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Life At Full Sail - The Gamer School
WICKED writes "Full Sail: The School for Gamers? Are you the type of person that dreams about getting into the gaming industry, but doesn't know where to start from? Join myself and our guest writer Brett, as we take a closer look at Full Sail's Computer Animation and Game Design programs, and bring you the highs and lows throughout our 14 months." Game programming and design education have been in the news a lot more lately, and it's interesting to see a hands-on perspective of what these programs have to offer.
Full Sail? A gaming school? I find that extremely hard to believe. Everything about Full Sail can be summed up like this: The school has everything to make you want to go, but nothing to make you want to stay.
...but from everyone I've heard that attended there or had friends that did say job placement rate sucks, only dedicated (as in you teach yourself with their equipment and make your own homework) students learn anything. Before I leave on a really down note, though, Full Sail is good for a certain type of person. The people who already know what they're doing, people looking to find others to start a company, or people looking to play with expensive equipment.
They're very slick, stylish looking. They came to my high school with a fancy tour bus where we could play rad video games. They had a guy come to our tv production class to tell us how great Full Sail was which I swear up until that point I had never met any of those cheesy tv infomercial guys before.
-Rabbit
If you're not willing to toil for years as the coffee bitch of the industry, scraping and clawing against hundreds of others with your exact credentials for some vague semblance of recognition...don't bother. Seriously. The school starts up a new class every month that averages about 30 people per degree program. That's 360 new people per year who know the same things you do. Who all see the same job openings you do.
I've kept in contact with a few of my friends from my course. One of them now does characters for Disney; you may have seen him in the televised parade this last Christmas. He was one of the Goofy players, if I recall. One flat out gave up and joined the Marines. Another had a recent interview at EA and was told word for word "If you actually want a job, lie. Don't say you went to Full Sail. Everyone knows it's a cookie cutter school." Enlightened by that, she's currently preparing to go back to school this summer to learn how to groom animals. I myself had an interview with a small company here in the DC area that does video editing and military simulations for the government. The interviewer told me (as nicely as possible) that their company had already received several dozen applications from other Full Sail grads, many with more current knowledge than I possessed. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.
A few good things did come out of it all. I wound up with my "war buddies" (never hurts to have references). I obtained an intimate knowledge of how to jaywalk on University Blvd. (FYI, the key is to cross halfway between the lights, just after the big wave passes). I learned how to function at any period of the day, with or without sleep. AND thanks to some of my more unscrupulous classmates, I've got a stack of burned software that would make any warez kiddie plotz. Not that I ever use any of it, of course. I'm a good boy.
If you're still quite adamant about going, all I can say is this: use the school as a stepping stone in your education. Don't come out of it expecting to have Pixar duking it out with Dreamworks over who gets to hire you. Go on to higher education, such as an architecture major at an actual college. Otherwise you'll be like me, who is currently praying to every available diety that the local library system will hire me for an aide position.
Unless, of course, you've got fourty grand burning a hole in your pocket and you've just GOTTA know how Bullet Time works. Then go for it.
Let me set the record straight on all the Full Sail sucks comments. The reason everyone's roommate, or friends friend friend says full sail sucks is usually because they couldn't take it.
Full Sail is a no-nonsense school. If you can't keep up with the pace, then you're either really dumb, or you're unwilling to learn. Unlike most colleges, no one here is going to put up with people who aren't willing to learn.
I'm a student there in the game design program a couple months away from starting my final project. I have nothing but great things to say about the school. The instructors are awesome, some of them you may even know. Dave Arneson, co-creator of dungeons and dragons teaches rules of the game, and Richard Wright, author of the OpenGL SuperBible, teaches (you guessed it) OpenGL.
If you really want to be in the gaming industry, and you're willing to put forth the effort required then you NEED to seriously consider this school. I'm in class 40 hours a week (no exaggeration), and outside of class I choose to work an extra 20-40 hours every week. Why? Because I absolutely love what I'm doing and if you feel the same way, then get the hell down here.