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Majoring in Video Game Design
valdean writes "The New York Times has an article on how video game design is slowly but surely finding its way into mainstream academia. Whereas fewer than a dozen North American universities offered majors in game design five years ago, now that number is more than 100. From the article: 'Traditionalists in both education and the video game industry pooh-pooh the trend, calling it a bald bid by colleges to cash in on a fad. But others believe that video games - which already rival movie tickets in sales - are poised to become one of the dominant media of the new century.' Are video game design majors just slackers, or are they pursuing a lucrative and legitimate career?"
And so my question is, how many game designers trained in the high art of game design itself do we realistically need in the modern world? We certainly need lots of modelers, graphic artists, coders and testers who will often employ their skills working on game projects for game companies, but by comparison, what kind of market is there out there for a 'game design' graduate who isn't an expert either in the business end of game design (a gaping hole in the collective expertise of many a small game company, who believe they can succeed in the market on design talent alone) or the particular areas in which one needs well-developed specialised skills. There are certainly great designers out there who just do design and they're the ones we tend to celebrate most from the various great dev teams of history, but is shooting for 'designer' shooting for too small a target market?
I'd have a hard time suggesting that working in the game industry is a good way to make money. There's far more money to be made other places, except for a handful of lucky developers and designers.
this is true. the college i just graduated from, Columbia (Chicago) is just starting a game design major this year that branches out of the interactive media department. while everyone is excited about it, the first thing most of the faculty will tell you is "This industry will eat you alive." It's disappointing because I'd love to be creative and make entertaining things for a living, but at least no one has any hesitation about saving my ass by shattering my illusions that that is what I'd be doing.
And by saying a handful of designers is also dead on - some representatives from EA recently came over to discuss jobs in the field, and when prompted about designers, the rep said something along the lines of "we'll hire any animators we can find, but there's only 3 or 4 good designers in the whole business and we'd much rather pay them to design good games instead of wasting a lot of money of whatever you think up."
abort, retry, fail?
To me, the best thing you can do is to get a CS degree and then come out of school with some major, game-related project to show off to people. I was lucky enough to get this experience through a job while I was in school. A lot of people won't be so lucky, so work on a mod or a tech demo or something.
The real think to remember is that there's nothing magical about working on video games. It IS a particularly cool job, but that doesn't change the fact that you are making software for a customer. Be smart, work hard, apply yourself and it will all work itself out.
Also play a lot of games, that always helps.
While getting my Associate's degree (on my way to a Bachelor's in Business Admin.) I picked up a certificate in Game Design. Not because I want to be a game designer, but because I want to have a grasp of how they think and part of the process, because my ultimate goal is to become a Game Producer.
:)
I don't know what the quality of these programs is like elsewhere, but at the school I got my certificate from, one class was taught by Jennifer Boespflug from Microsoft, and the other was taught by Hardy LeBel (on the Halo and Halo 2 teams).
So what did I learn? I learned a lot about the background of the industry (most of which I already knew as a journalist and fan), and I learned a lot about how much research a good game designer needs to do to make sure that they're really getting to the core of what will make the product resonate with gamers. But more than anything, I learned that I don't want to be a game designer.