable. Even if you're talking with "Levelord" or the two gay men from Penny-Arcade.

Trust me.

Game Industry *focus*, not *program*

[frohike]

I can't understand for the life of me the headlong rush that a lot of universities are making to become industry training programs or "technical programs" like ITT, DeVry, etc.

The point of going to a university is not to learn a trade, but to get a well rounded higher education, be exposed to a lot of wacky and intelligent people (who you will use as contacts later, and who you'll undoubtedly have lots of interesting conversations with), be away from home, and become yourself. You don't go to a university to become more qualified to get a job.

I fought with this for a long time. I'm one of those self-taught people who started when I was about 6 years old on my TI-99/4A, moved on to PCs, did demos, wrote little games, and so on. When I got to college initially I was very bored because it seemed like I was just doing a bunch of busy work to fulfill requirements for some paper I needed to get a job. However, I started discovering that the school is just a convenient social setting (as mentioned above). Later on towards the end of getting my degree, I discovered that all the focus on those "useless" subjects like the liberal arts classes were some of the things I cherished most from my time there. Reason? I learned a decent amount from taking CS classes, but it wasn't stuff I couldn't have figured out on my own. The liberal arts stuff got me interested in subjects outside my main focus, and got me doing more reading, relating things inside and outside my focus. I can go to a party today and *gasp* talk about things besides computers, intelligently, and have fun with it.

I don't know if that made any sense, so my apologies ahead of time. People who have gone to a general, well rounded university will understand exactly what I'm talking about, and those who refuse to go because it's "a waste of my time" will probably never understand. But I feel sorry for these guys who are going through these intensive industry-based programs. They are really, really missing out. They could have gotten the same basic skills by having a couple extra classes for game design and such (perhaps adding more art/lit classes to their CS, or vice versa), and with a bit of personal determination to study it on their own.

Looked at the web site

[hrieke]

And wasn't impressed. Then I looked at what was offered and really wasn't impressed.

The courses end with you building a FPS game. Where are the classes on designing puzzles, creative writing, composing music, and everything else that goes into being a game designer and developer? Not downplaying what is offered, but there is more to a game play than real time lighting effects and game physics.

Sega's web site once had a great set of articals title "So you want to be a game designer?", and one of the first things they said was to take a shape (like the DC swirl) and describe it, it's function and purpose. That type of streching the mind brough forth games like Ecco and Jet Grind Radio (not to mention Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket and so on).

If you're going to be there for 3 years, I'd hope more is taught about being a developer and designer of games than level design, art design and FPS design.

Will Guildhall address cross-platform issues?

[tps12]

First, I want to thank you for doing this program. It sounds like a great way to infuse the game industry with some "new blood," and I anticipate many wasted hours enjoying the fruits of your labor. :)

One question I have is whether, or in what manner, the issues of cross-platform game development and portability will be taught. I know there are a lot more materials out there on learning DirectX as opposed to SDL, so will the Guildhall teach straight Windows game programming, or will students be encouraged to target multiple platforms? Also, how do you see Linux fit into the game industry as a whole, specifically for new programmers?