What They Don't Teach You At Game Design School

The Guardian Gamesblog has a piece wondering out loud at what they do and don't teach in game design courses. From the article: "Games development requires expertise, and hiring graduates fast-tracks game development. Arguably, the release from the burden of training should allow developers to create new technologies. The industry has encouraged the university games courses, sending development kits to departments and staff to seminars. Since Abertay's flagship programme launched almost nine years ago, 165 games-related degrees have sprung up across the UK, a trend equalled in other countries around the world."

Comments

My Take

[th1ckasabr1ck]

"I am often asked what kind of course a prospective games designer should enrol in. While I have no personal experience of working in the industry or attending one of the courses, I tell people to get a degree in English literature, psychology, world religions, history, creative writing or philosophy. This is echoed by a number of long-term jobbing designers I have spoken to, none of whom has a games-related degree."

For what it's worth, I'm a game programmer and the designers that I've worked with have almost all come from other walks of game development life. They start out as QA guys, artists, assistant producers, programmers, etc. and then transition over to design.

I'm still not exactly sold on these game development majors yet. If you want to program games, get a CS degree. If you want to be a game artist, study art. If you want to be a level designer, make levels. If you want to comvince a company to make your next grand idea for a game, well then good luck.

While you're getting your degree, work on game-related projects on the side. It worked for me.

And your point is...?

[kaldrenon]

This article certainly raises a good question, but fails to answer it. If the game development programs offered at universities don't teach people how to design games, then what should be done about it?

The author says that "in most creative industries, the people from the outside have the brightest ideas and the cleverest approaches to solving problems." In effect, what he's saying is that for game development to flourish, the degree programs offered for game development should be ignored. Seems a little contrary to me.

Along with the fundamentals of programming, the core of a Computer Science degree, a game developer could need countless different references and sources, depending on the projects he intends to develop. A person making a football game, for example, needs to know more about sports, physics, and physiology, depending on the intended realism, whereas a person making an insightful and thought-provoking RPG with a deep storyline would want to do cultural, historical, or anthropological studies.

Because of the vast variety of secondary resources needed to develop certain different games, and because no one can really teach innovation, I say that all a game development degree can teach in order to assure its usefulness are the fundamentals of programming in modern video game design. A few more electives than other courses would certainly not be amiss, but learning to program is the only thing every game developer needs. Everything else depends on their objectives.

Re:Uh, is this guy for real?

[Morpeth]

"Philosophy isn't something you write about, its something you experience. If you need to read philosophy, you're missing the whole point."

Utter nonsense. Actually you're missing the whole point as you're obviously of the philosophy as "touchy-feely goobley gook" mindset, and I doubt ever took a single real course in the discipline. Have your read "Being and Time" by Heidegger, "Genealogy of Morals" by Nietzche, or say "Critique of Pure Reason" by Kant? Obviously not.

"If you need to write about philosophy, you just like to stroke your own ego."

More nonsense. Would you say this about someone publishing a math theorem, an archaeological discovery, or say some new genetic sequence? I doubt it. Why is writing about philosophy (as academic field, like epistemology and phenomenology, not the meditative pop culture bullsh*t you're talking about) any different? And don't forget most early philosophers like the Greeks were also scientists, mathematicians, political theorists, and they even took the first shot at what we would call psychology. But I guess their work was just stroking their egos too? Whatever.