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EA Starts Gamedev Program
mrseigen writes "CNN is reporting that EA has opened a game program at USC. It is the first official game development education. Yeah, right."
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You mean like Medicine?
If only all those hours of my life that went into Starcraft counted for something
Dang, even the submitters don't read the articles anymore. It claimed to be "first-ever endowed chair at a university for the study of electronic gaming and interactive entertainment" not "the first official game development education". I'm an alumni and there have been game development classes going back years.
Also, before people start sneering, this degree is in the USC School of Cinema-Television, not the Engineering dept. It has about as much to do with the programming side of gaming as a degree in cinema has to do with the details of the electronics in a movie camera. USC does have some cool Computer Graphics classes in the Engineering dept, however.
Brian
Only engineering students get that much. Literally, no joke! Do not mod as funny.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
A university (or any *school*) should be a center of learning. If there's demand for a course of study, faculty willing and able to teach it, and resources to support it, I see no problem.
A university designed for vocational training would a vocational school. USC still offers Classics and Mathematics degrees all the way up to the doctoral level, right?
Maybe you could post a link so we could verify the original page , I mean I dont doubt you, but seeing is believing and this will be a really good joke if it is true:) (My room mate has a degree from USC)
Maybe someone from Blizzard can come and give a class there on how to do multiplayer RTS games. Battle for Middle Earth is probably the worst multiplayer setup I've ever come across.
Plagued with NAT errors, DCers, no port forwarding instructions in the readme, and huge balance problems.
I mean come on, Warcraft3 has an incredibly solid multiplayer setup, and it's been around for -years-.
How EA can pour millions into an awesome game, and then completely wreck it with some half-assed effort at a multiplayer setup, and get away with it (Tolkien enterprises would be -pissed- if they had any idea how horrible the multiplayer is in BFME) is beyond me.
Talk about pissing away the Lord of the Rings game franchise. EA has pretty much blown it on every title that's come out under LOTR. Incredibly weak...
That's not to say that there are no good CS courses about though.
That view is based a lot on my my uni and what I know of other uni's courses. I'm studying Games Tech at Abertay where that course is generally noted as one of the most demanding in the whole uni, a magnitude above the CS course. Although that might just suggest that our CS course is crap.
A games company may well look at CS students as viable, but more and more the games degrees are becoming important, not only for the stuff that you learn but also for the fact that finishing a 3/4 year course shows that you have some sort of dedication to your chosen profession.
I love it. The guy endows himself as a faculty chair. Forever putting to rest the notion that University curriculum can't be bought.
Academic integrity @ USC => zero.
What an outrage! They should get someone qualified like someone who has been in an important creative position in the industry for over a decade...
On the other hand, often a person who hasn't one-sidedly specialized in the said field is the best hire. Sure, a game company does need a frightening number of graphics drones lately, but someone with experience in, say, Shakespeare, advanced music theory, German literature, dance, fencing, or biochemistry might be a more worthwhile hire.
You can train a new hire to do the game stuff, but other interests often make for more well-rounded people who are easier to get along with and communicate better. Not to mention that someone's lack of "dedication to the profession" might give them insight to issues such as "The sound is funky here," or "Why does the jouster's foot look wonky?" or "Why on earth our game have so much grammatical errors?"
If anything, I'd prefer to work with and hire at least some people who are NOT historically dedicated to the profession. THEY are often the ones with the "Why don't we just _____ instead?" ideas.
The game degree will get a person started and make them extremely relevant for the first few years until the technology changes. After that, the edge such a degree gives is greatly reduced.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Should universities be designed for vocational training?
Why not? That's why most people go to college. I think it should at least be an option for people not looking for expertise, just a 9-5.
Quit whining. Endowed chair positions at USC can't be bought. He wouldn't get that position unless he were qualified (hint: he taught at Stanford)
My 9 years experience as a videogame programmer says: No.
Because you'll be stuck with largely irrelevent skills in 5 years if it turns out that you hate videogame development after your first three year project gets cancelled 1 month before shipping.
I've seen it happen.
I feel much better knowing that I have a computer science degree - and could walk across the street and get a job programming financial software if I wanted to (although I tried it, hated it and went back to games).
The greatest thing that computer science taught me was how to be flexible, pick up new computer languages and techniques - and to apply software engineering to my day-to-day work. I didn't need to get a degree in making videogames - because I joined a team that already knew how to do that and were able to teach me as I went along.
The actual videogame-specific bits of videogame programming should be (1) natural to anyone with an interest in videogames, and (2) easy to pick up when you join a game development team.
Uhm I think you might get just a LITTLE more theory in med school than in vo-tech. Additionally just to get in you likely have enough hard sciences in your pursuit of education to have developed a bit of problem solving.
I mean call me silly, but my doctors have had undergrads in microbiology, biochemistry, and *gasp* mechanical engineering.