Universities Step Up Videogame Studies

Thanks to Wired News for their article discussing the continuing rise of academic programs related to videogames, covering the University Of Southern California, who are "...planning to offer a minor degree in the topic in the fall of 2004... it is believed to be the first major research university to do so." The article also notes that, previously, "gaming programs were limited to more-specialized schools such as DigiPen in the Seattle area and art schools like the Art Institute of California in San Francisco, which offers a degree in game art and design. NYU and the University of Washington have certificate programs in video games, and others, like MIT, wrap gaming into media studies programs."

Comments

Guildhall.

[Harbinger(JDW)]

Sorely lacking from the schools mentioned in this article is the Guildhall at SMU. Not only is it backed by a major university, but it is also not in a particular faculty which means that the teachers can teach the specialized curriculum and not have to go to classes that are simply CS or Art classes poorly adapted to creating games. Add to that the fact that the numerous game companies in the Dallas area are very supportive and often have people drop by to give lectures, and you have one great potential for a school. It isn't all hype either, the people in the game industry really are participating and giving lectures to the students. I should know, since I am among the first group of students currently in the program.

for those in canada

[schapman]

I recently finished my studies at A.I.C.D.I.S. Artschool in burnaby, bc, canada. They were recently bought by the arts institute, which in a way is a good thing. After graduating, you have access to the whole AI job board, and from what I've been told, they are decently good at finding job placements for people. I studied game programming there and learned a lot about programming and game design that I would not have learned elsewhere. They have some excellent instructors there (my programming instructor is probably the best teacher i've ever had), and the course is very much driven to applicable studies. I've found the universities offer a lot of theory, and while this is good, we spent most of our time making use of those theories. I worked on one game there that was our schools feature at the 2003 game developers conference (a fantasy sword fighting total conversion of UT2003). They also stress the importance of working with teams and from the start, you work with groups on projects. As with any school, there are some flaws (mainly the high cost as it is a for-profit, private, and thereforce non-subsidized school) but on the whole, it was a positive experience. I work as programmer now (not in games though, as game companies seem to prefer people with experience) and am working on a demo to start my career in games on the side as I develop my programming experience. There are some big bonus' in going to a private school though.. unlike large universities, they can change the curriculum at any time, and with the constant and frequent changes in the game industry this is a must. I started my 3 year program there when directX 8 was in the mainstream, but by the 3rd year, dx9 had been released, so our instructor took much of his personal time out to learn the differences to be able to instruct us in its use. They also stress the importance of good game design, which many games seem to be lacking these days. I still remember the biggest point of this when a fellow student posted a piece of paper on the wall that said:

hero

|

\/

gameplay

|

\/

monsters and treasure

The industry doesn't want this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see any possible way that those in the industry still sane would want to encourage these types of degrees. The industry is already so saturated that it's easy to imagine lots of disapointment and people not using their degrees. Is this the new film school stereotype?

For an artist, skills with traditional media (paper drawing, clay modeling) are more important than knowing how to use a certain 3D package.

For a programmer, generic computer skills and adaptability are more important than being able to use specific hardware.

By the time the above have obtained their degree the industry will have completely changed and the skills they have will be obsolete. Not to mention the possible avoidance of advanced topics that would be covered in a standard art or computer science degree. For example: Will these kids be scared of assembler?

For management? Why.. a business degree would be more applicable.

Re:The industry doesn't want this.

[schapman]

Will these kids be scared of assembler? AHH assembler :P actually, in my program, we learned assembler as the first step to writing shaders. After we spent some time on it though, we switched to HLSL. According to the instructors, the only time anyone in the game industry uses assembly now is after the game is mostly written, and certain parts need to be optimized. also, according to them, the only people who write assembler now, are the poeple who have been doing it for a long time. we are getting to the point where assembler is becoming obselete in games. with things like HLSL, and other higher level shader languages coming out, there wont be much of a need for it soon. Even when I see all the posts on the directx mailing list, i always see render code done in c/c++. The only time the assembler is broken out is for shaders, and even that right now seems to be people finding bugs to fix in the compiler.

Re:The industry doesn't want this.

[edwdig]

By the time the above have obtained their degree the industry will have completely changed and the skills they have will be obsolete. Not to mention the possible avoidance of advanced topics that would be covered in a standard art or computer science degree. For example: Will these kids be scared of assembler?

People in a general CS program are scared of assembler.

Game programming is one of the few areas left where you're likely to drop down to assembly. If anything, I'd expect someone from a gaming school to be less afraid of assembly than someone from a standard CS program.

Re:The industry doesn't want this.

[Anonymous Coward]

as an artist and student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and a member of the first class here to take the newly introduced Game Art & Design major, i'd like to say that they do indeed put a major influence on traditional media, and we do everything from paper drawing and clay modeling as well as learn multiple 3D packages throughout our major.

