Champlain College Offers Degree in Computer Game Design

sp00 writes "Computer-game-loving teens and industry professionals take note: a new Electronic Game and Interactive Development degree at Champlain College in Vermont has been unveiled. The career-oriented college will offer a bachelor's degree in this field starting in the fall, and it's the first degree of its kind in the region." While academic programs for game development aren't new, they're still far from being a standard course offering. It's cool to see that they're catching on.

Comments

Game Design is best for graduate school

[Mr. Piddle]

Seriously, while gaming can teach serious algorithms and such, it is specific enough to be harmful to all the wannabes who graduate and find that game companies have already been saturated by their classmates. Not only that, game companies are relatively rare and in relatively few cities. There just isn't that much flexibility, and the popular notion that everyone should uproot their families and move to where the money is is naive, IMO. If I grew up in Kentucky or Maine or whatever, why should I want to move to San Jose or Houston? I've heard that game companies don't pay well (supply and demand), so those plane tickets back to mama aren't going to be cheap.

Honestly, I think Game Design degree prospects would probably be better of going into Nursing or Accounting (established relatively well-paying always-in-demand professions in every city on the planet).

Re:Game Design is best for graduate school

[Stubtify]

Yes, but the skills they learn could be used to design games of their own. I mean Bejeweled has made that little company quite a few million dollars, and its not the latest and greatest in 3d gaming.

With some vision and the needed knowelege someone in this program could go far. I understand that a degree in game design is overkill to create a game like bejeweled, but there's more to designing games than doom 3.

Re:Game Design is best for graduate school

[Mr. Piddle]

On the other hand, I know the military is big on hiring games theory people for their warfare sims. I don't suppose this would help in that department however unless they gave a serious background in that area.

Again, the problem is that the number of warfare simulator developers really is quite small in the grand scheme of things. The reason I am a little peeved by all these high-profile things like game development/space missions/rock stars is that it creates a lot of wannabes to don't realize they need passion first, then smarts. A person shouldn't go into aerospace engineering, for example, if they have no first-hand experience with airplanes. Watching documentaries or reading Popular Mechanics just doesn't cut it.

I would hope that the number of people who enroll in Game Design is a very small group of dedicated people. Unfortunately, I know that a lot of people will probably enroll...you know the Uni knows that too ($$$)..., when most of those kids really just need to get a general-purpose degree in business and go out and get a real job and raise a real family and be satisfied.

Targeted at Teens?

[mahdi13]

Teens Can Now Major in Computer Game Development

Does that mean us thirty-something people will be turned down if we apply? Sure, teens are the #1 candidates for college but the 30+ still like to continue their education...oh that's right, we are suppose to lose interest in games after 30...

Re:Targeted at Teens?

[oskillator]

A 40 year old in the game industry is a very rare sight indeed. This is supposedly because people burn out on the 80 hour weeks during crunch time, which I certainly believe is common, but I have to wonder whether the industry is also biased against hiring older people.

Get a _real_ degree dammit!

[El_Ge_Ex]

"Yes, now you too can earn a worthless degree in a narrow field working countless hours getting no sleep. For your first job you say? NO! That's just for your demo reel!"

These degrees are for people to have no motivation to learn on their own time, which by the way is something every game campany looks for.

You want to be an artist? Get an art degree. Programmer? Comp Sci. Designer? English, Business, or Management are good fields.

Don't be a fool, GET YOUR DAMN SCHOOL!

-B

Re:Man

[El_Ge_Ex]

You want to learn about game design???

http://www.gamedev.net
http://www.gamasutra.com
http://www.cgtalk.com

Have fun, I just saved you $100k.

-B

Like the Degree I started

[pudge_lightyear]

It's really sad to see what universities and colleges are turning into. I was a major in Contemporary Music at a college in Illinois for two years. It didn't take long to find out that the only reason that they have the degree is:

a) Get people into college that don't want to be in college because it's no fun
b) Get people away from other colleges w/o fun degrees

The problem is... the effects of the previous are:
a) People who shouldn't be in college (especially a private one where I was) show up, don't want to be in class and pretty much make a separate class for themselves (the people who just don't care or want to be here)
b) Nobody likes them because they're just there for fun
c) They pay a lot for something that is completely worthless (except for the Liberal Arts stuff that they weren't paying attention to)
d) There is no merit to the degree and the school is knowingly setting 99% of the students up for failure.
e) They tend to become popular (like sports) and take away from the truly academic leanings of the school.
f) The best and most creative get the jobs, period. It's not like teaching, where you have to have a degree to do it.

This computer games thing is exactly the same situation. People will come to it to... Gasp... have fun... not learn... not become part of the institution... they then hurt the institution overall by lowering expectations, education levels, success rates after school, etc... but they are a big draw.

I say... leave these things to trade schools and bring back to colleges and universities the things that make our schools the best in the world... EDUCATION!