Warning

[0x0d0a]

Anyway, if this is true, I would love to go to one of these colleges.

This has come up before. It's a bit less appetizing than initially appears. That isn't to say that the video game field is a bad field, but that I'd want to think hard before picking up a video game development degree. (This is coming from someone who took a video game development class in university himself.) My comments apply to the software development side of video gaming -- game design, story, music, are a whole different story.

Reasons:

a) Video game development is a hard industry to work in. Turnover is high, pay is relatively low, and there are tough schedules. You may like it, you may not, but it's easy to get a rosy picture of it before you enter the industry. Sure, long hours may not be a big deal at first -- fresh college grads frequently don't have a problem -- but if you get married, have a couple kids, the hours may start to be too much.

b) Video game development houses, from what I can tell (and I don't work in the industry), tend to get a bit shafted from a financial point of view. I'm not entirely sure why this is the case -- they take on a good deal of the risk, they require a good amount of resources, but generally the publisher is the one to really profit from games. There are a few well-to-do game development houses (id is everyone's favorite example), but I suspect most of those seem to publish their own games.

c) I'm not sure that you can *spend* four years learning to write video games. Nobody knows where exactly the technology is going for certain. Currently, for a typical 3d game, you want a grounding in matrix math, some systems programming, an algorithms class or two (especially in graph theory for pathfinding), and experience with applications programming. Depending upon your role, you may want a class in networking (engineer/CS-style, not IT), you may want a class in languages (probably not -- in general, folks have found it to not be a very good idea to make up a new scripting language for each game), you may want a class in practical AI, and you may want something in signal processing (if you're doing *really* elaborate synthetic sound). There just isn't a whole hell of a lot of things that you need to write video games. A good chunk of, say, a CS degree is theory, and you just don't need anything too elaborate to write video games.

d) Writing video games != playing video games. It's easy to associate video games with fun and assume that writing production-quality video games is equally fun. Obviously, that depends to a good degree on the person. I tend to dislike writing video game code, since it's likely done with tough time constrants, and you don't have the freedom to write clean code. It's unlikely that the code will be maintained or anyone else will work with it in the future other than a few bugfixes, compared to, say, database software.

e) I suspect it's easier to get a general CS degree and move to video game programming than it is to get a video game programming degree and move to a position that uses more general CS knowledge.

f) If you're looking for a degree as a magic card to get a job in the video game industry, you may want to reconsider. For years, a lot of the folks in the videogame industry got in there be being really dedicated to video game development, independently producing a portfolio, etc. Right now, the big money is in the console market. As a n inexperienced junior programmer, it's fairly difficult to move directly to the console market -- it's easier to get a job working on PC-based games and then move to the onsole market. Unfortunately, the PC game market's smaller size can mean that it's tough to get into *that* at the moment.

g) If I'm hiring someone to build a space shuttle, I don't look for someone with a space-shuttle building degree. Aerospace engineering, sure. You aren't going to be penalized for being to general. My experience is that college is useful for making you learn the g

Hey, what about Georgia Tech?

[brandonY]

We may not offer it as a major, but we do certainly offer a very successful class in video game design, alongside other classes that go along with it, such as digital video special effects (who make some very impressive movies), computer graphics, and more AI classes than you can shake a stick at.

Plus, the video game class has successfully sent at least one group to the IDGA conference every semester it's been taught, which is pretty impressive, seeing as it's one class amoung several and only has about 30 students, unlike Digipen where the whole school is trying solely to make games.

So, um, yeah...go Jackets! To hell with Georgia! Woooo!

Re:Actual benefits?

[EduardoTheBastard]

No, we don't respect them.

A couple of years ago a colleague did some part-time teaching at a local video game school. He didn't do it again because it was ridiculous. The stuff they were teaching was outdated, and way too specific.

For instance, they spent many weeks learning about fixed-point math. Now, it has been a long time since most of us have relied on using fixed-point numbers instead of floats for speed. Sometimes they are still used for compression, but they are always converted to floating-point before anything is done with them.

Plus, anyone with even a reasonable mathematical background can learn everything there is to know about fixed-point numbers in an hour. If the students needed several weeks, they probably aren't the sharpest crayons in the box.

When I hire a programmer, they need to be flexible and smart. Just out of university, I want to see someone who can communicate well and has a solid grounding in computer science. They will learn the rest.

(Of course, if they are just out of school then they'll be really cheap because they don't really know anything yet. Ha! But it doesn't take long for the stars to shine through and get promoted.)

Other schools offer this as well

[Anonymous Coward]

The University of Hull (in England) offers a Master's Program as well as an undergrad program: Computer Science with Games Development. The University of Abertay Dundee also offers a Computer Games Programming course both as a Master's and as Bachelor's